Tony’s guests this week:
Robert Egger, president of cForward
Scott Koegler, editor of Nonprofit Technology News
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 on december twenty first. Oh, i very much hope that you were with me last week. It would cause me pain if i learned that you missed get engaged. Three amy sample ward is our social media scientist. She continued her siri’s on online engagement with gold setting. How do you know if your engagement strategies are successful? We’ll talk about identifying goal areas directly related to your mission and assigning metrics. That is what we talked about. I need an intern here, so edit this copy. Amy is a membership director for the non-profit technology network and ten, and she contributes to stanford social innovation review. Also, we had dutiful documentation. Jean takagi and emily chan are legal contributors, explained the rules from my rs on what should be in all those acknowledgement letters that you send for two thousand twelve gif ts this week, candidates for causes robert eggers, president of sea forward working to rally candidates around non-profit platforms he and i will discuss how to assess those candidates in your local races and getting the non-profit agenda before them and how to support the candidates who step up also computers crash scott koegler, the editor of non-profit technology news and our monthly tech contributor, reminds us that technology can let us down. Your computer hardware will only last so long, so you should have a plan for replacing it. To avoid a crisis, i’ll talk to this former chief ah what’s the eye for, um information officer seo about the hardware lifecycle budgeting, training and planning damegreene eden intern also between the guests on tony’s take to my block this week is i am grateful and i’ll tell you what i’m grateful for. If you’re on twitter, you khun, join us, the hashtag there is non-profit radio use that hashtag wildly and it’s my pleasure now to welcome robert egger. He is the founder and president of sea forward on advocacy organization that rallies employees of non-profits to educate candidates about the economic role that non-profits play in every community and to support candidates who have detailed plans to strengthen the economy that includes non-profits and you’ll find they’re site at sea. The letter c forward dot org’s robert is also president of d c central kitchen, where food donated by hospitality businesses and farms, is used to fuel a culinary arts job training program. The kitchen is a ten million dollars a year self sustaining social enterprise. Since nineteen eighty nine, it has produced over twenty six million meals and helped a thousand men and women gain full time employment. In twenty thirteen, robert will open l a kitchen on the same model it’s. My pleasure to welcome robert egger. Robert. Welcome. Thanks, tony. Happy holidays. Thank you. Happy holidays to you, it’s. A pleasure to have you on pleasure to be here. What is the non-profit role in the economy? Why should why should candidates be paying attention? Well, it’s a bold statement that i believe that there is no profit without non-profits theirs. If you think about what community can attract a business or new new visits or young couples stay and maybe have a have a family, if they don’t have arts and culture, they don’t have communities of faith, education, healthcare, clean environment. You know, those are the things that the non profit sector produces. So you know what we’re saying is, look, there’s, a new civic mathematics that must come and play if the economic recovery is truly going to work. And that’s saying, in effect, that both non-profits and four profits are equally essential toe every city’s, every communities, every state’s, every country’s vibrancy. So what we need to do is elect people who understand that so we can move beyond the kind of old notion that dot com businesses drive the economy will dot or charities just do a good deed, very good, no profit without non-profit now the non-profit sector is about ten percent of our gross domestic product is that do you agree with that? Yeah, it is an effect, but, you know, if you really drill down a bit, which you’re looking at is in most cities non-profits are one of the top three employers, and so for example, in cities like new york, they’re the number one employer in the city now beyond that and again, i really want to emphasize a lot of people will say, well, that’s, not good, because the non-profits don’t create value, they don’t create revenue there and see what we’ve done is we kind of confused the word non-profit with not creating anything of value, but let’s, let’s, cool down just on the taxes i’ve seen this a lot recently where people say, non-profits don’t pay tax xero and i tell you what, brother, try and run and city without the payroll taxes non-profits pay every year and more importantly, trying to run a city where the city’s tax dollars have to go to make up for what non-profits do often times with money that’s brought in from outside the city. You know, we’re one of the major sources of outside investment in every single community. So a smart mayor we’ll understand there’s a tremendous potential to, for example, double the amount of money coming into the city or the state via the non-profit sector. By helping us, you know, say, in effect, what do you need? Can i help you develop partnerships? Can i help you? Uh get grants? What can i do to help you? Being the kind of resource is into this city or state that will help it grow and employ more people. How big is the non-profit sector where you are in washington d c we’re twenty six percent of the employment base in washington d c so when we look at the mayor’s race, for example, in two thousand fourteen were heavily democratic city. So the spring democratic primaries pretty much how we choose the mayor. So the goal is to say to the non profit sector, look, you know, it’s important, and i mean, many of you have historically kind of rallied around your individual cause, you know, housing the arts, aids, whatever and that’s important. But there are strategic moments when you need to let go of your immediate issue and stand together for the all boats must rise questions that i think are essential to be asking candidate. But