340: Healthcare Funding Options & Shared Leadership Options – Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio

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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. 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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. 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 oppcoll 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 the truth. 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 know 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 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. 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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? 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099: Automated Accounting & Online Engagement To Action – Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio

Posted on July 7, 2012 by Nonprofit Radio

Tony’s guests this week:

Aaron Schmid, chief product officer at Bill Highway

Jay Frost, CEO of FundraisingInfo.com

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

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Hello and welcome to the show, it’s tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. I very much hope that you were with me last week. It would cause me pain if i learned that you had missed your more effective board. Gail gifford is the author of how to make your board dramatically more effective. Starting today, she helped you make sure your charities mission is relevant. Your ceo is supported and your board is strong. Also, a conversation with paul clolery he’s, the editor in chief of non-profit times he and i talked about a trend that he sees happening in events that they’re ramping up and what he’s concerned about in the future for charities this week. Automated accounting. Aaron schmidt is chief product officer at billhighway and he thinks a lot about accounting, so you don’t have to we’ll talk about increasing visibility, improving, reporting, standardizing if you have more than one office automate and increasing sorry and integrating with your bank and automate that’s re automating the gerund form that should be automating. I need i need an intern, so i have somebody to blame. For these mistakes, automating will be part of our discussion. Also, online engagement toe action from fund-raising day two thousand twelve. Jake frost, ceo of fund-raising info dot com, talks with me about moving people from engagement online to giving online how to convert your social media friends into donors. On tony’s, take two between the guests non-profit radios. One hundredth show it’s next week. Use non-profit radio that’s, our hashtag on twitter, use that hashtag to join the conversation there. Right now, we take a break and when we return, it’s automated accounting with aaron schmid, stay with me duitz thing getting dink, dink, dink dink. You’re listening to the talking alternative network waiting to get in. Don’t. You could. Hi, i’m carol ward from the body mind wellness program. Listen to my show for ideas and information to help you live a healthier life in body, mind and spirit. You hear from terrific guests who are experts in the areas of health, wellness and creativity. So join me every thursday at eleven a, m eastern standard time on talking alternative dot com professionals serving community. 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 dafs you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent arika schmidt is with me now. He’s, the chief product officer for billhighway and he leads the product and technical development of that financial technology platform. He’s a c p a. Aaron was previously a management consultant for deloitte consulting. Where’s clients included american express, bear stearns and borgwarner and i’m very pleased to have his expertise on the show. Aaron schmid welcome. Good morning. Thanks, tony. What’s wrong in accounting in small and midsize charities, you know, there there’s quite a bit of a few come to mind, you know immediately. And you know, one is just the lack of standardization across organisations and it really doesn’t matter if if your organization consists of one entity o r one hundred fifty different ways of doing the same thing. It’s just really not a healthy way to run a business, and it caused several problems related to, you know, operational inefficiencies. It could be very hard to educate and enforce again when you have fifty different ways of doing things, and it becomes even harder to get any type of consistent or meaningful reporting. So, organizations, you really need to focus on creating consistency. You know, both with prophecies and tools. You need one financial system of record one process to find. Oh, and that’s going to increase the level of visibility and accountability across the organization. Okay, these processes were talking about this is all around your money, money coming in money coming out. Absolutely no money coming in and out specifically around reporting, you know, i see. Ah, latto inconsistency. You know, just recently, way had a simple example where volunteers were running. Ah, client organization of ours. And those volunteers were were using different versions of the organization chart of account. And when you looked at it, i’m sorry. Different versions of the organization’s what chart of accounts? Chart of accounts. Okay, but it’s really what? What? To find your financial statements. It was really obvious when you look across the reports that were produced in the organization that the counter being misused and they were