228: Mastering Millennials & Your Board Calendar – Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio

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What is that music? This is tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent and i am your aptly named host. Yes, we have new music, new music this week that was cheap red wine and it’s going to be our music going forward. It’s by scott stein and if you’d liketo meet scott, you can go to the facebook page. We have a little q and a with scott stein. I’m very glad that you’re part of the show. Welcome scott. New music and a new year luciana tova for those who are celebrating fifty seven, seventy four oh, i hope that you were with me last week. I would suffer idiopathic ridiculous apathy if it came to my attention that you have ms trim tab marketing. James eaton is president and creative director of the tronvig group. He explained how something small and seemingly insignificant, like the trim tab that’s it helps to steer a ship can make a big difference in your marketing and more social. Now what amy sample ward, our social media contributor and ceo of non-profit technology network and ten, had thoughts about how to manage the internal changes. When you make social media a part of your office culture this week, the overhead myth letter signers written to the donors of america, the three co signers of the letter are the ceos of the better business bureau wise giving alliance guide star and charity navigator our tailor jacob harold and ken berger, who explain what what led up to the letter, why it was necessary and why they feel many charities should spend mohr on overhead. Plus your questions and good overhead, bad overhead. Jean takagi are legal contributor helps you understand what may be sensible and appropriate non-profit graham expenses and what you should avoid. How do you protect your board officers and employees, but not go overboard on overhead gina’s principle of the non-profit and exempt organizations law group neo-sage san francisco i’m very pleased to welcome the three ceos who are the co signers of the overhead myth letter. Art taylor is president and ceo of the better business bureau wise giving alliance they’re at give dot or ge and he’s with us from arlington, virginia. Jacob taylor is president and ceo of guidestar there at guidestar dot or ge jacob’s calling from washington, d c and ken berger is with me in the studio. He’s, president and ceo of charity navigator at charitynavigator dot orb, gentlemen, welcome hi, good afternoon, glad to be here. It’s. A pleasure. Glad to have all three of you. I do want to ask you in the beginning, tio, try to be concise with your answers, because way, have lots of info to cover and just about twenty five minutes together. So tree, please try to keep that in mind. Really my first question. Art galleries for you. How did you get to be the first signer on the letter? How did you guys decide the sequence of the signatures? That’s, what struck me? Well, actually, i’m not sure about how that came about. I think we probably just threw a golf tee around. And whoever got the point got the name of their first. Okay, i don’t think there’s any significant. So about the order of the names. I think we used different orders for different events that we appear at and different communications that we send out. So, there’s. Nothing to be read into my name being first on. Okay. That’s. Very cordial of you to say. The only pattern i could see was alphabetical by first name art jacob and then ken that’s all that’s all i was able to discern, um, let’s, let’s, stick with you there. All right, you guys are the three. You represent the three leading sources of information about charities. Um, let’s start with you first and then jacob, and then can tell us what’s special about your organization, the wise giving alliance how’s it has it has a little different than the others. Please aren’t well, we’re one of the organizations that will actually make a judgment about how we feel about charity’s accountability and where, as i said, we’re primarily focused on whether a charity is accountable to the public, and we have a set of twenty standards that we use to measure the extent to which we believe charities are accountable. The’s standards were developed with the assistance of the non profit sector. It took us a little more than two years to devise the standards back in two thousand one when we last revised. Hm. And so we really feel that they represent the interests of donors, as well as the aspirations and hopes of charities that want to be accountable to their donors. All right. Thank you, jacob. How about how about guide star? Sure. You know, the big contrast i would make with my two colleagues organizations here gets right to something that art said, which is that guide star itself is not an analyst or raider or provider of judgment. What we are is a platform for data from all across the sector. So we have data on every single non-profit in the country for many, many sources, and we want to share others analysis, because we do think that the sort of analysis done by better business bureau wise giving alliance charity navigator can be very informative and important for the field. And we see it as our role to bring together the many different voices and and present them in a systematic way. And jacob, how many hits are you getting on the web site each month? Let’s, let’s. Just establish how relevant thes sites are for donorsearch schnoll sure. So last month we had about one point. Two million unique visitors. Excellent. Okay, unique visitors. Excellent art. I should have asked you how many? How many hits are you getting or if you can say unique visitors each month? Yeah, i don’t know if it’s unique visitors, but we get about one. We get about five and a half million report hits every year. So five and a half million times. Someone will come to our website to see a charity report can. How about charity navigator? What makes it different and and how? How popular. Well, you know, i just want to say first that i think, you know, between the three organizations were about fifteen million dollars in budget trying to oversee a one point five trillion dollars sector. So there’s, this much need for their, you know, all of us. And there’s a lot of us, i think similarities even more than the differences. But we also i do make a judgment, and we have a, you know, five level star rating system scale from zero to four stars. And we have about thirty metrics that we used to make those judgments. We also engage the sector in that. And also we have all one point six million non-profits on our website with information about them, even if they’re not currently rated. Let’s, let’s. Move to the letter itself. The overhead beth letter from believe june is when, when it was formally announced. Jacob the letter cites the misconception that overhead is a poor measure of a charity’s performance. How did that misconception arise? You know, when there’s a vacuum, something has to fill it, and i think there’s a desire on the part of donors as well as journalists, academics, researchers and non-profits themselves tio try to have a way to make judgments about the non-profits sector, which is very diverse and where there certainly are variances been in quality. Uh, and i think people saw the overhead ratio of something that had some meaning i’m sure my colleagues will talk about how it is not meaningless. It’s just what i would call a filter that helps us still filter out a few bad cases, but not a proxy for for equality and, you know, it fiddled it filled that vacuum, and my hope is that over the next few years, as we systematically gather a number of other types of information across the field, that we can offer an alternative that is much more meaningful and useful and helpful for the field on broader that that alternative being much broader than looking right just that overhead, anybody else want to add? To what you feel led up to this serious misconception about our ways, you know, we at the wise giving alliance, we’ve always i believed that you should look at a broad spectrum of things when you’re assessing a charity’s accountability, and while we have financial ratio metrics, address fund-raising and administrative costs, those are just two of twenty different areas that we look into. And, boy, we must ask charities almost three hundred questions before we can actually no of all twenty of those standards, okay? We’re actually met, so we’ve always group believe that there should be a broader look at what a charity does in order to really know if they’re accountable. And so when this opportunity came up for us to come together and share with the public that belief, we were all for it. So that’s sort of how we come into the table can how about you? How’d we get to this misconception? Well, i think it’s been over a lot of years, and i think that there’s been an ongoing debate over the question of what accountability measures should be those that we use the urban institute has done studies, of course, dan piela has gotten a lot of traction, and i think, you know, the views are wide ranging from we should have absolutely no accountability for overhead. There should be it’s meaningless. And i think all three of us were concerned that we be not throw out the baby with the bathwater that there’s a sort of a balanced place. We need to get to. We’re going take a pause for a couple seconds and course will continue with the three ceos of three co signers of the overhead myth letter and live listener love. When we come back, stay in there, talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Do you need a business plan that can guide your company’s growth? Seven and seven will help bring the changes you need. Wear small business consultants and we pay attention to the details. You may miss our coaching and consultant services a guaranteed to lead toe. Right, groat. For your business, call us at nine. One seven eight three, three, four, eight, six zero foreign, no obligation free consultation. Check out our website of ww dot covenant seven dot com are you fed up with talking points? Rhetoric everywhere you turn left or right? Spin ideology no reality, in fact, its ideology over in tow. No more it’s time. Join me. Larry shot a neo-sage tuesday nights nine to eleven easter for the ivory tower radio in the ivory tower will discuss what’s important to you society, politics, business and family. It’s provocative talk for the realist and the skeptic who want to go what’s really going on? What does it mean? What can be done about it? So gain special access to the ivory tower. Listen to me. Very sharp. Your neo-sage tuesday nights nine to eleven new york time go to ivory tower radio dot com for details. That’s. Ivory tower, radio dot com e every time i was a great place to visit for both entertainment and education. Listening. Tuesday nights nine to eleven. It will make you smarter. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com dahna duitz i love our new music, scott stein, live, listener lover get live listeners all over the country, in fact, and, of course, all over the world. Asia checking in, but we’re going to start domestic san francisco, atlanta, bloomington, indiana what if that’s the centre at indiana university. Leesburg, virginia. North kingstown, rhode island, south portland, maine. Walnut creek, california in san diego, california lots of californians live listener love there’s lots more coming, lots more live listeners glad you’re very glad that you’re with us and i never want to forget podcast pleasantries for the nine thousand or so that listen in the podcast love you too. Um, let’s see ken berger, you’re sitting here in front of me. It’s true i am. You are the only shill willing to come to the studio. How do you feel about this? That the rating organizations bear some responsibility for the evolution of this this overhead misconception? Well, i think you know, when i when i learned about the origins of charity navigator, part of the challenge for us was that the only standardized information that was available to us way back when was thiss financial information on the nine. Ninety. That’s, really all that there was that we could look at it. We always tried to communicate to our users that finance and overhead is just part of what you should look at. That’s always been part of our message, and i think part of our problem part of our responsibility is, we never really got that message out loud and clear enough. And that was where charity navigator one point o had to start. Yeah, it was all that was available. Yes, yes, but, you know, and so we’ve been trying to do bang the drum louder and louder over time, to let people know there are other things that are critical that have to be considered in the most important of all, being the results of the work. Okay, you other guys, anybody wantto weigh in on your organization’s responsibility leading up to this? No, i take it, you know. I’ll just say that i think, you know, we what we didn’t do ratings, we certainly presented the ratio on our site, and, um, i don’t apologize for that, but i think there was always room, as can said for further context provided to users and two donors about how that could be a meaningful peace, but not a full, full story. And then i would also argue that the blame where the credit or the responsibility, however we want to characterize it, goes far beyond any organization that did a rating but all the way to non-profits them cells, which, you know, reinforce this myth by literally, quite literally, billions of times a year, you know, prominently displaying their own ratios on their sites and at times they do that with complimentary data about programmatic results, which i think is very powerful. But when they do that alone, when they they on ly share that information, they really reinforce the myth in a problematic way, and so i would encourage all non-profits to ensure that if they are sharing, they’re they’re financial ratios, that they only do that in the context of their programmatic work and the results they’re achieving their communities, and they might have been doing that in response to donors who were, you know, picking up on it and picking up on the misconception i mean, there’s been a lot of talk about it and that that may have been, albeit sort of, you know, inappropriately waited response, but it may have been a response to the public, so the demand for those for those numbers, i think that’s absolutely right and it’s essentially create a vicious cycle where i think no one wanted it tio kind of spin out of control, and it hasn’t. So now where we’re pulling it back, trying to put things inappropriate contact trying teo affirm this multidemensional approach that we’ve all been talking about write your letter is is addressed to the donors of america, not to the charities of america. Dahna um yeah, go ahead, there’s some something more okay, there’s something i would like to say. You know, i think one of the things that really strikes us is that when a message goes out there, as some people are promoting that what? You should look at his results and results alone and forget about all this overhead. In this other financial business and what not in these other ratios? I think that it’s really ridiculous, and i think it’s really unfair to donors, i think that in a sense donors have made a very rational choice in looking at proxies to some degree, because the reality, as we know from years of research, is that is that the vast majority of non-profits do not publicly report on their results, and in fact, if you take it a step further, the vast majority of charities don’t have any data on their results to report upon. And so it’s not fair. I think two entire, you know to say, well, donors, you know, you should be looking at this when in fact there’s nowhere for most of them to go for most cause areas. For most types of charities, you don’t have robust information. So in addition to the advice that jacob gave about the overhead being paired with the results, i think there’s a fundamental message that charity’s more and more have got to step up to the plate and really take on this matter off results if you want people to look at things other than overhead. You have a really obligation to give them the most meaningful. The most important information which we agree all is about your results. Yeah, the conventional wisdom for for a lot of years has been that our results are unmeasurable were too complex for the work that we do is too abstruse, teo quantify results and that’s still happening. And in fact, we spicy and increasing drumbeat. There are more and more of these kind of particles we see coming out saying, well, we’re too complex. It’s two unique were too it’s, too expensive, there’s any number of a litany of excuses, quite frankly, and we’re not saying that you have to be perfect and it has to be robust. We just want to see charities begin to get on this road and do the best you can just started. Don’t say that. It’s. Impossible. We know that it’s, not there’s. Plenty of resource is out there to help our tailor. The point i would. Oh, please go ahead. There. There are the reasons people give to charities are very complex. And quite a bit of it goes to the extent to which people trust the organization the extent to which they trust people are trying to achieve the organization’s mission and trust can be measured. You are sensed by people, sometimes more so than it can be measured. You know, when we feel that the people in an organization are giving it an honest effort, that they’re working hard to achieve the goals of the organization. We tend to trust that organization, mohr and their different ways of looking at that it’s not always extent to which, you know, we see these results printed so, you know, that has to be factored in, and sometimes trust goes to the extent to which people feel comfortable with how they’re spending their money. And while we don’t like that, it’s still part of the complex mix of what drives people to give to chairs art the letter goes so far as to say that many charities should spend mohr on overhead. What what was behind including that? Well, you know, you can certainly look at some organizations who like to tout the fact that they spend, you know, very small sums of money on overhead and and want to point out that that makes them somehow better than organizations that maybe spending mohr that’s. Dangerous, because if an organization really needs to spend more money on overhead and and that amount is reasonable, they should move in that direction, rather than in a direction that would keep them from being an effective organization by not spending that money. So, i think, that’s, the point that we’re trying to make here. If an organization needs to spend more money on overhead, and they’re still within reasonable boundaries for what would be comfortable for for them and for their board members, they should look in that direction. They should. They should do that, including overhead for long term growth. Minute. This constant struggle between the immediate need and and the the desire to have build scale and capacity for the longer term. That’s, that’s very, very challenging. Yes, that’s. You know, that’s, what boards and executives of non-profits are charged to do? We have to balance the challenges of explaining to a doubting public that he spent expenditures are worthwhile and that they will lead to results. Uh, that’s the role of the board and that’s the responsibility, i think, of the executive running that organization to make sure that the people understand the directions that they’re headed in art taylor is president, ceo of the better business bureau wise giving alliance jacob harold, president, ceo of guide star, and ken berger, president, ceo of charity navigator. And we’re talking about there overhead myth letter that the three of them signed i want to take a moment, send a little more live listener love, hillside, new jersey, yonkers, new york, new york, new york, baltimore, maryland and bloom dale, ohio live listener love out to all of you let’s, go to some some questions we did a lot of pulling for listener questions, and i want to thank all three of your organizations. Thank you and your staffs for retweeting my tweets, looking for questions and really, i wantto do one think all three of you and your and the staff, they were working with me. Really very, very, very helpful. Thank you for that. Um ah, question came from amanda. Pee on da on twitter, she’s at living united who decides and how do you decide what is program and what he’s overhead? These areas can be pretty overlapped and sort of pretty vague boundaries. Who want to take that? That question from amanda p about program versus overhead. How do we decide? I think part of that can be in discussion with your your auditors to help ferret out. Make sure that you’re using the best practices in the policies that air in place to make that determination. We do know that, you know, i bought it. Work is as much an art as a science and there’s some ambiguity there. But there are some experts that have worked with a lot of organizations that you can, i think, rely upon, you know? And the other thing is to remember that were typically looking at larger organizations, those of us at least those of us that are doing these ratings. So those kind of organizations that need to do a gnawed it and to have that kind of expertise they can work with that professional to help make certain that they’re allocating those costs appropriately, that our overhead and that are not overhead and let’s also remember that when we’re talking about overhead, there are two subsets of that in particular, one is fund-raising and the other is administrative, and there was some important differences between those things, and as we’ve been talking about the importance of overhead, a lot of what we’ve been talking about is especially in the area of the administrative, the infrastructure jacob can mentions the fund-raising overhead is there a another? This is another question i got from a couple of listeners about the cost of raising a dollar that phrase, the cost of a dollar raising the dollar, any any guidance around that? What can we what can we offer charities? Well, so you know, i would say this distinction is is an essential one, um, and that when we talk about investing in yourself and investing in training or strategy or internal systems, that really falls into this category of administrative overhead and that’s something that in general, i’m very sympathetic when an organization says we need to invest in ourselves on we need to be able to think in the long run and that ultimately the way that we’re going to maximize effectiveness is by being a strong and effective healthy organization with fund-raising you know, i think that when you look at the cases of fraud, which i believe are rare but it’s still important for us to address, they more often fraud and or gross mismanagement, um, they more often fall into the category of fund-raising fraud or front fund-raising mismanagement, i’m not going to offer any sort of a, uh, redline a particular number where it’s, fine, if you’re below and it’s bad, if you’re above because the non-profit sector is simply to divers for that, i will say that, you know, the vast majority of a dollar raised is going teo fund-raising costs, especially when those air outsourced to professional fundraisers, you know, that’s something that to me is not a red flag at least a pink flag is worth exploring, but i also recognize that, you know, philanthropic capital is the fuel of the non-profit sector, and it does cost money to raise money, and we have to defend non-profits ability to invest in their own fund-raising while recognizing that there are those cases where it goes too far, aren’t we have find it interesting? Yeah, that in our evaluations, about forty five percent of the organizations we evaluate failed to meet one arm or of our twenty standards, but only about twelve percent failed to meet because of some financial ratio issue, whether that be fund-raising or administrative. So, you know, we like to help donors appreciate that if you’re just focusing on these overhead numbers, you might be giving to organizations that you wouldn’t give, too, if you knew more about him. So there’s also the flipside of overhead, which is over relying on them, can can lead you to support organizations that you might not want to if you do so, we think that our financial ratios are probably at the right place, given that so few fails to meet those financial ratio stands. Okay, that puts it in perspective. Thank you. All right, let’s, stay with you. We have a question from the council of non-profits in washington d c on twitter. They are build np capacity. Should we still use overhead? Is it so charged a word? Now that we should be using something else instead, well, you know, the word overhead is a generalization, as we’ve just discussed, what we’re really talking about here is where their charity spending a reasonable amount on administration and program and fund-raising and those are the three categories that we use should we continue to use that those three descriptions? Absolutely, because organizations do need to know how much their spending on these particular categories for purposes of comparing their effectiveness in these particular areas, effectiveness isn’t simply program effectiveness, it’s also, you know, making sure your administration is effective and making sure your fund-raising operation is effective, and i don’t think you can do that without keeping score financially to go along with what you’re doing. From programmatic jacob question from jean takagi who’s, our legal contributor and on twitter he’s at g tak wonders, why did it take so long for the overhead myth letter? Um, you know, a fair question, and i’ll i’ll say that, you know, part of it is just the coordination and that you know, the power here it that our three organizations that have some differences have different approaches, sometimes differences of opinion. Came together because we did share a belief that we have the field could move beyond are our focus on on overhead, it just takes a while sometimes to coordinate that across organisations that even as we are friendly there there elements what we do that are in competition with a city with one at the same time, though guidestar, charity navigator and others did sign a similar agreement back in two thousand nine. So we did do this before. I think part of the differences that, you know, you have the damp a lotta phenomenon, and i also think that and jacob and guide star was very instrumental in this, trying to have a way that tangibly the non-profits could actually sign on and be involved and engaged in the process which pulled people in in a way that weren’t wasn’t in that original effort in two thousand nine. Yep. That’s right. Gentlemen, we have to leave it. Okay. Very, very quick. Back-up. Go ahead, jacob. Oh, just that. And the one thing that has that there’s now hope that their new alternatives emerging and that we can begin to fill the vacuum with something else i want to. Thank all three of you, alright, can burger just said, amen. Thank you, taylor president, ceo wise giving alliance. Jacob harold, president, ceo guidestar. Ken berger, president, ceo of charity navigator you confined art on twitter at wise giving. Jacob is at jacob, harold and ken is at ken’s commentary. Gentlemen, thank you very much for being guest. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you. Been a real pleasure. We take a break, go away for a couple seconds when we come back, tony’s take, too. I want to express some gratitude, and then gene takagi on good overhead, bad overhead. More live listener, love. Stay with us. You’re listening to the talking alternative network, waiting to get in. Duitz nothing buy-in good. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. Hi, i’m ostomel role, and i’m sloan wainwright, where the host of the new thursday morning show the music power hour. Eleven a m. We’re gonna have fun. Shine the light on all aspects of music and its limitless healing possibilities. We’re gonna invite artists to share their songs and play live will be listening and talking about great music from yesterday to today, so you’re invited to share in our musical conversation. Your ears will be delighted with the sound of music and our voices. Join austin and sloan live thursdays at eleven a. M on talking alternative dot com. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Buy-in hi, i’m bill mcginley, president, ceo of the association for healthcare philanthropy. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Oppcoll got more live listener love, rocklin, california, brooklyn, new york, clinton, maryland, dallas, texas live listener loved to you let’s, go abroad. We’ve got seoul, korea, seoul so so loyal. Such always someone at least one of a couple of today from seoul. Thank you very much for listening on your haserot and chongqing, china usually have more from china, but only one today. Chung ching, china ni hao, time for tony’s. Take two and i want to use this time to just thank you very much for listening. I am grateful for your support of the show. I’m in your ear right now and i thank you for that. Radio is a very personal, maybe even intimate medium, i believe. And i thank you personally for listening and supporting the show. Thank you very much. And that is tony’s. Take two. Just my gratitude for friday, the sixth of august sixth of september. Who writes this copy? Who writes this copy to sixth of august, the thirty sixth show of the year. Jean takagi he’s, the principal of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco he edits the popular non-profit law blogged dot com and as i said earlier, i’ll give him another shot out on twitter. He’s at g tak welcome back, jean tony, how are you? I’m terrific. What was what was your take on that conversation? You know, i thought it was really interesting. Tony, i really appreciate the fact that the three of the signers of the overhead myth better came onto this show and we’re willing to discuss discuss that issue. I think it’s a really important one to recognize. Excellent. And i was grateful as well it was. And that was the first time i ask can off mike that’s the first time that the three even have been together in a live for him like this. The only other time was answering a newspaper. Reporters questions and, you know, newspaper is a secondary medium to radio, of course. So very glad to be the first time that they were all three together. Live s o. You have some thoughts on good overhead, bad overhead. I got some questions, gene, that really worded differently, but fell into the category of this. How do we decide what is appropriate? Yeah, i think. That’s a great question. Tony and it’s. Difficult. To answer because it’s so specific tio the organizations in the circumstances that may be applicable to that organization so it’s hard to make generalities. Which is the whole reason why it’s hard tto rate charities based on their overhead. But i think we can, you know, lissome general principles of what might be good overhead and what might be problematic. Okay, you have some from categories, then that that we should start with the good, i believe, sure. So i think education is a really good category educating particularly your board of directors so they can understand their responsibilities and how they can best contribute to the organization. I think boards are largely an untapped resource for many charities and investing in educating and engaging them. Figuring out how to best engage report, i think, is really valuable then educating your executive director or ceo. I think that’s so important as well, often times ditigal dd is charged with implementing a plan, and that person may not have the experience or the educational background to do all the things that are required to implement that plan. Perhaps no translating their vision into organizational priorities are setting realistic budget providing. A useful employee feedback, you know, defining and delegating properly assessing organizational needs on dh communicating those two all the stakeholders of the organization, the eighties are charged with doing so much and so many different areas, and they may have tremendous skill and leadership, but they may lack certain certain skills or experience in certain areas, and i think boards have got to make sure that they put into their budget equipping that executive director with the information or consultants or other materials that she or he needs to get the job done. Thiss ah lot of what you’re talking about falls in the category, i think of professional development for the board, for the executive officer on that would also trickle down to the staff as well. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, i call it education rather than professional development, because professional development sometimes seems like a benefit that you’re giving out to your to your employees. And i think these air just crucial investments, both in making sure that you’re properly equipping your organs, you know, perhaps you’re your most important organizational asset, which people, um and also in terms of just, you know, making sure that you’re going to retain the best people if you’re not educating them, retention is going to be a big challenge, all right? What’s another category of what you deem acceptable and an appropriate overhead expense stop purposes by saying i am a lawyer, chun hee’s. I’m bringing that perspective into this and and others will have other perspective to offer. All right, jeez, what’s coming boy, go ahead regularly at the morris with for me as a lawyer, making sure that you’ve got the right policies in place is really important. I think sound policies can improve on organization’s operations, can help prevent really costly mistakes and keep in organizationally a new organization legally compliant, which can be valuable in so many ways. So that would the expense aside from time to time to create policy and then have it approved by the board, might involve consultants in areas that the organization’s lacking expertise? Yeah, absolutely so anywhere from an auditor, regardless of whether you’re require an audit or not under under laws, maybe an audit or financial review, khun raise cem cem, sufficient information or materials for the board or the executive to consider an internal control policy. Financial management policies getting other consultants involved or lawyers to deal with conflict of interest, document retention, whistleblower issues figuring out what type of gifts are ok to take and which ones are not ok to take. Most organizations don’t have gift acceptance policies and that’s something that they should look into, and i think you’re going to raise maybe an issue of expense reimbursement later on and that’s another good policy to have to make sure that everybody’s on the same page well, okay, around that you and you and i have talked about a lot of these policies in the past, in detail, so around that expense reimbursement there was there’s, an interesting case, a to college, a college president who spent one hundred forty thousand dollars on a trip to china, and it is justifying it. Could i don’t remember the name of the college. I don’t do you? Yeah. It’s, westfield state university and their president was abin da bao. Okay, he’s he’s. So that expense, among other things, it’s. Not just that expense, but among other things. But that one caught my eye because it’s on its face, it would seem so outrageous. But there’s things. We don’t know, like how many people were there and, uh what? What the outcomes were i mean, that could be a justifiable expense, that kind of money for a trip it was to china. I’m pretty sure yeah, absolutely. So i don’t know enough about it to really comment on it any more than to say that, yes, on its face, it can look like it’s going to be difficult to justify expense, but that’s, as it was characterized by the media on dh i don’t know that we have all the information or if the media has sametz displayed, you know, the information that would raise sort of public outcry where otherwise it might be kind of boring to know what justifications there were for such an expenditure. Perhaps there were good reasons teo increase the amount of revenues that coming from from china, or support or toe otherwise in attract students from from there, if that was indeed one of the goals, i think there’s more that needs to be learned about this before criticizing it, and the board or the executive committee of that board had requested and risk steve thirty page audit, i believe, and i think they’re going to need to go through that pretty court carefully. It just raises the point that it’s really without all the facts, as you’re saying, it’s really impossible to know whether one hundred forty thousand dollars for a trip to china or fifteen percent spent on program in a year or are more vice versa in a year is appropriate. You just if you just can’t draw these lines the way one of the ceos i think it was jacob, harold said, you know, and we were talking about i was talking to those guys you just can’t know and be so precise with dollar amounts and percentages, yeah, in some ways are in many ways i would say that st tony, i guess there are the exceptions and aren’t there are always exceptions, but if a charity that’s focused on poverty relief is paying for, you know, first class entertainment, first class flights to paris toe entertain their staff members for retention purposes. I upleaf that’s bad overhead, but, you know, outside of the really obvious examples, it is sometimes difficult t criticize a charity, but i don’t think we can downplay whether donor-centric tae shins are reasonable or not, if you’re transparent organization and that information is coming out through the media through the charity rating sites through your nine ninety, you’re going to want to make sure that that you’re aware of certain expenses that might catch people’s eyes and turned them the wrong way because of public relations and the goodwill that the charity has is, you know, other other than the people of this that that are supporting the charity, another one of the charity’s most important resources that that goodwill so you don’t want to harm that you want to avoid the perception of a bad expenditure. Yeah, especially if it looks like a blatant rip red flag out there. What’s another category you you have for us in the in the good overhead section. A few risks that you have the right insurance investing in the, er, right technology, kind of another area, i think, in terms of raising the effectiveness and efficiency oven organizations performance even currently, and not just building skills for the future. I think you gotta look at things like technology are using data technology, that’s going to be more expensive, upkeep and that’s creating inefficiencies. In the productivity of your staff for that hinders prevents reasonable expansion will knew technology allows for more effective and efficient ways of advancing the mission, communicating with the donors and supporters, finding new donors, you know, mobilizing advocacy efforts, measuring and analyzing impact. And i think measurement tools is another thing there’s a demand now from from lots of sources about well, if it’s not overhead it’s about, are you creating positive impact? And if that’s the big question out there now what? How our charity is measuring that i think are may have mentioned that a lot of charities, they’re not showing that in their nine nineties, we can’t really determine howto review charities based dahna on impact and part of that is because it’s so hard to measure, but what investments are you making there then? I think the last thing i wanted to mention with building engagement and collaboration collaboration is it was such an important part of being more effective and efficient and taking great ideas to scale where, where it makes sense and that all costs money, and if you’re going to label that is overhead and then i think you have to make sure that you’re putting your money in the right place. One of those questions that i read from a listener was, you know, he’s overhead, a jaded term now. But, you know, maybe i’m probably doesn’t really matter what the term is, but investment is something that i think that sounds more positive than overhead, and it seems to fall into. I think it sort of captures a lot of what you’re talking about in terms of engagement. You know, in investing in people and maybe joint ventures and things like that, we have to go away for a couple seconds. Jean, of course, will stay with us, and we keep talking about good overhead, bad overhead. Got a little more live listener, love, stay with us. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Oppcoll are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. No. Got more live listener love, vietnam live listener love out to you, warrington uk and mara pole, ukraine live listener left each of you. I’m sorry, we don’t have vietnamese or ukrainian covered in the studio here. We do have japanese, though. Konnichi wa to you, yokosuka! That was terrible. Let me try that again. Yokosuka and osaka i could eat you are gene let’s, let’s move, teo bad overhead some something’s in the fall into that category you think probably are hard to justify. Yeah, there are certain transactions that i think or expenses that they’re going to be more difficult to justify than others think again there they’re going to be exceptions to some of these, but generally speaking, if you’ve got transactions that appeared to benefit insiders like boardmember zehr officers mohr than the charity’s intended beneficiaries, those are going to be difficult to justify, and you’re going to want to think carefully about whether you should make those expenses and then whether they’re really of reasonable advantage to the organization if that was to come out in the open. So those are one type extravagant expenses way before we before we moved to benefit another if that one hundred forty thousand dollars china trip is really resulting in very trivial benefits and never with the expectation of muchmore benefits to accrue to the organization but was really about sort of making sure that a president or ceo was traveling on a very enjoyable trip. That’s compensation, that’s that’s not that’s, not an organizational expense that that it’s going to be easy toe to justify in and of itself, and finally appears, you know, having significant expenses on furthering some other cause other than your mission other than your state admissions, then that may be a problematic expenses well, and that may be a violation of your duty. Teo ensure that the charitable, recent sources are used for that particular mission. So if you’re an organization with a mission to improve the lives of children with leukemia, you shouldn’t spend significant amounts of the charity’s money tto help disaster victims in the local community, even if that’s a wonderful cause because that’s not your mission, you mentioned the insider transactions, and one of the policies that were supposed to have when we were talking about good overhead was was conflict of interest policies, but that is not. Supposed to deal with the the insider transactions? Yeah, in part it does, but we can. We can have work transactions that are going to pass the legal requirements of conflict of trance. Interest transactions are not necessarily bad if a director or boardmember is offering an organization rent and one of you know his or her office spaces and that’s slightly below fair market value or nor more than fair market value, that might actually be the best deal for the organization to take. And that deal might be fine. But on the other hand, if you had other choices that were equally viable and it looks like you’re benefiting one ofyou, directors air, doing him or her a favor by renting out when it their offices and that can be problematic, and then you want to you want to factor that into the decision for that particular transaction. You have some thoughts about fund-raising expenses and how they may or may not be good or bad, excessive or or appropriate. Yeah. And there again, it’s it’s really about the care and the diligence at the board and the executive are exercising in determining what is an appropriate amount. To spend on fund-raising expenses and what is to be gained out of it sometimes you know fund-raising expenses are going to be expensive, and if you’re building a new campaign and intending to raise a lot of money, you may have to invest a lot in that to get the right people there. Tio use the right strategies for marketing, but again, you’ve got a sort of manage both what your needs are and what your donors and the public’s expectations are. Well, yeah, it’s a tricky area that’s very hard, though, because the public’s expectations air being set by thie overhead myth misconception, for instance, and what and what they do see some charities publicizing the way i think it was jacob harold, you know, said hey didn’t use the fund-raising expense example, he used the overhead ratio example, but those don’t expectations are very hard to two teo to manage well, impossible to manage their very hard to know sometimes, yeah, i think one of the questions that that has been raised on twitter around the show as well with what you know are the signatory to the overhead midst letter going to do about changing don’t expectations, and i think they’ve got limited power to do it. I mean, it’s, great to shut some sunlight on this issue, but, you know, your donors are your donors on dh you’ve got no, you know, here’s, another overhead expense that you should be spending on is educating your donors about why you’re spending the way you are on if you can tell them exactly what you’re doing and be open with it, hopefully that’s going to justify it for your particular backs of circumstances, but you can’t just simply, you know, expect donors to understand it very, very high overhead ratio initially, uh, let you know, let them figure out for themselves that it’s going to actually result in better impact and lower overhead ratios in the future. You know, companies deal with this, you know, expectations. I said it’s, impossible to manage, not manage, but i don’t know, maybe i’m splitting hairs here, but persuade mean over time, and it does take time, and it does take money. People’s perceptions do change. I mean, look, a tte political candidates who are disgraced and then, you know, win win congressional offices or running for mayor or something on dh, you know, and have a good chance of succeeding. Look at, you know, your own your governor in california, for instance, people perceptions about people can change perceptions about companies can change. Weii just have about a minute left. I mean, it can be done, but it’s a very long and i think expensive process. Yeah, i absolutely agree. And i think it is important for platforms like like this and be open the overhead mid letter and and your show, uh, tony, for people to understand, you know, overhead averages about twenty five percent across all industries in the for-profit world and thirty four percent across service industries, at least according to one major study and a lot of non-profits are scared at anything that approaches over twenty percent and, you know, maybe that’s not right. And sometimes you need the initial overhead expense to build infrastructure uh, before you move on to more efficient systems, and that means your overhead, rachel is going to be bigger as well. So educating more and more people about this through through the media, through other platforms, but also on the organizational level really, really important. Durney martignetti non-profit radio we’re trying to be the change that we want to see in the world jean takagi is principal of neo in san francisco non-profit and exempt organizations law group. You’ll find his blawg at non-profit law block dot com, and you’ll find him on twitter at g tak jean, thank you very much, as always. Thanks, tony, my pleasure. Next week, scott koegler returns he’s, our tech contributor and the editor of non-profit technology news. We’re going to talk about internal versus external social media and communications tools and platforms very much want to thank my three ceo guess the three tenors, i don’t know there were the they were like the three tenors. I don’t know which one would be pavarotti, who were the other three placido domingo and i put it in janice ah, former opera singer on the spot she can’t name the third just she can’t name the third she will as soon as we sign off, i know i’m i’m sorry, janice, if you like this show, then you’ll like my podcast, which i do for the chronicle of philanthropy. It is fund-raising fundamentals it’s monthly and it’s ten minutes each podcast and it’s on the chronicle of philanthropy website and itunes have some more lingering live listener love that io, doylestown, pennsylvania. Bethpage, new york. Port. Charlotte, florida. And tokyo, japan live listener love to all of you. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Gemma’s taylor is today’s line producer. The show’s social media is by deborah askanase of community organizer two point oh, and the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of the new rules i’m loving this new music. What do you think you could tell me on the facebook page? What you think of the new music? I hope you’ll be with us next friday, one to two p, m eastern. Talking alternative broadcasting at talking alternative dot com. Duitz e-giving didn’t think the shooting. Good ending. You’re listening to the talking alternate network, waiting to get you thinking. Cubine are you a female entrepreneur? Ready to break through? Join us at sixty body sassy sol, where women are empowered to ask one received what they truly want in love, life and business. Tune in thursday, said noon eastern time to learn tips and juicy secrets from inspiring women and men who, there to define their success, get inspired, stay motivated and defying your version of giant success with sexy body sake. Sold every thursday ad. Men in new york times on talking alternative dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. You’re listening to talking alternative network at www dot talking alternative dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. This is tony martignetti athlete named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent technology fund-raising compliance, social media, small and medium non-profits have needs in all these areas. My guests are expert in all these areas and mohr. Tony martignetti non-profit radio friday’s one to two eastern on talking alternative broadcasting are you concerned about the future of your business for career? Would you like it all to just be better? Well, the way to do that is to better communication. And the best way to do that is training from the team at improving communications. This is larry sharp, host of the ivory tower radio program and director at improving communications. Does your office needs better leadership? Customer service sales or maybe better writing are speaking skills. Could they be better at dealing with confrontation conflicts, touchy subjects all are covered here at improving communications. If you’re in the new york city area, stop by one of our public classes or get your human resource is in touch with us. The website is improving communications, dot com that’s improving communications, dot com improve your professional environment. Be more effective, be happier. And make more money. 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157: Trim Tab Marketing & More Social, Now What? – Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio

Posted on August 29, 2013 by Nonprofit Radio

Tony’s guests this week:

James Heaton, president and creative director at Tronvig Group

Amy Sample Ward, CEO of Nonprofit Technology Network and co-author of “Social Change Anytime Everywhere”

Read and watch more on Tony’s blog: http://tonymartignetti.com

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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. I hope you’re with me last week, i’d suffer pilot nephritis if i learned that you had missed cool crowd funding dahna ostomel, founder and ceo of deposit, a gift, shared her wisdom on how to create a successful crowdsourced campaign from appearance and copy to who you’re reaching and how and in-kind investment anita fi willis, vice president of strategic partnerships at new york, needs you. She and i talked about how to create or grow your in-kind giving program, she stepped through the process from assessment to thank you this week. Trim tab marketing james eaton is president and creative director of the tronvig group. The metaphor of the trim tab as one person who can move an entire society has professional and personal meeting from him. We’ll hear about both of those he explains how something small and seemingly insignificant could make a big difference in your marketing and had to figure out what that small thing is. This is an archive show originally aired on july twentieth last year and more social now what? Amy sample ward, our social media contributor, co author of social change, anytime everywhere and ceo of non-profit technology network, has thoughts about how to manage the internal changes. When you make social media a part of your office culture, amy’s lives and on tony’s, take through this week, take time off. In fact, i’m off this week. Where, ah, were pre recorded. My pleasure. Now, to bring you. James he eaten and trim tab marketing with me now in the studio is james eaton he’s president and creative director of tronvig group. He grew up in florida and left the u s at nineteen for an eight year odyssey in asia, where he had a near death experience in the north of tibet, became a terra bod in buddhist monk in thailand and studied calligraphy in japan. He’s, fluent in japanese and proficient in chinese tronvig group, has worked for clients in a wide variety of business and non-profit categories, including museums, community organizations, funds and think tanks. His philosophy is based on the power and efficiency of truth and importance of doing good in the world. James speaks on marketing and branding, and he blog’s at tronvig group dot com. I’m very pleased that his work and his very interesting background bringing to the studio james welcome. Thank you, pleasure to have you on the show. What is your definition of marketing? Marketing is tactical activity that you engage in on top of your brand messaging so that’s, very dense technical activity, your brand messaging, what does? What does it mean in your heart? So for example, uh, marketing activity will get you to buy a particular toyota s o you’ll see an ad, you’ll say, wow, that’s a great price. I’m going to go buy that toyota, and but that needs to be built on a brand and it’s the brand that allows you to ally yourself within that that product and believe in it so that you will subsequently say, never buy another car other than a toyota for the rest of your life. So the marketing is tactical in the branding is strategic ah, the marketing ask youto to engage in a particular activity make this donation volunteermatch volunteers have to be all about money that’s right here beyond our board and that supported by your mission, you’re your brand or the the the notion in people’s mind of, of why you exist and why you matter so ah, the so marketing is essential as the communication tool to get out a request for specific activity and you want to do this all in your own voice, right. This is why marketing you matters that’s, right? You want to do it such that you are creating a sense of alignment with your with your organizational with your organizational brand. You want them to do what you want them to do. But then, at the end of the day, you also want them to believe it and believe in you and believe that they have done something good. And before they can believe in you. They have to know about you and there’s. Where the right communications eso marketing is communications there’s an interesting statistic that just came out from nancy shorts. Men’s blood getting attention which says that eighty four percent of non-profits characterized their own messages as difficult to remember. Oh, my eighty four percent of non-profit difficult to remember difficulty. Remember how this is a communications, but they know it well. Yeah, then and there’s nowhere. This issue, they know. So, what we gonna do to cut through this so first, uh, one thing that’s important is teo. Not be afraid of marketing. When people think of marketing the i did get a little bit of cold. Feet like this is something that’s going to be costly it’s going to be in order for it to be effective it’s going to have to be big, and for some people it’s just a pejorative term. And for some people it’s a sort of term it’s ugly thing it’s a it’s, a it’s, a it’s, a right it’s a for-profit or it’s a commercial activity that non-profit shouldn’t be engaged in, but actually because it is about communication. If you have an organization whose mission is good who’s doing something good in the world, it’s almost a crime not to communicate that if you don’t communicate that thousands of people who are actually in alignment with what you do, who care deeply about what you do don’t know about it, right, you don’t want to hide and right. So marketing is your is a means teo, get that out in your own voice. Um to those who are already predisposed to want what you do to to want to support what you do. Ah, so it’s not it’s, not about a chain, you know, trying to create a marketing message like a ginsu knife. Kind of like push of course, it’s really about just explaining in ways i think old thirty second infomercials at four in the morning or too expensive, anyway, it can’t be engaging in that. So put those aside no it’s about communicating the true value of of your offerings so that people can understand it with with, with clarity and and and understanding of what there they need need or want to hear. So it’s this overlap this intersection between what you are and what you do and what they’re ready to listen to and to find that place and we’ll talk about. We can talk about that a little more in in a minute, but don’t take over the show we’ll get, we’ll follow my agenda, okay, okay, but we’ll get to that point, but you have some very good ideas. First, about howto identify who these people are, who might be predisposed. We have just about a minute before the break, and then we have lots of time after the break, so we just sort of tease the, uh, the your idea around finding the right people for your message. You have lots of information already, probably about your constituency. Who gives you money? Who comes to your events? Who visits your institution? That data, i cannot just sit idly at the, you know, in the corner somewhere. One of the things that an organization can do that can be tremendously effective in this is something that anyone can do, and it doesn’t require any money at all. And that is to take all that data and build it up into what we call personas teo to make of that information, eh, really, person, something imaginary person that you can talk to that will, that you can use toe bounce off your marketing ideas and your location idea. Okay, we’re going to talk about these personas after the break. Hope you stay with me. Trim tab marketing with james eaton talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Do you need a business plan that can guide your company’s growth? Seven and seven will help bring the changes you need. Wear small business consultants and we pay attention to the details. You may miss our culture and consultant services a guaranteed to lead toe. Right, groat. For your business, call us at nine. One seven eight three, three, four, eight, six zero foreign, no obligation. Free consultation. Check out our website of ww dot covenant seven dot com are you fed up with talking points? Rhetoric everywhere you turn left or right? Spin ideology no reality, in fact, its ideology over in tow. No more it’s time. Join me. Larry shot a neo-sage tuesday nights nine to eleven easter for the ivory tower radio in the ivory tower will discuss what’s important to you society politics, business it’s provocative talk for the realist and the skeptic who want to go what’s really going on? What does it mean? What can be done about it? So gain special access to the ivory tower. Listen to me. Very sharp. Your neo-sage tuesday nights nine to eleven new york time go to ivory tower radio dot com for details. That’s ivory. Tower radio. Dot com. Every tower is a great place to visit for both entertainment and education. Listening. Tuesday nights nine to eleven. It will make you smarter. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com so let’s, look a little more into these thes personas that may be could be a donor or could be a potential boardmember or maybe some other kind of volunteer. Or how do we identify these people? You want to think about who engages with your organization and essentially list them out first by type? You know we have donorsearch thes general characteristics age, you know, sixty five who’s retired who’s, you know, has time now too volunteer at the organization and so forth. So you you’ll know these people are but what you need to do is too create hey ah, an amalgam of a couple different people, but then make that into a persona that is very specific. So it has a name birthday on address. Particular children, particular pet peeves. Interests? Yeah. Such that you can actually write a journal entry and their in their head a cz if you were them. And of course, you could have multiple personas for each category. You wanna have a view percent might be a teenager. That’s, right? I also be your retiree that’s, right? You want to create a number of them? I think the maximum number is about nine but you want to have these very specific persons and you, khun, you know, grab a picture off the internet, give them a face, make them as real as possible, and you can actually bring them to meeting. What else do we know about them? What? Where they shop exactly where they shop. What? That, what websites they visit? You know what they do in their free time? What their secret fears are? What would be the hope? What would be the worst thing that could possibly imagine happening to them in their entire life for you? So that you create something that’s sort of a sort of psychologically formed imaginary person. And you give it a name and a face, and you use that to look at what you’re doing. Look at oh, we’re going to send this appeal letter out. Well, what would george think of that? And you be george, read the letter and say, well, this is this part of the letter is silly. I don’t i don’t care about that. So it gives you this consumer. Ah, perspective on what it is that you’re trying to say and it can make it substantially better. And it takes some work, but it doesn’t really cost you anything to put this put these personas together and it doesn’t cost you anything to bring them to a meeting and some people, like physically, like, have a little alright, stand on then or do these people talk in the meeting? What are we doing with them? You could so yes, they will criticize and review what you’re planning on doing that the actual program that you’re going to come to put out there, and that gives you this view that internally you don’t have and it’s, like focus group almost, but you but you’ve got this sort of imaginary person in the room and this can be extremely beneficial if particularly you then sort of look at your organization to create a kind of a latto vent diagram. What do we do? What we do this and we do this and we do this and he’s like the three areas of our of our activity. Where do these personas overlay on that you could like? You have little chest piece is almost like where did they sit on this thing? And where is our sweet spot that is? That is going to capture the broadest group of our constituents. And how do we need to talk to them? Who are they? And what language did they understand and will make sense to them? You can then tail your broad brand message. Your your your overall institutional organizational messaging to speak to them it’s one hundred times more reflective already already writing in their voice. I mean, you said you can even write their journalist that’s, right? Right? To write to them right to a specific person and not to this sort of amorphous, fuzzy general audience. And it will make whatever you’re doing one hundred times better. Okay, who do you who should be involved in creating these personas? Well, that’s an interesting thing and and it’s. Okay, say that’s a good question. It is a great. Even though i admonished you before you can say that’s a good question, that’s allowed. Can i tell a little story about this? Sure welcome. Who should? Who should be involved in understanding the consumer’s perspective in relation to an organization? The best answer is everyone that may be impractical, but arnel lehman, the director of the of the brooklyn museum who i think has a kind of a visionary and an adherent to trim, to have marketing, whether he recognises it or not initiated a few months back. A new program on this institution wide program where he requires every single person in the institution, whether the c f o the chief curator or a research associate to sign up on a sheet or not maintenance maintenance on a rolling basis. Ah, spend an hour on the floor of the museum interacting with the general public. Yeah, and just a knauer or an hour a week or just an hour on a rotating basis. So i don’t know how many employees they have. Quite a few, so copy takes a while to get through that cycle. And i think he instituted this, you know, basically with a switch of an aven edict in this case, and i think there was quite a bit of resistance internally to this. But what this does is it gives everyone that kind of on the ground retail insight about the experience of the exhibitions at that museum. Uh, the insights gained there will have, eh, a long term sort of cascading impact on improving everything that they do because they’ll be aware of the ultimate final on the ground, sort of experienced how people are using that museum because they’re interacting with absolutely answering their cause. They get to their watching. Maybe even yes. And i went to an unrelated meeting there recently. And when i came out of the meeting, i went into the great hall, and there was a fantastic exhibition there, and i had to tell somebody about it. So i walked overto this man who looked official. And i started saying, this is an absolutely fantastic exhibition. And, well, what was it? What was it was thie connecting cultures in there in the great hall? Okay. And we started up what turned into a forty five minute conversation about the exhibition and the institution and how it relates to the public. And it turns out that he was serving his his one our mountains from the borders of his three quarters of his one hour, i think, to both of our both of our ar benefits and that it was actually edward bleiberg who’s thie, curator of egyptian cloudgood on ancient eastern art. So but what he learned from you in that forty five minutes, do you think it was very interesting because he had contributed to that exhibition and he was resistant to the notion of that exhibition? And i spent, like fifteen minutes extolling how basically saying why? I thought the exhibition was great. And in fact i brought my kids to the exhibition that the following saturday, and they thought it was great. So he was getting retail in sight. He was getting what? No, i as the actual, like coming to it, knowing nothing about the background or the struggles that led to that exhibition, but the the actual user interface he was getting a firsthand account of how his work and the work of all the other curator’s who worked on that played out on the and this is the this’s, the tactical experiential level which makes all the difference for the success or failure of a particular exhibition, and ultimately of the institution and all that. And in order for that to happen all aren’t a lehman had to do is just have this idea. Yes didn’t cost him a thing. And this would obviously contribute to the creation of the personas? Yes. Okay. James eaton is president and creative director of tronvig group, which you’ll find at tronvig t r o n v g group. Dot com. What is tronvig yeah, that’s. My great uncles name. Carl tronvig emigrated to the united states in the nineteenth century and went to north dakota. Okay, south next-gen in memory, and we’re gonna talk a little about another family member of yours shortly. Let’s, talk about the trim tab. What? What is it? What’s. A trim tab. And why is this trim tab marketing a trim tab is, uh, a little a device the edge of a rudder that helps it turn. But the importance of the trim tab is a metaphor is let’s. Say you’re a child and you’re in a bathtub. And you have a little replica. A miniature replica of the queen elizabeth to this huge ocean liner and it’s floating in the bathtub. And you want to turn it well, the natural reaction would have to be in the tub with my brother. Do i? I hated bathing my brother. You want to turn the ship chips, and i’m there alone, we think my little boat. So you touched the bow, right? To turn the ship. You wanted to go left. So you you touch the touch the bow and that turns the ship. But if you had an actual queen elizabeth to ocean liner and you wanted to turn it by touching the bow, the force required to move the ship by touching the bow is astronomical. So how does this ship actually turn the rudder? Right. The rudder is in fact the size of a house, so i can’t turn it with my own strength. So in fact, on the end of the writer there’s, a little tiny rudder i called a trim tab turns in the opposite directions writer creates a vacuum and allows the rider to swing easily the direction that you wanted to go. Okay, so now if i take that model and i lifted out of the water and i tried to figure out what makes this ship turn it’s going to be very difficult for me to understand that it’s, that little tiny trim tab on the tip of the rudder on the rather runner on the redder, they’re actually allows me to easily turn this ship. So this notion of the obvious small changes that can turn the whole organization is what we’re talking about. This is the notion of a trim tab this’s finding those things that that actually can steer the whole system in the direction you want but are not big, they’re not costly, they’re not. We have this idea that big solutions are big problems have to be solved with big answers that end marketing is one. Of these big answers it’s like oh, well, we need to have more money. Well, let’s, let’s mount a big marketing dr and that there’s big marketing drive is going to give us big results. That notion is flawed and that’s good news for small and midsize charity is very good news in the fact of the matter is that if you think about the system and you think deeply enough about changes that can be made at the user experience level, there are some very minor that’s what i say when i say tactical, they’re very minor changes that can be made that can have the same effect as these big marketing programs were. We recently did a thing for the bronx museum, where we were asked to get more people to come into the museum. Ah wei have a certain amount of money, and they wanted to do a traditional marketing program, you know, bust signs, bus shelters, subway posters and so forth, which we did, but we set aside a little bit of that money to do something else that they didn’t really ask us to do. And that was to change the sign ege on the door and the windows of this at the street level of the museum. Okay, that thousand dollars from the however many thousand dollar budget we had was the best money we spent because that’s what actually brought people? How do you know that? How do you know that? The door sign it and the windows made the difference. Because when we were a few, a few a few things one when we were talking to people as they were walking on the right on the grand concourse, they’ve been there for forty years. Ah, and we were asking people on the street will what’s this. And they were saying, i don’t know they’re working buy-in causevox busy. Is that? Is that a courthouse? I don’t know. And if you looked at it, then considering okay, why don’t they know? Well, let’s, look at it. Oh, okay. There’s. The sign the sign is is way up there over the top of the door and there’s a flag way up there. But people tend not to really look up when they’re walking down the street. So and it’s a beautiful building. But there was nothing on the front door that you could see that the windows there wasn’t really anything that was big and obvious telling you what this was and and they were announcing in this case that they were free. So we put big orange signs in all of these places that you would see on the street and lo and behold, people walk. How come? How can charities find their trim tab? The the example that i give you that i give you a minute ago about understanding who you’re talking to and how they see you is a is a is a kind of trim to have activity the personas as a function of your spending the time because i think any trim tab action requires a kind of research it requires thought you’ve got to find that thing it’s not going to be obvious it’s not going to be the the i mean the thing that’s right there in front of you it won’t be the big an obvious thing, so you have to look at your system. How does it operate? What mental models are you operating with? What is what is this? And this is also how personas are interesting because they get you out. Of your mental models, you’re your marketing department might have its own vision of, like what? What the organization is or what have you and you we work psychologically with this kind of shorthand? We don’t necessarily think through every step along the way that gets us to a particular decision. We we use shortcuts and mental models are a shortcut, and we have them for our for organizations and and the way we operate and also who we think we’re talking to. Bye that’s what the specificity of these personas? Why it’s so important? Because you’re getting at something that breaks through these short hand models that we have of, well, we have this, you know, the retired over sixty five crowded and is too superficial, yeah, it’s the need to get into the detail we need to get in. We didn’t think we need to talk to the time you know, the curmudgeon, right, who comes every saturday and, you know and complaints to the guard, you’ve got to get into his head and start talking to him, and then he will break down your you’re in perfectly formed mental models and help you create useful ones, we have just a minute before we have to go this trip tap metaphor has personal residence with you. You explain. Tell listeners why that is. Yes, well, the notion is not applied to marketing. It may be mine, but it’s, not mine at all, in the sense that my great great uncle, buckminster fuller, whose people know as thie, inventor of the geodesic dome, futurist designer argast maximilian of the dime actually and map, and maxine carr and and the geodesic dome, which everyone knows because it’s, the lightest, most cost efficient, strongest structure in the world and your uncle, has this on his on his tombstone. Great uncle martignetti he on his tombstone, has engraved. Call me trim tab. Great nephew of buckminster fuller, james eaton is the president in creative director of tronvig group. You’ll find his blaga tronvig group dot com james, a real pleasure having you on the show. Thank you, thank you so much. My pleasure. I was a very touching end to that interview. I remember it very finally, we’re go to a break, and when we come back, tony’s take two, and then amy sample ward talking about cultural change. When your organization becomes more social, how do you manage that? Just keep listening. E-giving didn’t think dick tooting getting ding, ding, ding ding. You’re listening to the talking alternate network e-giving. E-giving good. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications? Then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way look forward to serving you. Hi, i’m lost in a role, and i’m sloan wainwright, where the host of the new thursday morning show the music power hour eleven a m we’re gonna have fun shine the light on all aspects of music and its limitless healing possibilities. We’re going invite artists to share their songs and play live will be listening and talking about great music from yesterday to today, so you’re invited to share in our musical conversation. Your ears will be delighted with the sound of music and our voices. Join austin and sloan live thursdays at eleven a m on talking alternative dot com you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Hyre sametz hi, i’m kate piela, executive director of dance, new amsterdam. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Durney welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent, i can’t send live listener love this week, but i certainly do love the people who are listening live were pre recorded this week for a couple of weeks, but i know california, texas, oregon occasionally, and we got oregon represented very soon with amy, new york, new york, brooklyn, new york and all our asian listeners. I’m sure you’re out there live listener love to each of you, thanks so much for listening podcast pleasantries for everybody listening through itunes and all the other podcast sites that the show is on. Thank you so much, tony, take two a sigh said, i’m away this week. If you go to my block this week, you’ll see it says gone swimming, and i’m a tte bethany beach in delaware taking a week completely off offgrid off line i’m not looking at email, not checking phone messages, not checking twitter it’s just a week disconnected on the beach, and i heartily recommend that for you you’re each in a urine e-giving profession you’re either giving to the organization or you’re directly giving to the people that you’re non-profit helps. And when you give and give and give, i believe you’ve got to take and that is time off. So think about yourself. I hope this summer you took time off to whatever you whatever you love to do, call it decompressing generally, but whatever it is you love. I hope you got some time to do it away from your phone and all the social networks that we enjoy so much most of the time. But we got to take some time away from all that just for ourselves and that’s. My that’s, my week that’s, my suggestion and that’s tony’s take two for friday, august twenty ninth, the thirty fifth show of the year. Amy sample ward. You know her she’s, a ceo of non-profit technology network. Our most recent car third book is social change. Anytime, everywhere. She’s, our regular social media contributor on dh her blogger is amy sample ward dot or ge? How are you? Amy? Welcome back. How are you? I’m terrific. Welcome. Welcome from oregon. Yeah, thanks. And i’m very jealous about a week. Totally unplugged on beach. That sounds like heaven. Well, you’re a very connected person. Do you? Do you take time off for yourself where you’re where you’re offline, i do not as often as i probably should and, you know, i definitely unplug from feeling like i need teo, you said, check twitter or stay on top of e mail, but it’s rare that i wouldn’t i even have my phone, right? Well, now you are ceo of intent. So that’s hyre responsibility. Yeah, i think you would be hard for you to go away and not be connected to them for however long, right? Exactly. Yeah. Ok, but the social networks you can let those go and and your friends and your followers they’ll all still be there, right? When you come back. Exactly. And it’s, you know, it’s kind of a nice feeling to come back from vacation and see people have kind of left left pieces of conversation for you to jump back into that that’s one of the cool things about social media. Yeah, you can get back right in. Yeah, a tte this point, i would say, i’m looking forward to my vacation and then, while this is playing, i’ll be on it. So let’s talk about what it looks like inside an organization. And some strategies for managing on organization when it becomes more social. What are what are some of the concerns that we wantto talk about? Well, i think we’ve talked before about how, you know, if you want your staff to be engaging in social media, we need to create some sources for them, like a social media handbook or even part of your arm fully handbook that there’s examples of you know what his customer service was like or here’s some commonly asked questions so that you can, uh, answer them with these examples, things like that, but the next step beyond that, when you’re when you’re really trying to move your organization to be a social organization and let those staff across the organization, not just one, engage online with your community, that next step then is to identify what that engagement looks like it’s part of their job description because it may be different department to department for staff buy-in staff person and it may be that some people, you just want to be accessible and to show that people across the organization or online and it may be that there’s a certain department, that actually you know, responsible for campaigns and it’s a bigger part of their job description, but it’s, hard as we know toe hold staff accountable to different pieces of that work is it isn’t explicitly in their job description that you can’t then put it in their review. Okay, so we’re going to make that, and we’ll talk a little more in detail, i think about what? Maybe some of those, uh, descriptions and maybe some of those metrics might look like it does impact the organization broadly when even even beyond individual responsibility. When you start sharing annual reports and financial disclosures on, you know, the way you’re supposed to be in good practice with transparency, people are going to start to ask questions about those things, man. So yeah, so i think what’s interesting is that, you know, organization sometimes start to share piela finance older annual reports or or, you know, impact reporting in some way and think, okay, here we go, one step you could be a lot of questions sometimes there isn’t because people just wanted to know, and that was it. But again, once you put it out there, it’s sometimes more about the culture changed. Within the organization that staff that staff realize that kind of information that really reporting is going to be shared publicly on getting all of the staff across the organization comfortable and batted on. Understanding why it’s important to do more so than it is now. You’re going to get it a lot of questions from twitter because people just read your annual okay, now i can see that probably true, right? It’s hard. It takes more cultural change to get it approved and understood. Then it does once it’s actually out there because that is true. How many people are actually gonna pore over your annual report? Like you said, they just want to know that it’s available right? Well, isn’t it a a great annual report? I mean there’s so many examples now of organizations really rethinking what the annual report did so that even as a report itself, its social and it’s engaging so it’s something that people come and directly interact with, you know, to open up different pieces and see different stories, maybe watch videos and then click on something else. Looked at the data from that program. You know what? Whatever it may be. But taking advantage of the fact they’re posting it on the web and making it and engaging interactive pieces of information on and that too, is going to take some culture change because many organizations have have created annual reports every year that are pretty static, you know, usually, like are are meant to be printed and then given to thunderzord donors are longtime supporters, but then also used in, you know, fund in different ways for forward over the coming year. Well, the idea, just creating an interactive, you know, the web page or something khun definitely could definitely take some convincing, especially when people are thinking of the annual port less so of it needs to look like this, but but more of a i like to have it in my hand when i meet with someone, how am i gonna have this interactive website in my hand when i meet with someone so recognizing where those people are coming from because of how they use that data so that you’re not creating us an infographic that’s how you know they couldn’t ever using the situation, but maybe something interactive online that still has some of the feature. Stories and the rial financial and, you know, fundez breakdown over the year and things like that so they could still pull the pieces out that they used in those meetings and when they’re trying to convince me funders teo, give you some more funds, but that otherwise it’s still meeting the need online have seen something a little more engaging. This all has implications also for our volunteers, and i’m thinking of the key volunteers, the board members, they need to be a part of this cultural shift also. Oh, exactly, i mean, you know, there are a lot of organizations out there where the board is technically considered, you know, working board, it’s a it’s, a very small organization, and the board is there to really contribute directly to the operations of the organization, which for many organizations now means someone on the board or a couple people on the border actually managing the social media accounts for the organization, and that doesn’t mean that they just talk about how great, you know, the organization is on twitter once a week. If whoever is going to be a man, you know, social channel needs to be prepared to answer questions, jump into conversations, be accessible regularly and if that’s not something that a boardmember who, as you pointed out is a volunteer, is able to commit to it not then that you don’t want the board to have access to the channels, but they’re just not gonna be able to be there as much as the community is on dh, maybe that’s an opportunity to have boardmember have personal accounts where they can certainly, you know, engage with people directly representing themselves, but you still have that organizational profile managed by a staff person just so that it is more more reliably online account. We’ve had lots of guests on talk about the setting, the expectations for board members appropriately at the recruitment stage, and if you do expect them to be out there and engaged socially on behalf of the organization, i think you’d want teo make that clear in your board expectations discussion while you’re recruiting people. Yeah, exactly make sure if you know, that’s something that there isn’t capacity on staff for and you need to recruit for it on the board. Be very open about that end about you know, how big nose communities potentially are how much time commitment and engagement there will need to be, and then, you know, proactively look for someone who is, as you and i have talked about before, recognizes the way that social work’s so it’s not someone trying to come into, you know, quote unquote have that message control, but someone that gets that this is a conversation we’re here to engage with the community directly it’s a great opportunity to do that and that we’re going to shave the conversation together and not someone who’s going to say, well, i’ma boardmember and this is all that we want the community to talk about, so, you know, that’s what? We’re going to tweet because you know that it doesn’t matter if they have all the time in the world to be on there because they’re just not going to be engaging in the right way? Yes, okay, we’re talking about getting buying at all different levels from leadership certainly employees, volunteers, key volunteers like board members were goingto go away for a couple minutes, and when we come back, of course, amy and i will keep talking about more social now what? Keep listening. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Welcome back on dh amy and i are still we’re going to continue talking about the cultural change and howto manage that when your organization becomes more social, more engaged. Amy well, let’s, talk about some of the strategies we you mentioned, including in job descriptions, what are what are different levels of engagement that might be appropriate for different, uh, sorry, different job descriptions where it’s not the person’s primary job when they’re not, they’re not the organization’s social media manager. What is just sametz samples of different levels of engagement, you might you might call on, well, one example that i like to use from n ten it’s. You know, for us, we want to make sure that all staff across the organization have an opportunity to connect with the community because that’s important to us and your mission is to help all staff use technology well. And so if we only had our community, you know, well the manager online engaging in social media, we also wouldn’t be practicing what we preach that all staff could be using social media. So we want to make sure that it’s staff running those channels what they can, but we also recognize that some people just you know, i know that it sounds crazy and unbelievable, but some people don’t have a facebook account for twitter accounts, and we’re not goingto have them create an account just because they work at ten and then have them not. I feel comfortable using it or not engaged very much there, because ultimately, that’s, what happens in this movie will be feel feel more just connected on confused then, if that person didn’t have a twitter account that s o that also is going to be contrary to what, what you stand for, which is real engagement, and if you’re not comfortable doing it, then you don’t force people into it exactly it’s not going it’s not gonna feel like a great conversation and came across their twitter account anyway, but there are opportunities to be accessible to the community and engage with them in a way that is comfortable and authentic. And so we have what we call weekly touchpoint and we have, you know, listening dashboards and all of those kind of resource is talked about in the past, and staff are expected to find one one thing that they want. To comment on or engaged with maybe, you know, someone participates in a twitter chat on, you know, a topic that they’re interested in or that is part of their work. Other people will find a news story about non-profit or technology sectors, you know, whether it’s from the chronicle for him to be or non-profit times and, you know, something like that, other people will just find block post from someone in the community, and you leave a comment and engage in that way, but whatever it is that you feel comfortable doing, the expectation is that you participate once a week, you find one conversation to contribute to in some way because the goal for us is, yeah, that you contributed, but it’s that actually, that means that was one member or maybe many members, if it was something like a tweet chat that feels like they got to have a direct touch from the organization and that it was it was really it wasn’t just, you know, one more email that we’ve sent out, but it was that staffers sense going and reading your block post, which feels good, you know, someone actually left a comment on your vlog and twenty thirteen were killed, like knowing these cummings anymore. So that’s one way where we set the expectations but left it open for open for interpretation, if you will so that staff can pick the channel that makes sense, and then if they’re doing this once a week, that’s fifty engagements per year per staff member that’s that’s, considerable, exactly, yeah, there’s twelve staff and, you know, easily fifty weeks where we’re online, so yeah, it adds up to feel like we’ve we’ve done a lot of external engagement and that’s not counting, you know, the actual social media engagement out of the organization’s profile, the foster parents and so on. And if you have that metric of one a week, some people are going to embrace it and do three or four or five a week it’s more natural for some people, others will be at that many others will be at that minimum, but even at the minimum, that’s still pretty good fifty engagements a year out of somebody who is not really that comfortable, but you know, that does what they do, what they’re being asked to do. That’s pretty good, exactly, and we have staff who, you know are are those staff i was talking about before that don’t have a twitter account that, you know, don’t log in to facebook, teo really use that, and so they choose the blog’s comments because for them they always get excited to actually hear what one of the end members was thinking about our working on so as much as it’s an opportunity to go the comment yes, engage directly, it also lets them feel like, you know, they can turn around in their chair and tell the rest of the office, hey, did you know that twenty martignetti thousand each right now, her, uh, whatever it may be, you know, because they just got to read, you know, take a few minutes out of their day of of otherwise, you know, just doing work and here, directly from a member as well, i love it and thank you for using intent as an example because i think that’s uplifting and motivating people because you are the non-profit technology network and still you’re saying you have people who aren’t all that comfortable don’t have a twitter account of facebook account and there’s still able to engage the love that you love it. Okay, so, uh, the the implication of including this in someone’s job description, as you said earlier, is that this is now going to be part of their performance review. We’re going, we’re going to talk about this once a year, once every six months hopeful i think once two years kind of bare minimum, but once in every six months, maybe in evaluating their their performance and maybe help them, i feel more comfortable or get to the next level if they are feeling like they’d like to get to next level, this can all be sort of growth opportunity. Oh, exactly. We’ve had staff where when they first join the organization, you know, they didn’t have have twitter accounts, for example, and they started out doing the community touchpoint knowing they had to find something to comment on or engage with and over time they got more interested and because it is and then they were on our own webinars as the half percent, you know, leaving the webinar and of course, that means you do the intro. You make sure that everyone’s able to log in eleven art, but then it means you’re listeningto all of these. Seminars throughout the year from, you know, experts in their in their different fields. So at one of the reviews, the staff person said, okay, i i listen to enough webinars about social media, i want to create a twitter account and i want to try engaging with the community there, you know, before our next unconference so that i can, you know, be a part of that online side of the conference, and i thought that was great a great way to for the organisation instead of us saying, we have a lot of people tweeting during the npc shouldn’t really have to do in our account and said by just saying here’s, the community, you need to be accessible, find the channel for you on the expectations you do something, you know, whatever town that is that over time they were able to see oh, i’m missing, you know, i’m missing this piece it’s on twitter, where i see people are doing things that i’m not there and they foreign fired-up join that channel on dh recognized the value themselves instead of us just deciding that they needed to be there. We have just a minute or so. Left, this should be part of staff training, too, not just the evaluation process, but regular staff training. Yeah, i mean, let’s think about how many times we complain that facebook has once again changed, you know, the the way that your friend list work or five settings or anything else if if you and some of plugged in recognized that weinger changing that it needs other people probably don’t recognize that. So having a regular checkpoints, uh, throughout the year where people can get together and say, oh, you know, i’ve actually been trying out google plus, does anyone want to talk about that? You know, or hey here’s, something that has changed in facebook setting, living off anyone needs to walk through it together. It could be a collaborative, learning type of meanings. That way everyone has a chance to share and to hear from each other just what’s working or what has changed in the different channel people are using under their own names. Thank you very much. Thank you for sharing. Amy, amy, sample ward, dot org’s, herb log and on twitter she’s at amy r s board and she’ll be back in a month thank you again next week, the overhead myth letter it’s coming, the three co signers of the letter will be with me, the ceos of the better business bureau wise giving alliance guide star and charity navigator do you want to ask them a question? Put it on her facebook page or send it to me on twitter. I won’t answer this week, but i will next week and we’ll have your question for them. So please love to have your questions. Also, jean takagi returns are legal contributor what overhead should you invest in to protect your non-profit coming from the overhead myth letter what’s wise overhead investment so that you protect your non-profit those you’re helping your employees and your board members. If you love tony martignetti non-profit radio, you might also love fund-raising fundamentals it’s, a monthly podcast devoted to fund-raising topics that i host for the chronicle of philanthropy, you’ll find it on their website, and you’ll also find fund-raising fundamentals on itunes. Our creative producer is claire miree off sam liebowitz is our line producer shows social media is by deborah askanase of community organizer two point oh, and the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of the new rules. I hope you’ll be with me next week. Friday one to two p. M eastern at talking alternative dot com, which is talking alternative broadcasting. Dahna hyre e-giving thing duitz good ending. You’re listening to the talking, alternate network waiting to get in. Nothing. Cubine are you a female entrepreneur? Ready to break through? Join us at sixty body sassy sol, where women are empowered to ask one received what they truly want in love, life and business. 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This is tony martignetti athlete named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent technology fund-raising compliance, social media, small and medium non-profits have needs in all these areas. My guests are expert in all these areas and mohr. Tony martignetti non-profit radio friday’s one to two eastern on talking alternative broadcasting are you concerned about the future of your business for career? Would you like it all just better? Well, the way to do that is to better communication, and the best way to do that is training from the team at improving communications. This is larry sharp, host of the ivory tower radio program and director at improving communications. Does your office need better leadership? Customer service sales or maybe better writing are speaking skills? Could they be better at dealing with confrontation conflicts, touchy subjects all are covered here at improving communications. 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154: Get The Best Out Of Your Board & Back To Board Basics II – Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio

Posted on August 9, 2013 by Nonprofit Radio

Tony’s guests this week:

Allison Chernow is director of external affairs at Bronx Museum

Terry Billie is director of corporate and foundation relations at Goodwill Industries of NY & NJ

Holly Bellows is chief development officer for Helen Keller National Center

Gene Takagi, principal of the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations Law Group

Read and watch more on Tony’s blog: http://tonymartignetti.com

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio, where we’re talking about big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i hope you were with me last week. You would cause me to go into cardiogenic shock if i learned that you had missed fermentation sandorkraut cats is a fermenter. We talked about the history, benefits and methods of fermenting foods and volunteermatch making scott koegler, our technology contributor and the editor of non-profit technology news, shared ideas about tech that matches willing volunteers with seeking charities this week, all aboard. First, get the best out of your board our panel shares wisdom on identifying, recruiting, training, engaging and transitioning board members. I talked to allison char now, terry, billy and holly bellows at fund-raising day in june and back to board basics, do you, jane takagi are legal contributor returns to contribute to continue our discussion on soundboard practices? This time, we’ll talk about term limits, how often you’re bored should meet having automatic removal provisions and very young trustees that’s young in age, not in how they’re acting, and jean is principal of the non-profit exempt organizations law group between the guests on tony’s take to my beth cantor interview is on video, and i feel i let you down last week, and i’m going to explain that right now. We have the interview from fund-raising day this past june, where we’re talking about getting the best out of your board, and here is that welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of fund-raising day two thousand thirteen where at the marriott marquis hotel in times square, midtown new york city and we’re talking now about board relations. My guests are it’s needed most closest closest to meet holly bellows, chief development officer of helen keller’s services for the blind. Next to her is terry billy, director of corporate and foundation relations for goodwill industries of new york and new jersey. And we also have allison for now director of external affairs for the bronx museum of the arts ladies welcome. Thank you. Thank you. It’s. A pleasure to have you. Your seminar topic is bored. Relations getting the best out of your trustees. No, let’s start far away. Allison, can we start with recruitment? What? What? What’s? Some advice around identifying and recruiting the right boardmember well for museum. We have a lot of opportunities for cultivation of perspective, trustees. We looked to people who come to many of our events. We sort of noticed repeat attendees way start plucking them out. We invite them to special private events. We find that people are very attracted to sort of exclusive private events, not generally open to the public. So we invite them to dinners or preview openings of exhibitions and that’s how we generate interests, and we see if they respond to that we just keep cultivating more and generally that’s, that’s way, tio sort of notice and pounce on perspective prospects. We also use other trustees to help us, and they bring along people whom they think would be a fit for the museum to two events as well. Okay, i mean, i sort of go down the line on different topics. Teri, you have anything you’d like to add about identifying the right people? Well, we’re different kind of agency were a social service ages. We don’t really have events or exhibitions or things like that that people would come to so instead we have to really go the traditional route, which is working with our trustees to see if they have friends or colleagues or others that might come be interested in working with our organization or we go toe on organizations such as bored source to do recruitment. Two or two funders, corporations, foundations that might be interested in supporting us in a different way through ford relations. Okay, so you’re relying more on your board because you don’t have those cultivation events. By the way, terry, i want to welcome you back to the show. Thank you. Chatted with you this time last year. How about you, holly? Like they have that goodwill industries is doing well differently. Well, we’re also human service organization. We serve the blind, and those were deaf blind. And so we have the same process as terry. We look for people who are already within the organization. People that know people that want to be committed for the long along home. Okay? And i apologize. I confused you with i’m sorry, terry. I’m here with goodwill industries and holly. Of course, you’re with falik falik color this’s blind. Thank you very much. Coach me on each individual word. Now i have it. Holly’s with helen keller services for the blind. Thank you, but no, thank you. Thank you for saving me. Okay, after we’ve way haven’t identified the right people way have to start. Teo, make conversation a lot more serious. Terry, how do we how do we go about that? Well, we work with a development committee. In fact, i had my development kitty meet committee meeting last night, which we met with five of our board members. And we talked about the different things that were doing to raise money. And we talked about developed direct mail cultivation events and funding alerts for possible corporate foundation connections, finding out what they’d like to do, how they like to help. And so that’s that’s, how we work with our board, we have a lot of other board members that in war policy driven, so they’re not so much into fund-raising so we have to use them as ambassadors they’re not so comfortable in. They get scared about fund-raising and what the expectations will be have to have to come out in the recruitment process. Right? Right. Would you say holly? This is critical. We need to be up front. How do you how do you do that? Helen keller. Well, right now i weigh had a board meeting on monday morning and a golf tournament afterwards. And so i i spoke with the board that i will be interviewing them over the next couple of months. Existing existing board, the existing board. Okay, and on that will be part of the question is, we also had a former board members come to the golf tournament to reinforce the other ties to the organization, and i will be interviewing them, too. And so is part of that process reaching out to not only what they’re interested interests are going forward, but, you know, looking for prospects and, you know, foundations as well as their personal connections for future board development. Imagine it’s it’s it’s important not to be trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Different board members have different interests. Aptitudes abilities, right? They can all come to the board for different reasons. Maybe they had someone in their family that is blind or deaf blind. Or maybe it just seems like a really cool thing to do. They learned about helen keller in third grade here in new york state. And they want teo you. Know, be a part of it. So various everyone has various reasons why they want to be on the board, and we want to exploit those personalities and and credentials, right? That’s, right? Some people they may not be able to get give from their personal wealth or their corporate wealth, but they are connected to lots of people who may be able to give to us or a foundation. I interviewed someone earlier today who uses is actually sort of ah, trainer on linked in hey uses, linked in board, connect on trains, organizations to use linked in board, connect to any of you use that for identifying potential board members. Anybody? Yes, that’s one of the things that we are planning to grow our board in the coming fiscal year fiscal starts in july, so we will be using board, connect as one of the tools and dish in tow board source to reach out and look for a new board members. So you haven’t used board connect yet? No. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I do plan to use it, though, so you’re so holy. You’re aware. Also aboard. Connect. I’m aware of it, but i haven’t used it. I’m creating a separate committee. A cz i told you before the interview. I’m hyre helmsley. We have a grant from the helmsley found charitable foundation and one of their charges tow us is to create a aboard for one of our programs so that we can attract funders and people who are interested in serving the deaf blind. And so i’m going to be using it soon to look for people across the country that might want to become members of this committee. Alison to make this aa two way street. How does the organization identify what it has to offer board members in return for their for their service? Right? Well, when we interview a prospect way really try and find out what? What is it that draws them to the museum? What is their interest? And for us, we have, ah, large education component. We have the whole art collection component, so they’re different reasons why a trustee would join the board of the museum. So we try and suss out what that will be. And i find a commonality is that they want to learn more. They often want to learn more about art. So for those who do, we put them on the acquisitions committee, and that way they can meet artists, and they can learn all that are they come to gallery tours. We sort of feel what? What is it that attracts them? So for others, it’s education, and they want to be part of the whole education programs. So they join the education committee for the board waken segment, their interests, and sometimes they don’t even overlap with board members. But we can sort of put them where they’re most enthusiastic. Okay, talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Do you need a business plan that can guide your company’s growth? Seven and seven will help bring the changes you need. Wear small business consultants and we pay attention to the details. You may miss our culture and consultant services are guaranteed to lead toe. Right, groat. For your business, call us at nine. One seven eight three, three, four, eight, six zero foreign, no obligation. Free consultation checkout on the website of ww dot covenant seven dot com are you fed up with talking points? Rhetoric everywhere you turn left or right? Spin ideology no reality, in fact, its ideology over in tow. No more it’s time for action. Join me. Larry shot a neo-sage tuesday nights nine to eleven easter for isaac tower radio in the ivory tower will discuss what’s important to you society, politics, business and family. It’s provocative talk for the realist and the skeptic who wants a go what’s really going on? What does it mean? What can be done about it? So gain special access to the ivory tower. Listen to me. Very sharp. Your neo-sage tuesday nights nine to eleven new york time go to ivory tower radio dot com for details. That’s. Ivory tower radio, dot com e every time i was a great place to visit for both entertainment and education. Listening. Tuesday nights nine to eleven. It will make you smarter. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com and just while we’re still on this recruitment process, terry, how i said, terri and i looked at allison mary-jo terry, how do you explain the organization’s expectations? Is it in writing, or is it just a conversation? Thie expectations around all all the functions of a boardmember it’s through conversations way actually, in the past, our board has not really been a fund-raising board, and so we’re in the process of kind of transforming and educating our board as to their financial responsibility, even though that’s something that most people understand that that is one of the reasons why you become aboard is to support the organization, unfortunately, we have boardmember is that have not made a gif right? And so we need to have the conversation with them and to say that we need one hundred percent support, it doesn’t mean that you need to give us one hundred thousand dollars. You can give us five thousand dollars, you could give us three thousand dollars, you need to give us something so that’s one of our challenges with our organization, with a board that we are working through, even though we’re jumping way ahead in the boardmember life. Cycle that could be an indicator that it’s time for a boardmember step down exactly. In fact, we just started a new campaign to attract the millennials, the young twenties and thirty somethings to start, eh? Maybe a young, not so much a board, but a council we’re going to call the good the good counsel, and they’re going to be younger people that we want to get involved and engaged and so that they could eventually turn into board members. So we’re starting with the youth, starting with they’re all about cause marketing and the finding ways to make a difference by their volunteering, so we’re going to be working with them to do that, and then eventually, you know, have them start their own, like little special events and cultivation and awareness and marketing, and then eventually waken see floats to the top and hopefully get him on board. Okay, back-up another step, let’s say we’ve recruited the boardmember we need to keep that person active, engaged who wants to talk about keeping a boardmember active and engaged way have we’re fortunate that we have a vehicle for doing that, we can invite them to openings and too many events, but it’s really also about having them see the inner workings, lights, lights just dimmed here. Nothing wrong for those of you watching the video on youtube, there’s nothing wrong with your vision. The overhead lights all just went out here. Marriott marquis. But we’re continuing. We have our own lights powered battery so doesn’t doesn’t interrupt back on. Okay, no, don’t adjust your sets. Everything is fine. Okay? I’m sorry. Go ahead. So for example, that the trustees who are interested in education way let them come and see the classrooms that come to the museum to see the work in progress and to see the work that we do so it’s very important that they come in and see all the grassroots work that’s that’s happening. And the other thing is that we just try to make them feel special. I mean, we try to write letters that are personalized for them that nobody else could get, so that they would feel that, you know, they in fact do make a difference there. So, you know the gratitude combined with hands on and really seeing what what’s going on works to really keep them interested. Invested? In it good, great, it isn’t. One of the things that i have begun doing is whenever we get a grant or a large donation, even a small donation, but we are an organization that’s been around for one hundred twenty years or more, and so we have lots of get small gifts that we get and half for a long time, but i ask different board members to call the foundation or call the person and just a thank you they don’t ask for anything, but to in that way, they’re learning more about that organization, and they’re feeling connected and that’s been a real positive response that i’m getting. So as i said, we’ve been around for a long time, we have many donorsearch couldn’t call everyone they are picking up more and more that they can do. So. Holly, how about training training the new boardmember what does that look like for for helen keller way haven’t i haven’t started training yet since i’ve been since october, but what that will look like is for is creating a talking points and some role playing for those that haven’t gone out and ask for money, paring them with someone who has done it and feels comfortable with it, having conversations about their experience on other boards. It’s, interesting custom, many of our boardmember serve on other boards on, sometimes they’ve gone out and made asking some have not so it’s going to be a combination of things here teach person’s comfort level. At the very least, i tell boardmember sze in in the past that invite the person to join you, make your donation in first and then in fight uh, your prospect to join them if you just can’t really say, can you give x amount of dollars so that’s a nice, non threatening way to get started and asking for money. Allison, how about training the new boardmember bronx museum of the arts? What does that look like? Well, we have a retreat on annually and in terms of role playing, there was a facilitator who came and your role played about making an ask and talking about the priorities for the museum, so it was really a time it was a very concentrated long day dahna meeting the other board members really learning about the mission and learning how to move it forward howto ask. And how to do that. Nut’s involves metoo holly, it sounded almost like you have ah, maybe a mentor mentee relationship for board members is that? Is that is that overstating? No, it didn’t help that a senior boardmember mike, you that’s correct, my position is newly created position, and part of that is to help our board became come more of a fund-raising board many of our programs our government funded, so there wasn’t a need in the past to be a fund-raising board and many organizations like helen keller, are transitioning from having helly government funded programs to where they’re going to have to go out for private gifts, and they’ll get bored members more senior boardmember help with that, terry. Anyway, you want to add about training the new boardmember right that’s, exactly the same situation that good will in addition to having individual individuals support, we have also had in the past a lot of government funding, so asking board members to help with raising money is a somewhat new angle for them. So what we’ve been doing is bringing on a different new board members, for example, way just havin a new boardmember from j p morgan chase, who has been on other boards and has done fund-raising so he is kind of going to be a example or role model to the other board members to show show them how easy and painless it is, but we do have to identify tasks board members who just can’t do fund-raising or maybe maybe won’t? Well, maybe won’t takes little training, but they’re just they’re timid. They’re terrified of it. Terry, what do we identify other things that that boardmember could do around fund-raising right, right. Other than asking right it’s it’s getting them to come to different events or different cultivation events, too, talk, be an ambassador, so they’re not asking for money. They’re building awareness, they’re talking to their friends about what they do about what goodwill does and sharing the passion about what the organization’s all about and really building awareness, not so much asking for money. If they’re afraid of asking for money, they could be a representative and record. For those who are afraid, teo, ask or it’s just uncomfortable for them. We often say what we need you to do is identify potential trustees, advocate cultivate b passionate and then we come in that’s our job and the and the executive director’s stopped to come in and do the ask, so it takes the awkwardness and the onus away from them, and they feel that they can just freely invite a guest without the worry of having to do the actual ask, okay, how about may be hosting an event? They could perhaps open their home? Holly other tasks that again trying to identify things that people who will solicit can still be involved in around fund-raising well, i have someone on our board who is an attorney, and that person uses their personal skills to review documents that are very important to fund-raising such as st charitable registrations for things like that that are very important documents that keep my department moving and keep us legal and transparent, but that’s not at, you know, going out, asking for money, but it is very important to the movement of the organization. So, yes, there are other task that besides fund-raising the other part of my practice, besides plan e-giving is the charity registration i wrote. I wrote a new book on how to do-it-yourself you and i do the registrations for charities i don’t want to do. Them so very well acquainted with that enormous morass called charity registration. Terry, we’re gonna have something. Yeah, just the same thing is asking people to host a breakfast, maybe at the club, maybe at a restaurant they go to or at there. If they have a nice house or an apartment to host something again to invite their friends or people that we want to get more engaged, all they need to do is be the be the host they don’t need to ask. Okay? And we do that also especially we play in the bronx nostalgia. So we have people hosting private problem bronze talk to sow bronx artists from storytellers. We really emphasize the bronx and have these very small, intimate events at people’s homes, and those people who host often become interested because they posted they become vested. And then the whole positive spiral happens where they want to get more involved. It’s great. How about the i don’t know the recalcitrant boardmember who just either can’t do it? I won’t do it. Or that you could. But it’s just not too. Is that person need to be transitioned off the board? How do we how? Do we finesse that situation or they’re recalcitrant? Maybe about or maybe there their attendance is very poor. Maybe they are. Maybe they’re great fundraisers, but their attendance is back. You start to see these signs, how do we want to take the first shot that way? Especially the previous job i had at a small museum. It’s, very hard because in a small shop you get to develop relationships with your trustees and you realized, especially in the economic downturn in the past years, that life happens that trustees have goes divorces, they go through bad business times, and that may account for they’re not coming there, not being able to give. And i think in a small place where you built intimacy it’s really important to have some flexibility to give them, for example, if you know there’s a personal situation to give them a year or so, it is sorted out and have a little bit of leeway. On the other hand, you know, once you do that and it continues, i think then that’s, when the board president needs to talk to the boardmember find out what’s going on and have a really frank discussion about whether it’s working for both people often they’re relieved to be let off the hook. Okay, mary-jo you’re tense, that’s totally familiar with me. I mean, we in my past organisations and in this one you have sometimes people that you just know that they’re heading out because they haven’t shown up wave a big gold wheel or a rappel wheel in the four in the booth next to us. That’s what you’re hearing it’s not we’re not giving any other way, but with next to us is giving away t shirts, caps, mugs or ipad mini being in the drawing for a night. So that’s that’s what you’re hearing going so, you know, we just recently had one of our board members say that she needed to step down because life changes and different areas of interest abila different, different levels of interest in what we’re doing, we’re already priorities changed, and she said she would continue to support the organization, but she needed, you know, she just couldn’t make it to meetings, and we knew that because she hadn’t been to meetings in like, a whole year that starts to hurt ford morale generally, i mean other board. Members who are making the time fine, making time making effort start to get resentful everything right? Holly? Yes. Okay, anything you want to add more about thie transitioning off boardmember i just sort of playing what you’re doing in terms of building up a younger constituency in my past job and now in the bronx museum, trying to build a board a parallel board. It’s called the leadership council, which conserve as a farm team for future board members and also as a retirement place for trustees. Who can’t you know, the financial onus is too great as trusting, but there’s a lesser amount expected as from a leadership council member. So it’s nice to have a transition. You’re keeping them in the fold, keeping them interested. But they don’t have all the responsibilities and duties of a trusting. Do we each have term limits for boardmember ship? No, none of you have term limits. Really that’s interesting. And that’s, you know, that’s. A very double edged thing. Because in my former job we had founder syndrome. You know trustees who had been there a long time. Really? Basically. So i ran the board de facto it’s very tough. And it really made me understand why term limits would be good. On the other hand, when you have donors who give these were our biggest donors, it’s very tough to give up financial support that they provide so that’s one motivating reasons to have this other board where they could go as well. Anybody thinking about adding board limits, we would like normal social. Yeah, we would like to add term limits, that’s something that we need to have a discussion with the board president and make some changes so that we’re hoping that we can implement that, then they’re coming here, ok, way happening had that discussion on at this point way have long serving board members who and she said, contribute and are active, and i don’t want to say goodbye to them because they’re valuable to the organization and we love them. So ish, as she said it, zo double in. Okay, we have about a minute left or so anybody want one talk about anything that i didn’t ask you about, that you’re it’s on your mind because you’re doing your seven or in a couple of hours about the board relationship hyre final final final thoughts? No, nobody. Okay, well, we’ll leave it there. All right, thank you. Oh, my god. Thank you. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Say that. Remind listeners and viewers that holly bellows is chief development officer of helen keller services for the blind. And terry billy is director of corporate and foundation relations for goodwill industries of new york and new jersey. On up, of course. Alison looking for your name here? Alison? Sure. Now sorry. Director of external affairs in the bronx. Regime of the arts, ladies. Thank you very much. Thank you for sharing your experiences. Thank you for being with me. Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of fund-raising day two thousand thirteen i love that roulette wheel in the in the background they were giving away the big prize was an ipad mini so i heard that in a bunch of interviews always nice to have a little little pleasant background music for an interview. And my thanks, of course. Also to the organizer’s at fund-raising day i’ve got some live listener love moscow in the russian federation and in china, taiwan, guangzhou, wuhan and beijing. Ni hao i’ve been to beijing and of into wuhan, also, and seoul in south korea, on yo haserot in japan, hiroshima, metallica and tokyo. Lovett konnichi wa there’s. Plenty of domestic live listeners will get to them in a couple of minutes. Right now, we go to a break when we come back, tony’s, take two, and then gene takagi, continuing our are all aboard day with back to board basics, do keep listening. They didn’t didn’t dick, dick tooting, getting dink, dink, dink, dink, you’re listening to the talking alternate network e-giving. Dahna good. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Hi, i’m ostomel role, and i’m sloan wainwright, where the host of the new thursday morning show the music power hour. Eleven a m. We’re gonna have fun. Shine the light on all aspects of music and its limitless healing possibilities. We’re gonna invite artists to share their songs and play live will be listening and talking about great music from yesterday to today, so you’re invited to share in our musical conversation. Your ears will be delighted with the sound of music and our voices. Join austin and sloan live thursdays at eleven a. M on talking alternative dot com. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Schnoll if you have big ideas but an average budget, tune into tony martignetti non-profit radio for ideas you can use. I do. I’m dr. Robert penna, author of the non-profit outcomes toolbox. And i’m dr tony martignetti and it is time for dr tony martignetti is take two. I just appointed myself phd since last week. They’re pretty easy to come by, so i figured, why go through the that the trouble? I’ll just name myself one my interview with beth cantor, which was on this show a couple of weeks ago. The video is now on my blogged you may recall, she is the author of the network to non-profit and measuring the network to non-profit we talked about riel online engagement and had a measure your success in your online efforts. That video is on my blogged at tony martignetti dot com, and i think i let you down. Last week i tried a new segment called out of the blue, and my intention was to bring things bring in people who have you are supporting non-profits but are doing work that’s not directly related to non-profits on dh sandora cats was the fermenter who are brought in, and he was terrific. He was delightful, but a zay was listening to him, and then i replayed it during the week, you know, i was kind of struck with why what? Is it why we listening? What does this have to do with non-profits it’s just not close enough to non-profits he supports non-profits um, but we didn’t talk much about that and that’s not really. Why you listen, is tto find out why people support non-profits i mean, at least not from one person’s perspective. S o we’re not goingto i’m not going to continue that out of the blue i what my intention was was to try to recognize that people who work in non-profits have lots of interests that have nothing to do with non-profits i read all the profiles of new twitter followers, and a lot of people comment on food that their food either to cook, ah, a lot of people coming on their kids, wine is a pretty popular one, different sports, so, you know, so that got me thinking people are multidemensional and maybe we should bring in some other dimensions besides non-profits and i thought a fermenter was a great place to start, but you have plenty of other podcasts, tens or hundreds of thousands of other podcast that you can go to to satisfy all those multidemensional interests that you have and i don’t think it’s right for me to try toe satisfy all those we have our niche here non-profits and picking the brains of experts to help people in non-profits that’s my mission here on this podcast, there’s plenty of other outlets for youto satisfy all those other interests that you have, so i think i let you down. We’re not going to continue out of the blue. We’re going tow. Focus more on on the core and that is tony’s take two for friday the today’s the ninth of august, the thirty second show of the year. I’m very happy to bring back jane takagi he’s, the principal of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco he edits the very popular non-profit law blogged dot com and on twitter he is at gi tak gt a k welcome back, jean takagi. Hi, tony it’s. Great to be back. Thank you. I can tell you’re smiling i couldjust always telling you i could tell when you’re smiling. It’s ah it’s. Wonderful to have your energy even from san francisco. I feel it great. I’m conveying that over the phone. You absolutely are. Yes, we started this. Conversation back to board basics two weeks ago, july twenty six so you can go back and listen to that if you missed it, jean and i are going to pick up where we left off, and that was with term limits. Question of whether there should even be term limits. What’s your what’s what’s the advice around that gene. Well, first piece advice tony’s to check with your state laws because individual state laws may vary. My understanding is that under in most states, that there are no term limits, meaning that a boardmember could get reelected onto the board over and over and over again, without any restriction of the law, unless the organization’s by-laws say otherwise. So then it depends upon the individual board thinking about, well, what are the good things about keeping board members on potentially forever? Versace? What is the good thing about limiting how long any boardmember serves so we can get new people onto the board? Increased our diversity on pursue other things and other perspective. So that’s kind of the starting point, but i’m wondering, tony. What? What do you feel about board term limits if you’re serving on the board? I’m i’m pretty pro term limits. Um, in fact, i was just on a phone call this morning with someone who works at the gnu heimans center she’s an instructor there, and i mentioned that you and i are going to talk about this very subject and she said has to be bored limits has to be, yeah, i like them, i think that they they boardmember could be extended if it’s a two year term or three term, you can always extend in addition on additional term tua boardmember but after four or six or maybe even eight years, nine years, i think boardmember tze get a little stale and i’d like a fresh perspective and i think there’s other things that boardmember khun do we don’t kill them just because they leave the board, they don’t die there’s other things there’s other ways they can help that’s such a great point, tiny, and i agree with you a hundred percent, i’m there are exceptions, but i’m very much generally in the pro term limit kapin with without term limits, i think you can encourage very insular boards that get stale as you said, they could become rubber stamp. Boards just going with the flow, you may not be able to attract additional skills and perspectives of the same people are staying on the board, and you’re not bringing new people in boardmember khun get very entitled about their positions and start toe slack off a little bit, and it becomes very difficult to remove long term board members politically speaking into from a sense of relationships and when you have term limits, it really encourages bringing in those new perspectives and thoughts and skills. But the best thing you know is to make sure that when you bring in new people that you’re really engaging them and not just bringing them as tokens so that that becomes very important too. But i like your ideas of, you know, just reelecting, you know, the board members who are performing really well don’t re elect the board members that are performing poorly or unable to attend the majority of the meeting and see exactly how many terms you feel would be sufficient before you could bring in new people. The previous segment was all about keeping boardmember sze engaged from the beginning getting, you know, identifying what their passions are. So these these two segments are discussion, and the the pre recorded panel discussion are fitting together very well. Now i asked each of those three panelists if any of them had board term limits on in in their non-profits and none of them did, and one of them express the concern that their board members are major donors and they don’t want to, you know, the way she said it, they don’t want to say goodbye to them, but i do think there a said there are other things that board members khun do maybe there’s, an advisory board or something that’s, not a fiduciary capacity, legal, legal, legal duty capacity, but still meaningful and not frivolous. Yeah, i think is individuals tonny it’s natural that we like to get our egos stroked a little in there for a major donor to a non-profit to be asked to leave the board can be, uh, a difficult thing for both parties, but i agree again one hundred percent with you let’s find other rules for them. And advice report doesn’t seem to sound prestigious, but maybe emeritus board oh, it’s latin oh, that’s latin brings immediate prestige. Yeah, obviously. Okay. You know, we can we can play around with the titles of the committees and even the titles of the individual board members or former board members if we really value their contribution, we continued to engage them but have been take a term off the board and maybe if we’re not if the board is struggling to recruit and can’t find somebody, teo, take the place of the departing boardmember after term off, maybe that person can come back on again. So that may depend upon each organization but that’s, the that’s, the putin model of boardmember ship you depart and then you come on. All right, all right, well, if we’re going to implement terms, then we should talk about how long those terms should be. What, um, is there is probably not state law guidance on that kind of that. That kind of detail is there. There actually is. So there is among state laws. So some state laws, like in california, we say if you have voting members, the maximum length of a term is four years. If you don’t have voting members who elect the board, the maximum term length is six years and that’s that’s just for one one term, but doesn’t wait. I’m confused by that doesn’t every boardmember have a vote aren’t all board’s voting boards? Well, so in terms of voting members like in the auto club or a homeowner’s association where members who are not board members elect the board members? Oh, i see ok, yeah, so a lot of operations a lot, but many organizations have voting membership structures, which are much, much more administrative, burdensome and difficult to maintain, so i typically don’t recommend that for smaller public charity type organizations, but for other organizations that do have voting members, they’re subject to different, or they may be subject to different term length rules under state laws. So be careful of that there’s also a special on california that i think maybe in other states as well. That says ifyou’re by-laws and articles don’t define what a term length is it’s automatically set that one year, so many organizations get tripped up on that. They didn’t contemplate that in their by-laws and they let boardmember stay on until the board members feel like, you know they want to resign, and you’ve got to make sure that the elections are going on on a regular basis, just sort of on the side, the by-laws air are so important because our don’t state laws have lots of defaults for by-laws being silent on different issues, absolutely. Tony, you’re one hundred percent right? So if if you’re by-laws don’t contemplate something than the default will be, whatever the state could end up with a lot of things you didn’t even know you had, right? And now imagine if you’ve got a board that didn’t do proper elections and you’ve got one boardmember who voted the opposite way from everybody else and then says, well, it doesn’t matter that it was ten against one, this sport isn’t properly compose. I challenge the validity of that action that that one thing can trip up the whole board until they solve that issue. Okay, okay, so we just have, like, a minute and a half or so before a break different term, you know, i guess obviously the shorter the term, the fresher the board is going to be, but you’re going to lose, you know, institutional knowledge. Yeah. And so what is the expectation when you recruit a boardmember if you recruit a new boardmember and you say the term length is one year, they make oh, yeah, easy commitment, but they made me feel very good about serving that one year before they really got you know the organization and develop a director for that organization and then leave after one year feeling fulfilled. Meanwhile, the organization may not be very satisfied with just the one year term. Human three year are probably more common, but some lawyers actually liked the one year term because it allows boards to get rid of or shed. Directors are really not performing very well ever failing to attend meetings, failing to live up to their produce, very duties where it otherwise might be a little bit complicated. Relationship wise toe formally remove. All right, so you can get you could get rid of the trouble quickly on. You could just continue to reappoint them. And i guess if you had one year terms, you probably want they’re to be many possible successive terms allowed. Yeah. You might set your term limits that something like four or five in that case? Yeah. Okay. All right. We’re going to go away for a couple minutes, of course. Jean stays with me and hope that everybody else does, too. And we’ll get some live listener loving as soon as we come back. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Oppcoll oppcoll are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping hunters. People be better business people. Oppcoll have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Gotta live listener love all over the country mesa, arizona golden, colorado in daytona beach, florida live listener loved to you, newport, north carolina and brooklyn, new york live listener love podcast pleasantries gotta send those out, especially to germany, where there’s a big subset of podcast listeners and if you are a podcast listener and you want some podcast pleasantry sent directly to you, let me know who you are, you know there’s ah there’s, facebook, there’s, twitter, there’s a contact page on my block. Let me know where you’re listening from, and i will send you those podcast pleasantries. Always great for the for the live listeners as well. Jean, what if we had a hybrid? What if we what if we make the first term one year? I kind of like this one term one year term, and i’ve really thought about it until you mentioned and we started talking about this topic. What if you had a first term is one year and then successive terms are two years or maybe three years? Could you do that? Yeah, absolutely. Tony there’s there’s actually a lot of room in the by-laws if you decide if the board decides it wants to spend some time to create the right structures. You could do something like, like, one year for your first term. And if everybody gets along in this thing well, to do the second term of two or three years and that might be sort of communicated to prospective board members with the understanding that the first years kind of that test period. Although everybody has their fiduciary duties to live up to. But they hope that they’ll be continued service after after that term. All right, so it also doing my classes, tony? So we could have different classes of attorneys or different classes of directors? Sorry. Lawyers? Yes, yes, everybody. The whole world is attorneys. Everybody knows that the world revolves around the all of them. And then they’re just two or three people out there who are not lawyers. Yeah. Further embarrassed, not you. You’re welcome. So, yes, we could have different classes of directors out there in some classes of directors. Could have a two year term. Some might have a three year term. Some might be prone to term limits of two term limit. Some might be subjected to classes, but how? You gonna decide how you decide who’s in which class, when i have tears and and the senior the three year member is going to look down on the lonely one year members? How you going to make those distinctions? Yeah, really top i mean, this is these air possibilities that you, khun contemplate the sea if they would fit within your organization, but yeah, creating different respect levels for remembers, but absolutely be wrong. So i understand your caution there about forming classes and maybe classes is not the right word now, but still different to you, even tears. Or, you know, however you however you euthanize it. It’s still g. She got a three year term and i only get a one year term. Why is that? We often do that originally with brand new organizations to get staggered board. So if you have a two year term and you start the initial board members everybody in two years, everybody turns off at the same time. But by staggering it, having some served three years in some serve two years and sometimes that’s done just by lottery. Believe it or not, ok, that won’t can get half the board being elected each year, i guess if it’s random, then then i could see you’d overcome at least the personality or ego concerns. All right, but what? So what are your recommendations around term limits? What is gene takagi like? I generally like to the three year term limits, although i’m not opposed to what you just suggested about having a one year initial terms and then two or three year terms after i do think that it’s important to get that commitment from directors, that it’s not just going to be this one year where we’re expecting you to serve for one year and then you can jump off and serve on another board, i’d like to see a longer term commitment and deeper bond created between the organization and its director. Okay, now, when you’re talking to non-profit clients do do they ask you, what should we do on then? Do you deflect that back to them, or how does that how do you finish that? Yeah, it’s a good question, tony, you know, i can’t get to paternal about it and just tell people what the best practices, so we have to make sure that it fits what their individual facts and circumstances are not if they’re three, you know, founders of the organization that want to be on the board and are going to champion other people, the recruitment of other people, perhaps those three founders, they’re goingto have longer terms uh then then the subsequent boardmember is that get brought on, but it really depends because we don’t want to create that class hyre key system that you suggested before, so we’ll have to take a look at stuff like that. Very careful, okay, it xero only is individual and look, look at gene is not a paternalistic attorney, one of the few you said it, so i’m sure he’s not, um, let’s, let’s look att since we’re talking about being on a board and being removed from aboard, should there be automatic removal if you’re not not performing up to snuff? Well, removal for not performing up to snuff is going to require a board decision and that’s going to be governed by state laws well, and even if state law permit sports to remove poor performing directors, practically speaking it’s, so hard to do, especially if that boardmember is also a donorsearch otherwise, support organization in other ways what we like to see is an automatic removal provisions, but only for failing to attend board meetings. So for example, if there was, you know, the board meeting’s every two months, if you fail to attend three successive board meetings without an excuse that had been approved by the board, even either before or after the fact you are automatically removed without further board action, so the board doesn’t actually have to vote to remove you. You’ve just automatically been removed, and they called me allow that. Okay, of course, then you’d want to go a little further and define does attendance mean live attendance in in person? Or can it be attendance by phone? I think it’s the state laws permit by phone than and the by-laws permitted as well, and most state laws, i would say, would permit it by phone, then you’re fine. I would count that as attendance, but if you just failed to show up at all and then it’s something else and it may be whether you’re sick or you’re you’re on sabbatical or have a valid excuse that the board is willing to say where we’re going toe not apply this removal rules because of this exception, but then the board approves to save a person they don’t approve. They don’t vote to remove a person, which is much, much harder. Yes. Ok, i see. All right, just about a minute or so before we go. What about having young people on boards if it’s appropriate to your mission? But in certain states, including new york, they have provisions for having young people onboard. Youth onboarding i think in new york you have to be above sixteen years old, and only organizations that served used or deal with issues like education or juvenile delinquency are allowed to have such boardmember okay, other states there expressly not allowed, you must be eighteen in order to do it, but most states i think forty states are silent on the issue now, it’s great to engage in engagement is the key word again. You to participate with boards and maybe having them entitled toe participate in board meetings is a great idea latto have them on the board and giving them fiduciary duties can be a little bit more problematic if you’re going to do that and there may. Be some rare exceptions where i think that that’s okay, you want to make sure that they’re not tokens and that their contributions are valid and their vote is equal to anybody, anybody? Else’s, vote on that board, you’ve got to be very careful now you can probably be held liable for breaching their fiduciary duties, although that’s not very clear, and if it was really agreed, just perhaps they could, and they can’t sign contracts on behalf of the organization because they probably wouldn’t be enforceable. So be careful about having that emily chan, my former colleague wrote a great block post called youth boardmember khun miners serve on a non-profit board that that i recommend for any organization considering having having young people on their board. Jean, we have to stop there. Is that? Is that blood post at on your block? It non-profit latto block dot com it is, and it was also captured in a non-profit quarterly article as well. Okay, thank you very much, gene. Great, thanks. Durney pleasure you confined gene at that non-profit law blogged or at g tack on twitter next week a fund-raising day interview we’ll start and then maria semple is here she’s, our prospect research contributor and the prospect finder the overhead myth show his book i got the three ceos who signed the overhead myth letter are going to be with me on september sixth. That’s, the ceo of better business bureau wise giving alliance guidestar and charity navigator, and ken berger from charity navigator has been on the show before. I would love to have your questions for these three ceo’s these three signers of the overhead myth letter you know you can ask questions on twitter, through facebook or contact page on my blogged love to have your questions for these ceos, please insert sponsor message over nine thousand leaders, fundraisers and board members of small and midsize charities. Listen each week you can reach me on the block or on twitter or facebook if you want to talk about sponsoring the show, our creative producer was clear meyerhoff sam liebowitz is the line producer. The show’s social media is by deborah askanase of community organizer two point oh, and the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of the new rules. Oh, i hope you will be with me next week, friday. One to two eastern at talking alternative broadcasting at talking alternative dot com miree i didn’t think that shooting a good ending. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Get in. E-giving cubine are you a female entrepreneur? Ready to break through? Join us at sexy body sassy sol, where women are empowered to ask one received what they truly want in love, life and business. Tune in thursday said. Known eastern time to learn timpson. Juicy secrets from inspiring women and men who, there to define their success, get inspired, stay motivated and defying your version of giant success with sexy body sake. Soul. Every thursday ad, men in new york times on talking alternative dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you, too? He’ll call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight, three that’s two one two, seven to one eight, one eight, three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. You’re listening to talking alt-right network at www. Dot talking alternative dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. This is tony martignetti aptly named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent technology fund-raising compliance, social media, small and medium non-profits have needs in all these areas. My guests are expert in all these areas and mohr. Tony martignetti non-profit radio friday’s one to two eastern on talking alternative broadcasting are you concerned about the future of your business for career? Would you like it all to just be better? Well, the way to do that is to better communication. And the best way to do that is training from the team at improving communications. This is larry sharp, host of the ivory tower radio program and director at improving communications. Does your office need better leadership? Customer service sales or maybe better writing are speaking skills? Could they be better at dealing with confrontation conflicts, touchy subjects all are covered here at improving communications. 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152: The Event Leadership Puzzle & Back To Board Basics – Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio

Posted on July 26, 2013 by Nonprofit Radio

Tony’s guests this week:

Sheila Kelly, vice president of development at The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research

Pamela Mohr, executive director of FACES at NYU Langone Medical Center

Wendy Kleinman, president of WK Planning

Gene Takagi, principal of the Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations Law Group

Read and watch more on Tony’s blog: http://tonymartignetti.com

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent it’s july twenty sixth i’m your aptly named host. Oh, i hope that you were with me last week. I would suffer atrial fib relation if it came to my ken that you had missed maria cuomo cole on relationships miss cole, a philanthropist and board chair of help yusa, shared the professional value of all her relationships, including her mom and how they’ve helped her and help yusa succeed. We talked at the june meeting of executive women in non-profits part of new york society of association executives and tumbler tactics, amy sample ward, our social media contributor, co author of social change, anytime, everywhere and ceo of and ten, explained the value of tumbler, how to decide whether you should be in it and how to get started this week, the event leadership puzzle from the association of fund-raising professionals, new york city fund-raising day in june, our panel solved this puzzle for honorees, chairs, hosts and event committees, from goal setting and recruitment to motivation. And thanks, i was with sheila kelly, vice president of development at the michael j fox foundation pamela more executive director of faces at noon you langone medical center and wendy kleinman, president of wk planning also back to board basics jean takagi are legal contributors back this month. We’re talking about who belongs on your board and for how long should you ceo beyond the board? Is it okay if your ceo chairs? What about term limits? Jean is principal of the non-profit and exempt organizations law group between the guests on tony’s take two my block this week is women’s touching relationship stories my pleasure now to bring the event leadership puzzle to you from fund-raising day new york city last month here’s that interview welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of fund-raising day two thousand thirteen, we’re at the marriott marquis hotel in times square in new york city, and our subject now is event leadership with me r sheila kelly, vice president of development for the michael j fox foundation for parkinson’s research on in the middle is pam moore, executive director of faces at noon you langone medical center, and wendy kleinman, president of wk planning limited ladies welcome it’s a pleasure, wendy let’s, start down the other end. There what what’s the trouble with that non-profits have of the challenges that they have around event leadership. Well, i think there are a lot of non-profits today, everybody is vying for the same dollars and everybody’s buying for the same audience everybody would like to have the same leaders at the helm, many of whom have been over asked, and i think it’s also it’s identifying, you know, the right match when you invite somebody to take on the leadership role it’s important that you identify what the organization’s needs are and you try to find the right person teo approach that matches and believes in your mission and who feels that they can help you raise the funds you need. Okay, pam, these thes leadership positions can take a lot of different titles, right? A lot of a lot of possibilities. What a quaint listeners with what, what the scope is that we’re talking about. It could be anything from being an honoree to an event where you’re expected to bring in a certain amount of revenue, either giving it or getting it. It could be whether you’re chairing an event, it could be whether you’re sitting on a benefit committee vice chairing an event there are so many different titles, so many different forms of event leadership, but the most important common theme is that everybody needs to know what their expectations are in advance, so they understand what their role is in your event. Okay, making expectations very clear and i guess also gold setting, i guess. Sheila, for the event itself. Yeah, it’s, it’s, tremendously important to be very clear from the outset what your goals are for the event, both from a revenue perspective and also just what you’re trying to achieve for the for the organization and making sure that the people that have a leadership role with that event no, what what they need to do to help achieve that goal on dh, that i think when you find the right people and they know that they are part of something that, you know, there’s there’s a distinct goal for they’re going to be more willing to sort of step up to the plate and take on what you’re asking them to d’oh okay, now we just have about twenty minutes together. So why don’t we start at least our focus and maybe we’ll end there. We’ll see with the committee. Get your volunteer committees. What? What? What kind of what committees are we looking to recruit? First, i think it’s very event specific. It depends on the kind of event that you’re hosting. So if you’re hosting a golf event, for example, your committee could be helping you plan the event. They could be helping you with all the details. But if it’s your gala and, you know, we have a large gala, really? We look to our committee’s simply for fund-raising and for forgetting new people to come to the event and to help us expand our network. So i think it’s it’s about being sort of clear about with the specific events what you’re looking for, people to d’oh. Okay. And how do you start the recruitment process? A tte michael j fox foundation for us for bone event volunteered for event volunteers. Now we really do look within our network. We have so many amazing supporters who care about our work. I think that that’s key. You want to make sure that the people who are are involved have a direct connection to to your mission and to what you’re what you’re trying to achieve and so looking within first before going outside makes a lot of sense because there are people right there who are going be willing and able to get involved, and so that’s that’s typically where we start and also people self select, you know you will have people within your network who will who will raise their hand and say, please let me know how i could be of help and it’s if that person is, is the right fit. You know you should take them up on that for sure, pam, what wanted your quaint listeners what’s the work of faces at the gnu lango in medical center? So faces stands for finding a cure for epilepsy and seizures. We are an organization within and why you and go on medical center that raises funds for research, education programs, advocacy for patients with epilepsy and their families. Okay, and where do you start your recruitment process for event volunteers? So i’ve lived two very separate lives, one working for a major health care non-profit and the other one now it faces, which has only been eight months what’s so amazing to me. About my job now is that i’m dealing with a grateful patient fund-raising so i work directly for dr orrin devinsky, who is the director of the comprehensive epilepsy centre at n yu, and we work directly with the people that we impact every day. So where i’m looking for events, volunteers or donors or chairs or honorees, they’re all people that have been impacted some way by the comprehensive epilepsy centre and a recipient of some service that we’ve provided so it’s building relationships with the existing folks that have been involved and seeing who they know that they want to get involved and then being introduced to new people. One of the things that were actually looking to do with our board is to create a board event. We really want to get the word out. People don’t know enough about epilepsy, seizures and how common it is, and one of the ways that we want to do that is not just our gala, because not everybody wants to come to a gallon, so we’re working with our board to develop an event where they invite some of the individuals that they network with so they can hear. About what’s been going on in the world of epilepsy right here. When did you have advice for smaller and maybe midsize shops that that may not have the internal constituency? Teo look to first for event volunteer leadership. Well, every organization has somebody who is in charge, and that person is out in the world all the time. So what we do is we try to encourage every mind, whether it’s, the board or it’s, a executive director or the director of development, or even if it’s a small committee made maybe two or three people that they should always remain cognisant of of a good candidate is just in their travels through life, you know, in the workplace or in their social life. Oh, you know, we mentioned earlier in the panel, you know, everyone goes to cocktail parties and many people have jobs full time jobs in addition to the non-profit work they volunteer for so on, and then, you know, you talk about what you do, and if somebody expresses an interest in wanting to learn more that’s someone who could be a potential candidate to get involved in your organization. So that’s one way of looking at the outside to bring people in, they don’t have the infrastructure to pull from, like, a donor of strong donor-centric urging those conversations and basically that’s essentially good branding to yes, people should all your people well outside fund-raising should always be talking well about the organization and and know what it’s needs are, i think, and those needs might be event leadership volunteering. Exactly. And i think it’s it’s learning how to talk about what the organization was also in a very friendly, approachable manner on dh to make it interesting because people want to know who you are, what you like to do and where you spend your time what’s our next step, then wendy, you’re the consultant on the panel what’s the next step, after we’ve identified some people who are potential leaders of the event, how do we start to approach? What should we be talking about with them? Well, i think you can you can meet on a one to one basis. Maybe initially, teo, explain all the different areas where the organization might need some health. It could be joining the committee. There might be a greater interest in the board, which has a bigger picture approach, or the gala committee, which might be specifically for one event. Uh, and everybody has their different strikes. Some people are better at selling table. Some people are better at bringing an auction items. Some people are better at selling journal. Latto. So i think, it’s it’s, having that discussion and trying to find someone’s comfort zone and really assess their capabilities, where their strengths are, ok? And i think it’s a mutual decision sometimes, and that makes a lot of sense for all volunteer positions. Really? Yeah, from the board. Teo teo. Someone who’s, doing something, not his time consuming but way, want to be engaging people where their interests are. Okay. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. 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So gain special access to the ivory tower. Listen to me. Very sharp. Your neo-sage tuesday nights nine to eleven new york time go to ivory tower radio dot com for details. That’s. Ivory tower radio dot com e every time i was a great place to visit for both entertainment and education. Listening. Tuesday nights nine to eleven. It will make you smarter. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com durney yeah. Sheila. Pam, do you want to share how you approach people for for these kinds of positions? Anybody wanna with your first up? You know, for us, really? It’s it’s, the relationship building in stewardship is is sort of the most important piece, right? And i think to wendy’s point people have different strength. And so when you find someone within your network, or or someone who’s new to you realising what they want to be involved in, there might be someone who is very interested in events. There might be someone who’s just interested in helping to to find new donors. There’s, you know, there’s lots of different ways that you can engage with people in it. What we what we refer to it, the fox foundation is giving someone a seat at the table, you know, having them feel that they are, they might. They have separate work outside of what, what they do with the foundation. But they are an extension of what we do and making sure that they feel that they’re armed with the right tools in the right messaging so that they can speak to the work of the foundation as well. I think that’s hugely important you want you want all the people who are associated with your foundation and with your mission out there talking about the things that are important and it’s the job of of the internal people to make sure that they have all the right information, that they’re on the support that they need? Absolutely what do we do now? So we’ve recruited suppose there are some committee members who aren’t quite pulling their weight, sam, i imagine that gets frustrating to those who are how do we how do we deal with that situation? I’ve dealt with that situation many times, so i think the first thing that actually needs to happen is and we had talked about this earlier is roles and expectations. I think that when you’re working with an event committee, the most important thing that you can do from the beginning is give them the rolls and expectations, so they understand exactly what’s expected of them this way. There’s really no question about what they’re supposed to be doing and what the result is supposed to be. These committee members need to be treated as leaders because most of them are probably leaders in their industry, they need to understand that the event that they’re working on, you know, the funds raised for this event are directly impacting the mission of the organization, and they have tto take ownership, and they have to own the actual event and understand that what we’ve, you know, and we’ve talked about this earlier during our session, what tends to happen is that if you do have individuals that aren’t pulling their weight on the committee, but you have people that are many times those people will almost self select away from the committee because they understand and recognize that they’re not doing what needs to be done in order to get to make it happen. Ok, in order to reach that goal, all right? That’s helpful? What if they don’t start self elected? Sometimes it could be it could be a problem, obviously, i you know, i’m a shoot from the hip kind of person if there’s somebody who’s not pulling their weight and they’re bringing the rest the committee down, it would probably be an individual conversation with that volunteer and letting them know that, you know, this is really what we expect for. The level of what this event is, perhaps this isn’t the right police for that particular volunteer, maybe there’s another part of the organization a lower level event, some sort of program we understand that they’re completely passionate about the mission and the cause, and they want to continue to remain involved. But maybe this particular event isn’t the right match for them and let’s identify what might work and as long as you know you can find that place for them, they’ll be happy. They don’t want to be a part of something where they feel like they can’t give what the other people are giving that’s also kind of, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s not a comfortable place to be. I would think. Sheila, what about having the committee organize themselves in terms of who’s going to be a leader? Who’s going to take on? What do you prefer to see? The committees decide that among themselves or you appoint people once they’ve agreed to be part of a committee, appoint them to certain certain positions we typically help with a structure. This is it’s really more apparent in some of our smaller events that are led through? Our community fund-raising armed with team fox way. Find that people really do want teo want to know what what we need of them. And as we were talking about in the panel, people that do this for a living, we would probably we were all on a committee. We would self select ourselves, right? And we would be able to divide ourselves up. But that’s not everyone’s, core strength. And so i think guidance in this area is key. And if you if you have a group of individuals that are passionate and they want to help and they want to get involved, helping them with the structure is very important in terms of the overall success of the event. Okay? Anybody want to add tio having the committee cam or wendy having the committee decide among themselves and versus lending structure? I think that there are some individuals, you know, much like sheila had said there are some individuals that might know, you know, if we were on an event committee, we would probably know what we would be good at. Whether i would be really great it’s sponsorships and shell. It would be really great. A ticket. Sales or whatever that looks like and every so often you obviously want to honor the request of a committee member that says, i really want to work on this, you know, and what i usually do with the committee when i am dividing them subcommittees, i give them a interest for him and they’re going to fill it out, and they’re going to indicate what theywant, obviously, i don’t want to put somebody in a role where they’re selling something if their strength might be planning, but most of my committees that i have formed, we’ll have some sort of fund-raising, you know, commitment to it, but that level might very depending on each individual person, so i don’t necessarily let them make their, you know, they can select what they want, but in terms of the overall leadership structure and setting that up and dividing them up and letting them know and, you know, i’ve handled that as a development professional, okay? I’m sorry, wendy, was there something you want to add to that? Well, as consultants, we’re we’re a little bit more objective, and sometimes we can observe a committee in a different way because we’re not. Dealing with them every day like hammond, sheldon might be in the sense that their internal so, you know, we’re asked for opinion about almost everything when it comes to putting an event together, so that includes sometimes helping to identify who we feel or who we would recommend to be the chairs, for example, who shows the strength. Dahna and because sometimes the committee members themselves were just too close to one another that they can’t single each other out, so we’re standing a little bit apart, we could say, well, we think that she would be a great chair and then and that person would be a great co chair, and this person probably shouldn’t leave the auction the auction chair, for example, because they’ve been so influential ins and busy obtaining auction item, so sometimes the strength or more apparent to us and they are even to them, to the committee members themselves, so we just helped them identify that guy. What else can we say about these events leadership committees? I haven’t i haven’t asked you about more more advice around. Go ahead, i think one of the things that also came up in our most in the most recent panel that we just had is the importance of treating the committee as as a leadership group on treating them like a professional group of individuals who are there to help move the mission of the organization forward giving them, you know, in addition to setting the expectations that i mentioned before making sure that they have all the tools that they need in order to be the best that they can be, whether that’s making sure they have a budget, making sure they have a timeline, they need to understand what this event needs to gross. We need to understand the expenses behind the event, what it needs to net at the end of the day as well. They need to have those clear Job expectations 1 of the best examples that i had given is making sure that, you know, if let’s say you have a committee and they’re actually submitting a list and there soliciting individuals, making sure at the end of each week there’s a spreadsheet that’s organized by solicitor, so every single person on that committee understands what money’s come in, who is responsible for bringing it in how much and where they need to be to do this on a weekly basis. I’ll do it on a weekly basis during events season. Absolutely. So i think, it’s, just the same way that you would handle it like a business. You want to handle your event committee the same way they want to understand, they need to understand that you’re taking this seriously. This is serious. Without this money, the mission of your organization is not going to move forward, and i think if you treat it that way, they will treat it that way and it’s a mutually respectful and professional relationship. More more you want, i couldn’t agree more. I mean, transparency is imperative when you’re dealing with planning of events, and when you’re working with the committee, they need to know exactly what expense structure looks like what the revenue expectations are so that they can feel a part of it, you know, events event fund-raising is expensive. It’s it’s, one of the more expensive ways to raise a dollar and anyone that does it for living knows that. And so there’s always that balance of making sure that you’re keeping your costs down, that you’re doing that. You’re maximizing your investments, and again, many of these committees air filled with people who run their own businesses who have great perspective in this area and and using them to there, you know, to the best of their abilities is actually makes your event even better. It sounds like this kind of work for ah volunteer could be great cultivation to be, be enhanced, enhance the they’re their own giving, or maybe expand their volunteer rolls in the future. I mean, if there’s that kind of transparency and they see that it is run like a business, as you say, sounds great cultivation from or more activity, whatever, whatever, yeah, whatever form that takes, we’ve seen people move at at the fox foundation from someone who just gets involved at the team fox level who running, running a marathon and fund-raising from their peers to then joining, you know, our leadership council, which is sort of a junior board of directors, and you know that that level of engagement just continues, but it’s about making sure that you’re cultivating that relationship from the beginning in the right way, especially for people who want to who want to have a greater involvement with your foundation and i think it’s giving him that experience too, you know, it’s making sure that they’re having a positive experience. One of the best feelings that i have is when i’ve transitioned a committee that might not have been functioning as well in the fund-raising side and giving them these tools and providing, you know, changing the structure of a committee so that it functions the way we’ve been talking about and then having them get so excited about it. And then when they come to the event and they see this, you know, seamless, amazing galla golf cocktail party, whatever it looks like, they want to get more involved, and then they want to recruit other people to get more involved so it in turn by doing it this way, it might be a little bit more work on errand, but in the end, it’s going to increase our revenue and it’s also going to expand our relationships within the whole community. We have to leave it there, ladies. Thank you very much. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Pleasure. All three. Thank you. Sheila kelly ceded closest to me. Is vice president for? Development. Michael j, fox foundation for parkinson’s research pam mohr is executive director of faces finding a cure for epilepsy and seizures at the gnu langone medical center. And when d kleiman is president of wk planning limited again. Thanks very much, ladies. Thank you. Thank you for being with me. Tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of fund-raising day two thousand thirteen. Thanks so much. And my thanks. Also to the organizers of fund-raising day twenty thirteen, sponsored by the association of fund-raising professionals. New york’s, greater new york city chapter. Gotta live listener love lots of new yorkers. Massapequa, new york, new york and brooklyn, new york. Welcome, live listener. Loved to you also new bern, north carolina. Gonna be there very soon, very soon. And washington, dc all up and down the east coast. Where’s there’s, nobody east of ah, nobody west of philadelphia and, well, we got santa. See joe argentina, that francesco or alejandra? And also ottawa, canada. Welcome live listener love to all of you will hit asia shortly. Right now we take a break for a couple minutes when we come back. Tony’s take two and then gene takagi with back to board basics. Hang in there. You didn’t think that shooting getting dink, dink, dink, dink. You’re listening to the talking, alternate network, waiting to get in. E-giving good. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you, too? He’ll call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight, three that’s two one two, seven to one eight, one eight, three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Hi, i’m lost him a role, and i’m sloan wainwright, where the host of the new thursday morning show the music power hour. Eleven a m. We’re gonna have fun. Shine the light on all aspects of music and its limitless healing possibilities. We’re gonna invite artists to share their songs and play live will be listening and talking about great music from yesterday to today, so you’re invited to share in our musical conversation. Your ears will be delighted with the sound of music and our voices. Join austin and sloan live thursdays at eleven a. M on talking alternative dot com. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Schnoll hi, i’m kate piela, executive director of dance, new amsterdam. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Hi there, welcome back, i want to also send along with the live listener love podcast pleasantries, especially to germany, gooden dog have lots of german listeners to the podcast, from a site called podcast that d so good in dog to all end and podcast pleasantries toe all the german listeners. Time for tony’s take to my block this week is women’s touching relationship stories? Remember last week you heard my interview with maria cuomo coal, which was pre recorded at a meeting of executive women in non-profits after that, we opened the discussion of relationships to the group and lots of women shared very touching stories of people who have been important in their lives and help their careers. And i included just a couple of minutes of the group discussion in last week’s clip, but the whole discussion was about twenty minutes and it’s really very uplifting on dh very tender, and that video of the video of that interview is on my blogged at tony martignetti dot com and it’s, also on youtube, if you prefer to go there directly the channel israel tony martignetti cem very tender and touching stories from executive women running non-profits now and the audio is much better than it was in the clip that i played for you last week. And that is tony’s take two for friday twenty sixth of july thirtieth show of the year and show number one hundred fifty two. Jean takagi is with me. He’s, principal of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco. He edits the popular non-profit law blogged dot com and he is at gi tak on twitter. Hello, jean takagi. Welcome back. I’m tony, thank you for having me, it’s. Always a pleasure. Thank you for joining us from the west coast. We’re talking about cem cem board basics this month on dh specifically, who should be on the board. And maybe for how long? Let’s. Start with the well, let’s start before we get into individual people. Do you see trouble or or challenges a lot of times around who belongs properly on a board? Well, i think a lot of organizations right now, tony, are struggling with recruitment, trying teo attain diversity. Getting a different skill sets on the board. Different representations of populations. Um, at the same time, it seems that the boards are very underutilized asset of many organizations in terms of the valley that they’re adding, or at least in terms of how the ceo or the executive director perceives the value add of the board of directors. And i think i’m going back to some of the board basics. Is a good place to start and explore some of these issues about not only what that board could be doing. But what, what aboard should be doing. You since you mentioned the ceo and their role with respect to the board, we polled listeners before the show and asked if your ceo is a boardmember and forty percent said yes, sixty percent said no. Should a ceo be a boardmember great question, so i think they’re different stages of evolution of organizations where whether the ceo belongs on the border not may change, and i’m going to sort of give you kind of the lawyers disclaimer about that i’m dunaj unconscionable thoughts on this, but there’s always going to be some exceptions tease general rules, and my general thought is tony, is that once an organization is matured, having the ceo or executive director on the board of directors can be troubling because of the potential conflicts of interests that are involved. And the big one is that the board is responsible for overseeing, evaluating the performance of and determining the salary and compensation of the ceo at the same time. If the ceo is on the board that is overseeing himself or herself, you can see the inherent conflict that’s involved. What couldn’t they? Couldn’t they recuse themselves from any discussions off of those issues? Yeah. Absolutely, and i think that’s commonly how organizations treated so if they’ve got their ceo on the board, whenever it comes around, too evaluating performance or determining compensation, the ceo recuses themselves from the board and the rest of the board makes that decision. However, that seems teo sort of discount the possibility that decisions on programs and finance and budget don’t also affect the ceo personally and the ceo very may very well have a personal interest in all of those aspects of an organization that are very important for boards latto oversee and make decisions on, and if the c e o by virtue of being on the board, i can control the board discussion and analysis of these issues, then it really creates a problem and allows the board to sort of get away from from mid duties of acting as the check and balance to the ceo. So is it not sufficient than let’s? Say we have a boardmember i’m sorry, we have a ceo who’s a boardmember um if they can contribute, but they don’t vote sounds like i mean, they still could they still control the discussion, but then they don’t have final decision. Making authority because they’re not a voting member of the board. It’s a great question the night, you know, i see lawyers actually struggling with this idea in many states and in california, we actually recently made a change or a proposal to a change in in the statutes about what is a director, and i think for most lawyers, the idea they want to get across to their clients to their non-profit clients is that there really is no such thing as a non voting boardmember and the reason for that is because boardmember have fiduciary duties, and they’re ultimately responsible for the management of their organizations. So while they khun delegate duties, toe officers and executives and ceo, they ultimately hold responsibility for what happens with the organization, and you can’t really ultimately hold responsibility is a boardmember if you can’t vote on the issues ah, yeah, so there really is no such thing as a non voting boardmember nonvoting director. What you may have, though, is a ceo or executive directors that is invited to attend in and participate in all of the board meeting’s except when the board meeting go into executive session and determining when the board should go into executive session without having the executive director there so that they can actually tied it by themselves on independent of the director, determine what is necessary to direct the organization and the future toe oversee the organization, how it’s doing in the present and in the past and do a little of what i’m going to quote somebody else’s term that they coined the lucy markets is a governance expert out of the uk, and she calls a stargazing about planning for the future and trying to determine how teo look into the future and make sure that the organization is ready to be able to respond to future challenges and take advantage of future opportunities a great role of the board that they probably don’t do enough for most boards don’t do enough of this when the ceo is they’re trying to ground everybody to the present, sometimes that future stargazing aspect is lost. So those are some of the reasons why maybe the ceo just recusing themselves at certain times isn’t isn’t the best idea. Well, that kind of cells short, visionary ceos, i mean, every ceo is not going to be wedded. To what’s happening this quarter in or this year and i think a ceo could be visionary and be looking fifteen, twenty years ahead doing that stargazing also, yeah, absolutely. I think we would hope that that when when, as a nonprofit organization boardmember myself, we would hope that when we hyre are ceos that we are looking for somebody that that has that inherent ability to be able to stargaze and be a visionary and a champion of that vision. On the other hand, i think we know, especially for smaller organizations, tony, and you’re probably well aware of this as well. Ceos are so burdened by the work of the day to day management of the organization that sometimes they just don’t have the opportunities, even if they have the skills t able to engage in that type of stargazing and board members may be in better position to bring their valley. So that added value that we talked about that board may not be giving enough of to an organization that’s, a really strong air in which they could do it and having the ceo lead, that would be great if that’s possible and then having the board, you know, sort of be the counterbalance and check, uh, to the ceo. Perfect, but if if the board is just relying on the c e o to champion all of the vision and determine what the vision is of the organization, he may not have the healthiest organization around let’s, go back to something you said a few minutes ago, jean the that you can’t really have a nonvoting boardmember because that that abila gates, the fiduciary responsibility of a boardmember was that i’m sorry was that was that california law or that’s a california proposal? What? Well, that’s california law and i think, while it may not be stated explicitly in other statutes, are depending upon what state your urine, i think that’s the general idea of most, if not all, of the states, that we’re not really supposed to have somebody who is a boardmember with the fiduciary duties of a boardmember, but otherwise unable to to vote on any of the issues do corporations for-profit corporations struggle with this? Also mean, my sense is that it’s routine for a president ceo to be a board member of a corporate board? Do you do you know? Do they struggle with this the same way? Non-profits are they absolutely do? Tony, this is a major topic of controversy and has actually been hitting twitter a lot in the for-profit circles as well among the governance experts and it’s close to a fifty fifty split about whether ceos they’re going to serve on the board of directors neither mainly mainly for larger public organizations. Oftentimes again, yeah, that the board is supposed to be the check and balance to the ceo and to bring the ceo onto the board might start to facilitate this rubber stamp board that just sort of agrees with a ceo and sort of puts all of their trust and relies on the ceo’s opinion just too far rather than acting is the check and balance, but it goes both ways because, you know, we haven’t really talked about the benefits of having the ceo on the board, and there there are some benefits, especially in the early stages of an organization. Do you have a visionary ceo? The only way that that ceo and possibly that’s, the founder of the organization to recruit the best members onto the board? Maybe if the ceo is on the board himself or herself because they’re the draw. They may be the draw to the organization, and without that person’s leadership, that organization may not be able to evolve to the next stage where, you know, i’m talking about where hopefully a cz the organization mature a little bit that you can get to a phase where their partners, the ceo on one side and the board of directors led by chair of the board on the other side, rather than blending the two together. But that may take a little bit of time to get to that stage, especially for small organizations, really depending upon the champion of the organization and its mission being the founders ceo and the boardmember all, at the same time, another advantage to having the ceo on the board sounds like would be that the other board members would be not so likely to get intruding into management day today. Issues. Yeah, but that’s that’s actually a good point. So sometimes, while directors ultimately have the authority tio and the obligation to ultimately manage the the organization that’s collectively, as the board of directors individually, board members have no inherent powers. At all. So that’s that’s something to really think about individually, director’s really don’t have powers unless they’ve been delegated to them as possibly officers of the organizations are agents for some specific tasks, but it’s a boardmember just by virtue of being a boardmember shouldn’t start directing employees of the organization and telling them what to dio even the executive director or ceo because it’s the board collectively that that overseas that that and not individual directors so i’m good, really good point let’s move to having a ceo chair, the board? What what’s concerns there. So all of the concerns of having the ceo being on the board of directors as a director are amplified when the ceo is also the chair of the board, and interesting enough, this was a recent article in the non-profit quarterly where and author just took the opposite position not now, fairly advocating it in all cases, but sort of making us aware that, well, sometimes a compensated ceo cancer because the chair of the board and it may be perfectly appropriate because what they want to do is completely aligned with what the board wants to do, which is advanced the organization’s mission is effectively and efficiently as possible, and if again the board doesn’t have a champion to do that other than this is the ceo, the ceo is almost resigned, teo being a member of the board and leading it forward so that part of the argument that that that author made but they’re the cons are again is that you can really encourage a rubber stamp board, you can lose the checks and balances that you’ve tried to design for the board, and ceos can, even without knowing that they’re doing so, make decisions that are based not necessarily in the organization’s best interests, but in the ceo, you know, ceos best interests as well, and not in terms of sometimes in terms of making more compensation for themselves or protecting their own job status, but sometimes it can be for more innocent reasons. Just the ceo thinks a certain way about a particular project and wants to protect that project ahead of others, perhaps, or looks to the present more than to the future of the organization and again in wanting to protect everybody, all the employees from from facing layoffs or anything like that doesn’t want to make that difficult decisions that might improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the organization in future, and really holds to the status quo, because there’s so many personal interests that are involved as well that the ceo maybe, like, here she is safeguarding too. So that’s where the board you know, it’s kind of this objective party from the outside looking in, khun really provide this different perspective for an organization. If you have the ceo of the chair of the board, designing the agenda of the board, being responsible for the education of the board and orientation of the board and preparation of all the board members before every board meeting, everything can get planted in a certain way to sort of direct everybody else to just approve. But the ceo is recommending and that that’s the danger of having a ceo is the chair, the listener pole. If if your ceo is a boardmember does he or she chaired the board, only thirteen percent said yes, and the other eighty seven percent said no that they don’t have that. We have just about a minute before we go away for a couple of minutes um, you’ve seen cases where the there’s, a volunteer chair of the board, and they’re identified as ceo of the organization. Yeah, and and that’s that’s kind of an interesting fact pattern that that oftentimes takes place even if the by-laws don’t say anything. So if you’ve got an executive director hired but your state law says that either the president or the chair, the board is the ceo, unless the by-laws state otherwise, even though you haven’t executive director, the chair of your board, maybe the ceo just by default of the law because you’re by-laws don’t say anything else, and that may not be a great place for a volunteer chair of the board tow want to be in should anything ever go to court and that person be held responsible as the ceo of the organization for understanding and knowing what the organization is doing on a day to day basis? And aside from the legal aspect of it, i think that would diminish the authority of the paid executive director. Absolutely. Here you’re absolutely right, and i wantto point to something that was on the april twenty sixth, two thousand thirteen show the guest was eugene fram, and he and i talked a lot about the title ceo versus executive director and how that and how executive director tends to diminish the authority of what, what he recommends. B b the ceo. We have to go away for a couple of minutes. When we come back. Jean, i’ll keep talking about board a six. Hang in there, stay with us. Dafs you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Schnoll are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. God, that’s. More live listener love. Ah! Houston, texas. Yakima, washington. Rocklin, california. Outside sacramento. San francisco, california. And a masked us avenger listener. Tokyo, japan durney chua and we know that it’s francisco imbriano zara is francisco welcome. Lots of masked listeners in japan. Also bunch of mass listeners in japan, seoul, korea and goose on korea on your haserot and chung ching, guangzhou and shanghai, china. Ni hao, so happy to have all the live listeners. Love i love sending live listener love it’s, more like my live listener love, then love going out to you because i love doing it. Jean let’s see that’s ah, let’s continue with the possibility of having other paid employees or even contractors on the board. Seems to me this is getting messier the further we go, yeah, it can get messy hair as we go along and, you know, here in california, we actually have ah, state law that says for non-profit what we call public benefit corporations. So those air, the charitable organizations that are not not religious and focus, um, on lee up to forty nine percent of the board may be compensated or related to someone compensated and that’s, whether as an employee or an independent contractor, so a majority of the board essentially must be interested or not compensated or related to anybody confident no, jean, that still seems too high to me. Forty nine percent, i think, should be, like, ten percent. You know, most states actually don’t have that law at all in the vast majority of states don’t have that. So i agree with you that it would be great to have a small minority of the board compensated so the board can be can be the real checking balance in terms of making decisions that are not beneficial primarily for the employees directors, but primarily for the mission of the organization in most states don’t have those laws. And i think part of that is to accommodate some smaller boards where they may only be three or four board members to start out with. And you do have the founder, who’s compensated on the board and, you know, so e-giving ten percent, which would be very tough. Well, all right, well, then, say one out of force, you know, based on the size of the board. But but it seems risky tohave employees or even do you see this case where it’s it’s other employees or even vendors to the organization on the board? Yeah, way, absolutely, tio i don’t know, i don’t know, maybe i’m it just sounds crazy to me to have especially vendors on the well, no, actually, they’re equally bad to me vendors and and other paid employees aside from the ceo, i just don’t think they should be on the board at all. Yeah, you know, i for the most part again, generally, i would say i would agree with you, you really lose out on all the checks and balances that we talked about, even maur if you’ve got not only the ceo on the board but other employees or contractors as well, and then what about the situation, tony, if the ceo is not on the board but one of the vendors is on the board now, that creates, like this unusual situation where the ceo is really responsible for making sure that bender’s is performing under whatever contract that they have. But the vendors sits on the board that oversees the ceo and can affect the performance or even the retention of the ceo and that that’s kind of crazy, isn’t it? Yes, that’s, i can’t. I can’t see a case where a vendor or contractor to an organisation belongs on the board. I don’t care, even if they’re volunteering their time and the value of their services, or whatever, they, whether they’re volunteering or being paid, they just don’t belong and an employee’s equally bad. You know, some employees are on the board, but not other employees. I mean, what does that do to the peer-to-peer relationships, working relationships in the office? Yeah, they can’t create problems, but let me take the other side for just a moment. That lawyers love to do this right, then so let’s take the other side and say, well, what about a vendor who has been a great vendor paid vendor to the organization that’s been giving discounted rates to the organization all along knows the organization really well on dh if you continue to use that vendor, you just get far better value than you would by using any of her his competitors out there. And now you feel like the vendors so aligned with the mission of the organization, you actually value the perspective that this person could bring to the board and no one invite them onto the board. But you don’t necessarily want to take away this advantageous business kind of action that you have with this vendor, and you may be paying double if you go out and bring them on the board, but not continue to use their services. That may be a case where i say that’s, ok, you’ve to be very careful about this, but that may be okay to bring that vendor onto the onto the organization and in, you know, in a slightly different matter. What if you’ve got a board member? Who’s not a vendor right now, but he says, hey, i can leave my, you know, that’s, an extra business space, and we’re looking to expand i can offer you a lease that, you know, just half the price that you’ll find anywhere else, and you go ahead and have the all the independent board members of that that statement to make sure that what actually is much lower than when what fair market value would be for that space, and that may be another case where it’s okay, the boardmember eventually becomes the landlord of the organization, but that may be okay as well, but you do need the check and balance of independent board members to prove those type of transaction. So you’re not just relying on somebody saying that, yeah, we’re way cheaper than everybody else, you’re actually verifying that with the independent boardmember okay, well, i’m not willing to go that far with you. I think the the vendors perspective can be brought in by the by the ceo so that i think the perspective could be represented. And, you know, if the person loves the organization so much the way you’re describing it, i don’t think they would double the price just because, you know, way didn’t put them on the board. All right, i don’t need to do neither do i, tony, but, you know, it’s interesting board source, i believe, are no urban institute did a study of non-profits that have they’re they’re contractors on the board, and forty five percent said it would be difficult to terminate that relationship that contracting relationship and but only seventeen percent, haywood said it would be very difficult terminate that contract relationship and still keep that member on the board. So it’s an interesting thing, i think generally i agree with you, we don’t like the idea of having them on the board because of the conflicts of interest, but i can understand situations sometimes went when it might be appropriate. You’re more understanding than i am. Jean wait, we have to leave it there to be continued let’s do aboard basics again because we didn’t get to term limits. And then there’s also the question of, you know how often should the board meet? And i’ll bet you have some other topics. So let’s do board six again next time. Okay, that sounds good. I look forward to it. Excellent, i do to thank you, jean takagi, yet it’s the non-profit law blogged dot com and on twitter he’s at g tak thank you again, jean next week, a new feature out of the blue we’re going to bring people in that have offed be jobs and a connection to non-profits of course we’re going to start this with sand or cats he’s a fermenter, and actually he called himself sandorkraut and we’re going to talk about the history, benefits and methods of fermenting foods and he’s got a simple sauerkraut recipe and in a future out of the blue, we’re going to go from sandorkraut to santa claus, we’re going to bring in santa claus and mrs claus, they’re going to be in the studio in october, kicking off their busy season next week. Also, scott koegler returns he’s, our technology contributor and the editor of non-profit technology news he’s also in ina file, so that means fermentation is bad for scott koegler you want to follow me on twitter, i’m at tony martignetti our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is our line producer, the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of the new rules, and we’re saying goodbye to regina walton of organic social media. We’ve had a terrific three year run with regina she’s, been with me from the beginning of the show, and you’re listening because regina promoted the show and you saw her good work, and that brought you to us. Thank you very much for gina it’s. Been a pleasure. I hope you’ll be with me next week. Friday, one to two p, m eastern, a tucking alternative broadcasting at talking alternative dot com. E-giving intending to be a good ending? You’re listening to the talking alternate network. Get in. Cubine are you a female entrepreneur? Ready to break through? Join us at sixty body sassy soul, where women are empowered to ask one received what they truly want in love, life and business. Tune in thursday, said noon eastern time to learn tips and juicy secrets from inspiring women and men who, there to define their success, get inspired, stay motivated and to find your version of giant success with sexy body sake. Sold every thursday ad. Men in new york times on talking alternative dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. You’re listening to talking alternative network at www dot talking alternative dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. This is tony martignetti aptly named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent technology fund-raising compliance, social media, small and medium non-profits have needs in all these areas. My guests are expert in all these areas and mohr. Tony martignetti non-profit radio fridays one to two eastern on talking alternative broadcasting are you concerned about the future of your business for career? Would you like it all to just be better? Well, the way to do that is to better communication. And the best way to do that is training from the team at improving communications. This is larry sharp, host of the ivory tower radio program and director at improving communications. Does your office need better leadership? Customer service sales or maybe better writing are speaking skills? Could they be better at dealing with confrontation conflicts, touchy subjects all are covered here at improving communications. If you’re in the new york city area, stop by one of our public classes or get your human resource is in touch with us. The website is improving communications, dot com that’s improving communications, dot com improve your professional environment. Be more effective, be happier. And make more money. Improving communications. That’s. The answer. Talking. Hyre

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