again, what we’re trying to say to any candidate and and all the competitors, particularly when you look at a place like new york city next year where there’s a mayor’s race and his mayor bloomberg steps down there’s gonna be a lot of competition. We want to say to all the candidates, you know, whether you understand it or not, this is probably one of the biggest special interest groups in america that has yet to be courted and that there is a there is a potential political strategy here and an opportunity for candidate to who again can understand this new civic mathematics and again reach out to the sector and say, look, i’m moving beyond the kind of, you know, flowery rhetoric of i heart. Non-profits yeah, and i’ve got a detailed plan for if you will like me how i will partner with you from day one, you want to do social enterprise, you wanted micro credit to create jobs, man, i am your best friend, you know, you want to use volunteers, particularly our elders, who is very essential that they stay now have been engaged, you want to use those elders and meaningful voluntary activity, bring it on, you know, i’m one of those people who’s who i respect and understand the process, but i’m there’s the fierce urgency of now and frankly, after twenty five years in this business, i’m kind of bored of educating candidate yeah, i sense of a sense of frustration. Well, yeah, i mean, i feed poor people. I work in the basement of the biggest shelter in american i know what charity can do, but i know what we can do and the notion that somehow we’re supposed to keep moving on where we’re has to. Do mohr form or with less and be quiet about it now again, please understand, when i talk about frustration and not being quiet, i’m not talking about being belligerent are throwing bombs or being confrontational. I’m proposing, you know, an economic logic that says, in effect, just stop and listen, you know non-profits aren’t they actually create tremendous value? They are essential to any economic recovery, right? I want to talk about the recovery. Yes, right. And you’d be smart to really embrace us as partners. Okay? I love that. I like that a lot. No, no profit without non-profit and particularly in light of states trying to recover from several years of bad budgets. Do you have a sense of the role of non-profits in california? Bunny chance. I’m sort of putting on the spot. Do you know tremendously? I mean, look at san francisco and l a will both have mayor’s races next year, right? And no matter where you go, but do you have a sense of the role of the non-profits play in the state generally or in any cities in california? Oh, i mean again, you can’t go to any city in which there. Is not the non-profit sector isn’t one of the predominant employers. Okay, so that’s true in the central valley? Look, att cities like fresno, stockton, baker’s field, all of them killing bankruptcy. Yeah, this is the perfect opportunity when you, when you start to think about who’s going to come in and be the mayor and pull a city out of bankruptcy, this is an ideal time for candidates to kind of almost break free of the old kind of cemented notion of how you build the economy, which is let’s, attract a big factory or a stadium or, you know, municipal bonds. What we’re suggesting is that non-profits particularly those like the d c central kitchen. You know, we have multiple businesses that employ graduates of our program that might be going back to prison. We pay a living wage we and reinvest all our profit back in the community. Frankly, we’re the best friend any mayor has. You know, business is like the kitchen, and they should be aggressively trying to court and help mohr kind of transition from the traditional kind of service model into the empowerment model on. So i think that my my thing is you’ve got to elect people who understand that and again on day one, say, let’s work hand in hand. Business government non-profits altogether to rebuild the city in the state, even before day one. We want to get candidates adding the non-profit agenda to their platforms. And right now we’re going to take a break, robert. But we’re gonna have a chance, plenty time to talk about how to get their attention. What to do once you’ve gotten their attention and then using platform like, see forward how to endorse them. So i hope everybody’s going to stay with us and robert eckert certainly will, too. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam lebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Dahna 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, stopped 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 buy-in 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 welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m sorry, i can’t send out live listener love today because this show is pre recorded. It’s ah it’s tuesday before the friday that you’re going to be listening on the twenty first, so grateful for all the live listeners, but i can’t send you love city by city the way i like to do robert eggers, egger is with me and we’re talking about candidates for causes. Robert, how can we start to get the politicians attention? We’re talking about candidates now candidates, how can we get a candidate’s attention? Well, you know what what’s great is one of the vehicles we have, and this is the strategy were employing is saying, look, it’s it’s very it’s, almost impossible for organizations to be political themselves again. That’s part of our five a one c three charter ratification can’t before against any candidate but the private citizens who work at those non-profits can and that’s our strategy and see forward saying there’s ten point four million non-profit employees now what’s exciting is you look at that thing’s like twitter and facebook there isn’t a candidate out there who doesn’t have a facebook page or twitter account, and there isn’t a candidate out there who doesn’t have a staff person monitoring those accounts every single day. So in effect, what you have is the press conference that never ends. You know what used to be that moment where they could say no more questions, no more questions, and they were gone? Or if you might have had that opportunity at a press conference or a session to say mr cain and mrs kennedy, what do you think of