being duplicated and again, it was just really, really made it difficult to accurately report from a budget standpoint and then tracking actually to that. And we really just went in and did a very simple review of that chart of accounts and ended up finding one version of the truth. I did a little education, you know, on the volunteers, you know how to use that and just that simple change. You really just changed the meaningfulness of the reported that the report there were being generated. Tony martignetti non-profit radio has drug in jail. You you’re really been talking for less than two minutes, you’re already skirting very close. Of course, i’m the warden of jargon jail, so the probation early probation is a possibility a chart of accounts is that something that every charity is supposed to have? What, first of all, what are these accounts? What is on this chart? Absolutely every organization non-profit for-profit goingto have a chart of accounts and it’s really a very simple concept, nothing more than a list of reporting buckets of how you’re going to track your information, you know, over the course of the year, and that information is going to allow you to make better, better business decisions and really, in the end, that’s all a financial statement is kind of a running total to find on that list of reporting bucket that you’ve defined is meaningful to your organization again to be able teo, accumulate that information at the end of the year and make again better business. What are some examples of these reporting buckets that we on this chart of reports that sort of accounts, revenues and expensive? So you would think of you your piano again? However, your cash is coming into your organization, you’re gonna break that down to whatever’s meaningful. So you know, one example would be to break down reports they don product lines. You know, if you know that one hundred thousand dollars came in over the course of the year that’s important, but if you know that that hundred thousand dollars was ninety thousand dollars came from product number one and ten thousand came from product number two, that lower level granularity again is good, it is meaningful and it’s going to allow you to make decisions based on it, as opposed to just having that one lump sum amount of one hundred thousand dollars. So defining those reporting buckets, that chart of accounts is critical to understanding the health of your organization, okay, those are examples of revenues that may be coming in. So one might be fund-raising and one might be fees for services, and maybe one is you have a little thrift shop or something like that or a little sale of product or something. What are some examples? Okay, what are some examples of money going out these reporting buckets? That would be in this chart of accounts, you need to think of your expense structure and how your money is flowing out of the organization. So, again, whatever it is meaningful to you could be a simple, as, you know, the rent in the space that that that you’re releasing it could be a symbol of the utilities or again, anything that makes sense to your organization, and we need to be accounting for these items all separately. This is the point, right? That’s the point exactly that that lower level of granularity is so critical and you got it achieve a balance because there’s effort into creating that, you know, amount of detail and you don’t want to get excessive where it’s taking too much time to, you know, separate all those things out, but you definitely want to spend enough time, tio, where you’re getting enough meaningful. Information tio r mu to be able to make make those good business decisions. All right? And now, in just a minute, we have left before a break. What is the the value of tracking these this’s this flow of money in and out in the same way each time for small and midsize charities that that probably don’t even have a cfo? Yeah, that that consistent is so critical because without it, you know, it’s really hard to enforce accountability across the organization, because if things are track inconsistently, you just you don’t know what’s going on and if you don’t know what’s going on again, it’s hard to hold people accountable throughout your organization latto finding that that one version of truth and then using it in a very assistant manner is going to be critical free to be able to execute you’re on your wayto financial health. I’m thinking of a small organization that may get one hundred, checks a year or so or something like that, and maybe different people are accounting for those checks each time they come in, not out and about a hundred different people, but maybe two or three different people are doing it two or three different ways. That’s, your point right, that’s, my point, that’s all it takes again that you don’t need to be a thousand entity organization like you mentioned one. Any organization with no more than two people can do things in consistently, and that can create all kinds of wasted time, time and energy where you can get that consistent, whether you’re two people or one hundred again, what’s coming out on the back end in the financial statements are gonna be so much more meaningful. If that khun assistance, he was fine from the beginning and then executed well throughout the process, we have to take a break. You’ll stay with me, of course, and we’ll continue talking about automated accounting. Everybody else stays with us, too. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. How’s your game. Want to improve your performance, focus and motivation? Then you need a spire athletic consulting stop second guessing yourself. Move your game to the next level. Bring back the fun of the sport, help your child build confidence and self esteem through sports. Contact dale it aspire athletic consulting for a free fifteen minute power session to get unstuck today, your greatest athletic performance is just a phone call away at eight a one six zero four zero two nine four or visit aspire consulting. Dot vp web motivational coaching for athletic excellence aspire to greatness. Are you fed up with talking points? Rhetoric everywhere you turn left or right? Spin ideology no reality. In fact, its ideology over intellect no more it’s time for action. Join me. Larry shot a neo-sage tuesday nights nine to eleven easter for isaac tower radio burghdoff 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 every tower is a great place to visit for both entertainment and education. Listening. Tuesday nights nine to eleven it will make you smarter money time, happiness, success, where’s, your breakthrough. Join me, nora simpson, as i bring you real world tools for combining financial smarts with spiritual purpose. As a consultant to ceos, i’ve helped produce clear, measurable financial results while expanding integrity, passion and joy share my journey as we apply the science of achievement and the art of fulfillment to create breakthroughs for people across the world. The people of creation nation listened to norah simpson’s creation nation fridays at twelve noon eastern on talking alternative dot com. 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 hello and welcome back. Aaron let’s, talk about the value of this reporting. What now? Our report is going to be more specific when we know that we’re having consistent processes each time check comes in or some money goes out. But what we’re going to do with these now maur clear reports. Well, now we can use them, right? And before, when things are not consistent. You spent so much time in the accident knows of finance that it’s very hard to work in any proactive manner, and now that you have this consistency, you can start using it to become better and use financial statements, you know, again for what they’re there for teo again, increase the financial health of your organization aboard would certainly be interested in clearer, more precise reporting, right? Your your board, your finance committee or the office or the school board and it’s a huge problem right now and a lot of organization. That’s one of the core purpose is generating these financial statements for the different types of groups, and you can lose sight of and why you exist is an organization and again that’s for your constituents and that’s for your mission and you don’t exist is an organization. Teo, keep up and keep your head above water from a finance back-up okay, so we can automate thes tasks. Is that right? That’s that’s a key part of this key part of it? I mean, key part of it really centers around, you know, trying to work smarter and not harder on dh a great way to to work smarter, not harder, harder is to use technology as in the neighbor enabler and, you know, you want to reduce manual task, you want to get rid of duplicates. Dafs and as i just mentioned, you want try to free up resources from those accident o’s of financial management every day and get back to focusing on your constituent, thinking about recruitment, thinking about retention and obviously, you know, ultimately your mission, yeah, i think the you call him the x’s and o’s mean thiss numerical accounting and and just everything around the numbers is pretty daunting to a lot of small and midsize shops. They’re not really sure how to do it. They’re passionate about their work, obviously, because they wouldn’t be there, but then the business side, the financial management side is kind of, you know, burdensome and scary. Absolutely. All right, organizations really get caught up a lot. Just how things have always been done. And regardless of how painful it is, you can get caught keeping your head down and not not thinking about taking a step back and thinking, you know, how can we do this better? How can we do this? Smarter on dh that’s where, you know, technology could come in to get rid of a lot of that waste of time and energy and get you back focused on what makes? All right, we’ve talked on this show a few times about software as a service which is synonymous with cloud computing. That’s where a lot of the help exists right in the cloud? Absolutely, absolutely. And they make a lot of sense, you know, in today’s, day and age, especially for smaller groups. The leverage of the cloud. You know, in my opinion, it’s just it’s very difficult today to be good at everything and technology. It’s just it’s changing at an ever increasing pace and, you know, to be great at it, you need to focus on it. And you need to focus really exclusively on it? Um, not not profit organizations, they’re not technology companies again. They exist for their missions for their purpose. Um, and again, in my opinion, you think you need to let the experts focused on technology. Um, security security of your constituent data, it’s just it’s, paramount, and you really need to make sure that you do your homework and select a provider that understands that on that protects that again so you can leverage the power of the club duitz you talk about the pace of change, of technology and how hard it is for for people to keep up, so if they’re using a cloud computing solution, then they don’t have to keep up right? The company that manages that software, they’re the ones who are upgrading their