the non profit sector? How would you partner? They could say, oh, i love the non-profit sector, the backbone of the community, thank you very much and split. Now we have the potential tohave literally if you think about it in cities like new york, l a, minneapolis, seattle ten thousand people every single day, relentlessly asking through facebook and twitter, what is your plan? We are one tenth of the economy, you know, one tenth of the workforce we channel the energy of millions of volunteers were major sources about sent investment what’s your plan and i think that that’s, the potential we have that we’ve never had before and that’s the seat forward strategy what we do, we’re almost like kiva in that we identify candidates all throughout the country. Last year we identified fifty three on sixty different candidates from, you know, races from mayor’s races down to city council. We’re going, we’re gonna have time to talk that way identified people who come from the nonprofit sector, okay, people, just like you and me, people who sweat out payroll there dedicated to make their community betters and now they’re standing up and running for office. And if they’re elected, they’re the kind of people who might stand up a city council member member meeting state legislature and eventually even you know, the house in the senate and really say, wait, wait, wait. I know this piece of legislation you think is important and will work. I work in the nonprofit sector. I come from the sector. I let me explain to you how it really works. Okay? This is essential. Not just for us is a sector, but for our country. Brother, you know what we’re saying is, look, will identify all these people and then you can come to our website and then you is private. Citizens khun go through our site to their website and give them directly. Okay, robert were saying little your you live in miami, you have you have a vested interest in helping somebody get elected in minneapolis, right? Robert? We’re gonna have a chance to talk about see forward and the success you’ve seen so far. Um, the only caveat that i want to add it just sorta amplify what you suggested that on. We’ve had a show about this with jean takagi and emily chan are legal contributors. When people are doing this sort of lobbying for the for the sector, they have to be careful what account they’re using. They shouldn’t be using their their company account, maybe they shouldn’t even be doing it on, you know, on the charities time. So just a just a caveat that politicking is important, but you have to be cautious about when you’re when you’re doing it on whose account you’re using and on what time that’s all and really, i’m really glad you brought that up, tony, because, you know, this is something you have to be wildly aware, like, for example, i’m at home, i’m using my private line. Right now, i can’t you know, i don’t do company time when i do stuff it’s, my private email or private twitter accounts that i do this work on or my c forward account. But that is it very important. Caveat you bring up well, yeah, you’re right, private citizens. But it has to be on your old time with your own account. Okay, alright, enough said. And we have and listeners could go back teo, show about politicking with gene and emily and listen to that for a lot more detail on what’s permitted and what’s not, um all right, so you want a you want a grassroots campaign to get the candidate’s attention? What kinds of? Well, i guess you’ve already you sort of laid out all the talking points. You just you wantto be able to specify what the impact of and the value for of charities is in your your local community in your state, you want to be ableto throw some stats in them at them and get their attention that way. But, you know, we also have an ask, you know, we’re making a point again. No profits without non-profits, but even if we elect a very smart candidate, you know, he or she on day one is going to be pulled fifty different directions. So what we’re proposing is, if you really understand its and particularly the role we play in attracting outside investment through grants or contracts, then why don’t you appoint a dedicated point person? For example, connecticut’s governor, governor malloy has a dedicated non-profit liaise on, and mayors in denver and los angeles have a dedicated staff person. And, for example, in denver, a very small office there, the office of strategic partnership has brought in almost fifty a million dollars in four years into the city from outside the city. New money? Uh, so again, that idea of a dedicated point person we think, is very strategic. And, you know, what we’re looking for is the kind of unifying principle for the sector that, again, we’re a very diverse group of people. We have a million different missions and sometimes their counter, but again, my bag is, you know, what we need to do is at the strategic moment and if i can a little, you know, illustrate a second, i always say, for example, tony, you and i have to have dry cleaners were right across the street, and we hate each other, you know we’d love to see each other’s business fail, but if somebody comes into town and wants to regulate its small business in a way that might impact our businesses, we might not drive down together, but we’d end up in the chamber or the board of trade, and we’d be we put aside our differences for a moment because we have a shared interest and that’s the thing that non-profit sector is never embraced, that idea of strategic moment in which we have shared interests well, there are in that election time. Yeah, that while there are coalitions like independent sector that try to bring the try to bring the sector together, especially now, i see that, you know, they’re very active around the deficit reduction and fiscal cliff discussions. So but those air, those air national coalitions and, you know, i think the broader you get, the more i guess, the more general and vague your talking points are in your and your calls for action are i would like to see it on the local level. Mohr yeah, i agree, and that’s why we’re focusing on the local level, you know, eventually we think that, you know, eventually we want to see presidential candidates openly discussed this i’ll be honest with you. I was really shocked that neither governor romney nor president obama and, by the way, the first president who got his first job in a non-profit neither mentioned philanthropy, neither mentioned the non-profits and again, the third biggest employer in america and each talked vigorously about manufacturing, for example, yet we are only percentage points away from employing the same number of people in america is manufacturing. Okay, so let me let’s talk more about some of the the actor calls to action, so so we’d be asking for a dedicated point person for the charity for the community forward is after now, okay, one example and i’m not trying to say by our product as much as we are one breakthrough, i believe idea, but we are hopefully the beginning of many different strategies to get candidates on par with us. Ok, but what other calls to action now? We would be be asking candidates teo to embrace well, i’m a big believer in social enterprise and micro. Credit and you know the idea, for example, it’s one thing to have a really great domestic violence shelter in your town fully funded, well, run, but ultimately those women gotta leave and ultimately, you know, but tragically, many women who come in or have no credit history and oftentimes very difficult time getting a job. So imagine, you know, a flip from the service model and saying, in effect, okay, how can we scream, help them create their own businesses and again think about we’ve raised an entire generation doing service, so i’d like to see a mayor who looks at all the universities in the town and sees, you know, school system bursting with a generation raised doing service who are now in the business school, who might come down and help a domestic violence shelter, develop business plans and demerol might say, i love this idea. So if you develop a a, um micro credit program, the city will match it dollar for dollar and i’m going to let three other partners with us so that every buck of private citizens put in will match in three, two, one let’s get people working again, i think that’s. What’s missing is seeing the non-profit sector is a potential job creator. Okay, do you have another example of ah call to action that we be insisting our candidates do before we’re going to endorse them because they’re they’re pro charity community? Yeah, i’m a big believer a we need great new metrics. I mean, for heaven’s sakes, you know, most cities have know idea you can’t ask a mayor how many non-profits today do you have in your community how much payroll taxes do they pay? How much money do they bring is so in depth analysis is essential, but another thing i’m really interested in is the contract process. I mean, we need mayors and city council members that they in fact, we want to get more of these non-profits of potential do contracts with the city because, again, they they’re motivated to pay a good wage, and they re invest their money back in the community versus making individual profit. But to do that, we have to lower the bar a little bit to help more people in, and we also very much need to expedite the reimbursement process between city and their contractors. So that non-profit organizations don’t go broke waiting to get get paid for services rendered, okay? So there’s a place where the corporate interests and the charity interests are overlapped you bet every everybody has list in that i was i was really impressed. Governor schwarzenegger appointed one of the first governors to appoint a volunteer coordinator on his cabinet, saying, in effect, look, we’ve got, you know, millions of older people but millions of younger people for whom service it’s part of their lifestyle now, and we’ve got a state that very well might have, you know, a natural disaster somewhere in the future. I don’t wanna wait until after the fact to try and get things coordinated let’s have a plan now, and i think that was a very, very intelligent way to look at the human capital that the charity, the charitable sector sector kind of channels volunteerism as a dynamic part of the city’s future of the state future. Now that we’ve identified candidates who have a pro non-profit agenda on there as part of their platform, how can we start to show our support? Well, i think is to get a private citizens you can, you can contribute. You know, i’m a big believer that even though we heard a lot about, you know, the billions a million spent in these campaigns that, you know, down the road, you know, those those the campaign will be more more driven by new media, which is free and pervasive. So i think that, you know, spreading the word about candidates contributing but also getting out there working for him, but what i’m interested again, it is not only backing people who come from the nonprofit sector but actually helping people who are in the sector now realize, you know, maybe you should run, you know, maybe the city, the state needs you, you’ve been a tremendous, tremendous supporter of this community step up and take another another step up on the chain, but again, what i’m trying to say to the non-profit sectors we gotta win, we have to support those men and women, our peers who step out and say, i’m willing to step up and take, you know, take a, you know, a bigger bucket of water on my shoulder for the larger you no benefit of the sector in our community, we need to get behind them. Okay, really, you know, support them in every way we can understood. And there there’s the role of sea forward. So let’s, take a couple minutes, talk about, see forward you you identified, i counted sixty one, endorsed sixty one candidates who had a non-profit friendly platform. Eight of them see forward specifically endorsed. And there were thirty five winners out of those sixty one. Yeah. And in fact, what makes it interesting is we have people throughout the sector nominate people. Look, you know, we’re trying our best here, but, you know, there’s not a whole lot of money in this. I’ll tell you, tony, i mean, it’s not like that, you know, the czechs air flowing in. We’re not competing with any super pac. You’re nowhere. We want teo what we’re saying to the non-profit sectors throughout the country, if you know somebody who’s running, nominate him, put him up on our page, and what we’ll do is we’ll look for those candidates that we think really have a tremendous opportunity, but well, even if we don’t endorse them, we’re at least giving them exposure beyond the small town where they might be running for city council mayor. And we’re saying all the ten point, million, ten point, four million non-profit employees check out this site and do a little shopping, you know, look around and see if you see a candidate, did you think? Wow, you know, that person is again four states away and a little tiny town, but wow, that’s a tremendous opportunity. What a vision i’m going to give him twenty bucks. What the hat? You know, when you’re running for a city council race in a small town, you know, fifty bucks a hundred bucks that that could go a long way, so never underestimate what ten million one dollar bills khun due in the political process in america, to get people who think again understand the role we play, it will be champions, not just for us again don’t don’t don’t mistake what we’re doing is somehow, you know, just trying to preserve the cut of the pie for the nonprofit sector. What we want is intelligent people elected who understand the new civic mathematics of how community thrive and grow. Robert, you had mostly of most of candidates were local from the twenty twelve election cycle, but you did have three. At the national level and and also the governor of washington state among those thirty five winners. Yeah, again, we’re really looking actually the person who was hunting who was nominated, i don’t think our candidate for washington state won the governor’s race, but a way had a pretty good track record of candidates who eventually want some with our support and don’t get me wrong that we just endorse. We just said, xero candidates that we think a really strategic and smart, so it was like it, sam saying, for example, who was the first indian american elected to the state legislature in michigan? You know, he ran the state association, he was the mayor of east lansing prior, and he would also he has also done amazing work promoting social enterprise in the city of detroit. So these are the kind of people we think when that, you know, sam will be out the statehouse really advocating for, you know, again, the economic role that we play in helping a state like michigan, which is behind the eight ball. You know what? A lot of states are really struggling with big deficits, so what we don’t want is people who think, you know, wow, these non-profits air getting off, you know, with a field day they’re you know, they don’t pay taxes and there just, you know, sucking money out of the economy to do good deeds. We want people to understand no, no, no, no, make no mistake, there is no profit without non-profit robert, i’m gonna switch the focus to you personally. What is it that you love about this kind of advocacy and endorsement work? Well, you know, i’m a big believer in no waste, you know, i started the kitchen because i hated seen food being thrown away, and i volunteered one night to serve the poor and saw men and women standing outside in the rain, and i had worked in a business that needed employees, so my bag has always been i hate seeing things that are still have value but aren’t being used to their potential, and i believe the non-profit sector and our vote, our classic examples of a tremendous american asset that are not being utilized, you know, i just came along to the food we throw away and the people we value have tremendous potential, and i think we proved that here at the d c central kitchen, so i’m just following the logic model of don’t throw anything away, don’t waste anything, don’t undervalue anything just because of the traditional way we used it in the past, no profit without non-profit. Robert egger is founder and president of sea forward. You’ll find that at sea, the letter c forward, dot or ge robert, thank you so much for being a passionate, enthusiastic guests, thanks so much pleasure, tony. Man, i wish you well, my brother. Thank you, robert. Now we’ll take a break, and when we retired, it’s tony’s, take two, and i’m going to explain what i’m grateful for. Stay with me. You didn’t think that shooting getting ding, ding, ding, ding, you’re listening to the talking alternate network, get in. Nothing. Cubine hi, i’m donna and i’m done were certified mediators, and i am a family and couples licensed therapists and author of please don’t buy me ice cream are show new beginnings is about helping you and your family recover financially and emotionally and start the beginning of your life. We’ll answer your questions on divorce, family court, co parenting, personal development, new relationships, blending families and more dahna and i will bring you to a place of empowerment and belief that even though marriages may end, families are forever join us every monday, starting september tenth at ten a m 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 the talking alternative network. If you have big ideas and an average budget to tony martin, any non-profit radio we dio. I’m jonah helper, nari team in co founders of next-gen charity hi there, time for tony’s take to my block post this week is very simple. I am grateful there are a lot of people that i’m grateful to, and i list them in that post on the block, but among them is you because you are listening to the show. I hope you’re listening often. Some listeners are very new, just within the past few weeks or months, and there are about a hundred or so that have been around for the two years that i’ve been doing this more than two years, and i’m grateful to each of you. I’m grateful to you for listening to the show. For those of you who get my show alerts by email every every week each thursday, i’m grateful to you. Thank you for letting me into your inbox once a week. I’m grateful for your support for your support of the show for your listening to the show, however it is that you propagate the show if you tell other people about it, if your forwarding those weekly email lorts that you get, however you’re supporting the show, i’m grateful and i want to thank you very much and you’ll find. A little longer list of people who i have gratitude for on my block at tony martignetti dot com that is tony’s take two for friday, december twenty first, the fifty second show of the year and the last of the year. My pleasure to bring on scott koegler scott is the editor of non-profit technology news. You can follow him on twitter he’s at scott koegler. Scotty koegler welcome back. Hey, tony, good to talk with my pleasure. We’re talking about computers crash. So you mean hardware is not gonna last forever? Yeah. You know, i have to say that when i was a cia, we’ve spent a lot of time and lots and lots of money on replacements and lifecycle transitions and all that kind of thing that, um, just, you know, you have to do with computer systems. I kind of changed my opinion over time, but it really depends on the on the situation that you’re in. So, um, i guess that’s what we can kind of talk about. Yeah. Okay. Um, well, how has your how is your opinion? Evolved? The used to be that the computers that you used, uh, ran an operating system. And that really hasn’t changed a bit. Still operating systems all the windows variations, there’s, mac stuff and there’s all kinds of one expiry ations. And it used to be that the applications that ran on those operating systems and turn ran on those computers dependent very heavily on the technology itself. In other words, the processor you know how strong how fast, how many bits is the processor, thie amount of memory, the size and speed of the hard drive. All those things were really critical because as a cz we migrated from the nineties into the two thousands of now intothe ten pluses, uh, at application software has always become the larger files more complex required more more horsepower essentially to run them and some of that’s still true. If you’re heavily involved in graphics, video production or audio production, you still have to have all that. But what’s really changed the game is cloud computing. So why has that changed? You might ask. Oh, okay, well, you and i have talked about it, but go ahead. Why has changed? The reason is that you’re really not depending so much on the hardware or the operating system for that matter, you are dependent on the connection. Um, so, um, so if you have a good connection, if you have your applications and your data in the cloud, then really, you can you can use almost anything that will support a browser. So so that that’s that’s where my opinion has changed, however, there are still reasons to change your hardware. And so now that i’ve kind of cleared the air on that talk about okay, well, we still need to change it. Listeners well, and i i appreciate your honesty. Your opinion has evolved. That’s. Very interesting. So there are. So so you think it’s okay now to push the hardware beyond what used to be, i guess, a strict like three or four year replacement timetable again. It depends on your situation. If you are running your your applications in house, if you have a ah constituent management system that that keeps track of your all of your donors and your constituents, your activities and that’s running on a network inside your facility. Okay, then you absolutely do need to pay attention to the age of your equipment. Because again, the applications get more complex that require more horsepower. And not only that systems break hard drives breakdown and computers breakdown. So, you know, there is a kind of to get ahead of the curve of the breakdowns you want to pay a lot of attention to. How old is each piece of equipment? What is? What kind of applications is it running and, you know, what’s the best deal this week of this month that i could get on a replacement unit. Okay, but if you’re if you’re more more of your work is in the cloud, then it may be okay. Toe hold on to hardware longer because, as you said, all you really need is a hardware that will support ah, browser. Exactly. Right. Exactly. Right. Okay. There are a couple things that kind of still go against that. And that is the operating systems themselves. Uh, there’s there’s a surprising number of companies and organizations. They’re still running windows? Yes. On one that’s. A little dangerous, right? That think microsoft dropping dropping support for that. Yeah, even even is uninformed is i’m about technology. I remember seeing videos six or eight months ago that my panels of microsoft engineers explaining two customers. Why? They wouldn’t be supporting x p and why they should move to the next operating system. So why don’t you just give a little explanation is i think there are still a lot of officers running windows expert why is that risky? Um, you know, the departed that it runs and experience has been historically one of the most stable versions of of windows that’s been around, um, and, you know, people argue that back and forth, but the fact is that if you don’t have updates, it’s more vulnerable to being attacked by viruses and hackers, all those nasty things that happened to computer systems, and eventually khun lied to either just the computer system crashing your dying completely, becoming unusable four for the villains stealing your data and interrupt your important work that gets done on that computer and that’s what it means, if microsoft is no longer supporting the xb operating system, then they’re no longer issuing security updates and bug fixes, right? Absolutely right, exactly. Okay, um, if we’re going to be extending the lifetime of hardware, and that probably happens in a lot of officers even where there is locally run applications because because of budget reasons. What are some things we can do to reduce our risk of working with these older machines? The kind of going along with what i just talked about? What windows x p one of the things that can be done is upgrading the operating system to a supported operating system and in some cases, hyre. For instance, moving from expert to windows vista may not be a good thing because it took it, took more hardware, took more horsepower, increased cps, more memory, that kind of thing. And by the time you add your closer cpu and increase the memory in your in your aging computer, you may as well have brought a new computers now faces. You could buy a desktop computer for three, four hundred dollars now. And, uh so replacing parts in an agent computer could cost. You have tio two thirds of that amount. So is it really, really valid too? Spend that kind of money on something that marginal up too up today. One you could actually just get something brand new, and i kind of skipped the whole the whole update. Okay, you know, okay, but if we have to hold on. To equipment longer, back-up is one strategy right for minimizing our risk? Well, yes, certainly back-up is strategy that needs to be managed and done all the time, regardless of the age of the computer, even even on a brand new computer. Of course, you need to have back-up of your data, you need to have contingency plans for disaster and think about all the problems just happened up in the northeast with storms, a lot of those computers and the electricity they ran them and the infrastructure that supported all that just, uh, disappeared in some cases, aaron, certain certain cases became unusable for some period of time. So what? What’s the contingency? What would you do if that happened? Maybe maybe better. In-kind in line with the question is, what did people do when that happened just a few weeks ago? So back-up yes, absolutely. Back it up back your software up back. Your application’s up. But more important, we have a plan for what to do when something that happened and and so these back-up should be automatic, right? We’re past the days when there’s a there’s a manual process involved in backing up. That depends. Certainly. Back-up should be automatic, especially in smaller organizations. We’re where there’s a smaller amounts of data it’s relatively inexpensive, too, to set up on offline back-up for online back-up i guess that connects through the internet to some remote, uh, location where your data is stored and the software that runs those should run automatically on either the server that you’re running your software on or on the individual no computers that are running that because, you know, data could be candy and usually is everywhere could be on the local disc drive can be on a server somewhere, so but yes to your point back-up absolutely needs to be automatic, and even if it is automatic should be tested because, you know, a large percentage of backup systems fail, and we only find that out at the time we try to actually use back-up right? So you should be testing that you can recover data that you know how to do it and that it is recoverable a cz you mentioned, you know, non-profits that were affected by sandy, there were offices that were closed for weeks, i guess a lot of people then saw the value of being in the cloud, if if they weren’t or saudi, certainly, if they were, because then all they needed was ah, web browser, and they could grab that from there could have that from their laptop that was with them or from some, some other some of their source, but then all they needed to do was able to reach the clouds. Exactly, and i’ve talked with folks that essentially used their cell phones, smartphones as a cz computer systems. They’re pretty much very small computers, right? So if you have, uh, a connection through a cell tower, which is a lot of cases during the storm was pretty much the only thing if even that was available, and so you’re able to connect out two applications running on your smartphone, maybe not being conveniently operated as you would your desktop with your laptop, but you could get there, and you could do the least very important things you need to get done. Okay, so reducing risk back-up and testing the backups, the disaster recovery plan, virus protection, malware protection. And you also mentioned some having the right policies in your article, you mentioned having the right policies on on employees. Use of the of the technology right employees are, you know, the best thing that can happen to an organization that can also be some of the most difficult sources of disasters. I mean, people make mistakes, and some some other people, um, do bad things. So, uh, you want to be sure that you have ways to get around or have contingencies, just in case either mistakes or somebody just decide they want to be not so nice and actually damage, er, we’re steal our lead or get rid of data, some other ways. We’re going to take a break. We’re going to take a break, scott koegler stays with us, we’ll keep talking about a computer crash and had a avoid that. We’ll talk a little about timeline, planning and budgeting training to stay with us. 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. Buy-in 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. All right, scott, for those who do want to put together ah timetable in a plan for their technology changes updates. Well, i obviously well, you start with timing, right? I mean, how do you how do you figure out when your stuff is goingto need to be replaced? Looking forward. Ah, good point. Tony. The first thing to do obviously is to know what you have. So you need to take an inventory of your systems. And when i say an inventory, i mean very specific. You know, what is the what is the product that you have is that the desktop is of the laptop what’s the cpu and what’s the speed of it what’s. The age of when was it purchased? What’s the operating system. All those very specific. Now, the attributes that go to make up a computer and there are there are several pieces of software that will actually go across the network and scan your network and deliver you a, uh, an inventory. Okay? Because that would include that includes all your peripheral, still your printers, right? And exactly servers. Certainly. Uh, do you happen to know any of the names of products that will do that for listeners. I don’t recall them. I actually wasn’t prepared to talk about that, right? That’s something that you want to go through, we can certainly schedule. Well, what do they mean? It’s an important playing it’s? Uh, for one way or another, you need to have a new inventory of what it is they have, and then go ahead and make an evaluation of what parts of that are at risk unnecessarily in terms of breaking but at risk in buy-in affecting your organization or some organizations if they’re running their applications in house, that risk is going to be c p u speed, hard drive viability that amount of memory in the operating system for organizations that are running cloudgood based applications it’s really going to be? What is the one of the operating systems and browsers now? It’s going to be far less critical? Obviously. And once you have that inventory and you’ve got the evaluation of what parts of your inventory are critical, then you need to evaluate basically, you take a guess. What do i think is going to change or or effect the things that we’re doing in our organization? Over? The next one year, two years, three years and from that then you can make a projected estimate of what should be replaced. So it’s kind of a multi step process, not necessarily easy and certainly not an infallible i guess because, you know, you really don’t know what’s going to break and you don’t know what kind of technology is going to come on in the future. Okay, but you’re looking at the oldest stuff first, right? Sure. That’s. The easy part. Last last in first out. Buy new stuff to replace it. Okay. Let’s help listeners out if they wanted to search for these the kind of software they were talking about that will scan your network. Like what? What keywords would you search for in google? I would try network inventory. Okay, good enough for budgeting now. How do you look forward into what the technology is going to cost? Two, three years from now, the the good laws of computer development are that the prices will go down. Capacities will go up. So if you look at what you what your expenses take the piece of equipment that you want to replace today and get a price for that? Just go to the market, you know, go online and find something that is an equivalent to today and start with that number. Because you know that one year from now, two years from now, three years from now, you’ll still be able to spend that amount of money in terms of you know, is there a product available that you could purchase for that amount of money? Okay, cesar, that amount of money in a year’s time, we’ll buy you more capacity. So for one thing, that gives you the ability to take a number and make a budget. Secondly, it kind of future proofs of purchases, so that in a year from now a cz as your requirements for capacity changed, the availability of the equipment will change as well. So i kind of go along the same path, so pick today’s numbers and use them in your budget. Okay. Interesting. I realize i said something incorrect a few minutes ago. I said when you were figuring out what what’s goingto be replaced to use a last in first out. But it should be that’s. That’s wrong. Should be first in first out. Essentially three. Oldest first, so first in first out, right? Oldest first. Okay, we have just a minute left. Scott, what other thoughts you want to leave people with about creating this thiss a short to medium term plan, medium term plan, i would say just get started on it, you know, one of those just like back-up if you keep thinking about it and kind of guessing on how it’s going to work, eventually it will be too late and you’ll never get there. All of a sudden it will be tomorrow, and the disaster is here and you’re not ready. So i would say the same thing with the, uh, with the replacement plan going on planet, even if it’s in perfect and by the way, it will be in perfect. Go ahead and figure out what it should be. Get something scratched on paper or put into the spreadsheet, and you can always add to it and refine it. But the most important thing is to get it in process, get it in place. Get your organization to understand what that what that processes and, uh, you know, get a few minds working on it because chances are that more people thinking about it better than one person thinking about scott koegler is the editor of non-profit technology news, which you’ll find it n p tech news dot com and on twitter he’s at scott koegler scott thank you very much. Happy holiday. Thanks, tony had theology. Thank you very much. Also, of course, my thanks, tio. Robert egger. Next week, there’s no show because of christmas. And if you celebrating christmas, you have my wishes for a joyous one. And hope you get spent a lot of time with family and friends. I’ll be back on friday, january fourth wave greg warner he’s, the president of marketsmart and he’s. Not going to talk about the future of planned gift marketing. I have a plea. Can you please rate and review the show in itunes? I know that you don’t have to go there to listen anymore. You go once you subscribe and then you never have to go backto itunes again. I realize that i’m asking you to make a special trip. Teo rate and review the show if you get value from it, if you like it, please do. Thank you very much. Wishing you good luck. The way performers do around the world, we are still in poland. I need another week, teo durney. I need two more weeks. January fourth will definitely be out of poland, but as the polish say, i wish you breaking of legs poem ania nuke poem, une anouk for the next two weeks, and i do promise, we’ll be out of poland. I think we’ll be in serbia on january fourth. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is our line producer on this show. Social media is by regina walton of organic social media, the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of the new rules. I wish you a wonderful holidays, very happy, new year, and i hope you’ll be with me on friday, january fourth, one to two p, m eastern, or on the podcast a couple days thereafter. If you’re listening live, we’re always at talking alternative dot com. Hyre i didn’t think the shooting. Good ending. You’re listening to the talking, alternate network, get anything. Take it cubine hi, i’m donna and i’m done were certified mediators, and i am a family and couples licensed therapists and author of please don’t buy me ice cream. Our show new beginnings is about helping you and your family recover financially and emotionally and start the beginning of your life. We’ll answer your questions on divorce, family court, co parenting, personal development, new relationships, blending families and more dahna and i will bring you to a place of empowerment and belief that even though marriages may end, families are forever join us every monday, starting september tenth at ten a m 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 alt-right network at www. Dot talking alternative dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. Oh, this is tony martignetti aptly named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio. 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