product all the time, exactly and that’s, the real benefit is you have companies that are focused exclusively on it, that they do it very well, you know, they’re they’re constantly thinking about, you know, back-up systems, disaster recovery plans, you know, they’re building their facilities and earthquake proof fireproof, you know, places they’re they’re constantly focussed on data encryption. These are skills that they’re not. Simple on and they’re only getting harder and, you know, there’s so many times where, you know, i’ll go into a client and you see the server that sitting in a closet on air conditioned, right cem cem closet where there may be water bottles over it or something like that? Absolutely, you know, and all it takes is a simple air conditioning malfunction and, you know, you could be out of business because there’s pipes and risers in there, a pipe bomb accident literally walked into, you know, a server rooms where there’s water dripping and, you know, they put the makeshift things up, directing water. We are men and that’s just the risk is just too high and there’s really help. Ten years ago, fifteen years ago, you didn’t have that choice. He kind of had to live with that risk, but in today’s, day and age, you don’t have to live with that risk again. You can leverage software, the service cloud computing for what? It’s good at on dh. Just vastly different than just a few years ago. Those those closets, server rooms, that’s when people get creative with plastic sheets and duct tape. Yeah, have seen it all year and you’re hyping, maybe like a hose or rubber number. A garden hose cut from somebody’s home and that’s it. You got it. You got it. And that’s the problem with one simple thing. And you can have ah, catastrophes. So you can sleep a lot easier at night, knowing that organizations are going to the level they are to protect what’s so important to your organization again, back to that constituent data and the related financial data. Right. Okay, so all this important data now you. You you mentioned security, but let’s spend a couple of minutes with it. How do we know that the off site storage of our precious data, the stuff you just mentioned is is safer than being on our computers that we can see that i can control and have physical, physical security over the great question. And that’s where i mentioned early really need toe do your homework when when you’re looking at organizations you want to look for under organizations that really, truly understand, you know what they’re doing, you know, some of the industry standards out there that you want to look at you? Have they done? Enough the sixteen hold on jargon jail twice in ten minutes, six homes for seventy and it’s just really about, you know, i mean, auditing. Obviously, most folks are familiar with financial audit on dh these audits were created for the purpose of systems and making sure that the day to day operation of those systems are in line with best practices. All right, so now, what is what is seventeen at the end of a sixteen again? Just that it’s a set of rules, basically that organizations need to follow and you have it have an independent auditor come in and look at the controls are are in place and actually test those controls to make sure that again, you’re back-up there are happening regularly that you have a disaster recovery plan that you’ve actually executed that disaster recovery plan. They’re going to spend a lot of time in your databases and make sure that your data’s encrypted and make sure there’s no sensitive credit card information or different things, you know that that are in there that regular folks within your organization should not have access to. All right, so these are a set of audit standards. You got it? I got it. Okay, look at that. If they’re dealing again with any payment related information, you want to make sure i’m gonna get in trouble with the jargon police here, but that their pc i compliant and again that’s the exact same concept. It’s just centers around credit card information. What argast that of standards that the different networks out there, like visa and mastercard have outlined to make sure that anybody that is processing credit card payments are following the standards and make sure that everyone’s data is protected. Okay, this is all critical. Mean credit card processing. So your executive director has a credit card for the for the organization. You may very well get credit card gift either online or by paper when people fill out replied devices. This is all part of that level of that needed security, right? And now what’s pc i what is pc? I stand for payments, compliance industry. And i forget the actually what the acronym it means, but again, it’s all about that that set of standards that you need to comply by ifyou’re goingto all be involved in credit card transactions. Okay, which are pretty common. I think absolutely all right, so if we’re going to move to ah cloud solution, how do we then make the transfer that from or the conversion from our manual system or whatever we’re using to something that’s off site in cloud based sure, you want to focus on that during implementation, and you want to talk about that plan that you know, with your new private provider front from the beginning? Um, most things today can be automated and, you know, just with the web itself just integration of systems there’s just so much easier than it is today. So in most instances, you’ll look to some sort of programmatic way to get your key data from your legacy systems into your new systems, you know, having toe rechy that information, you know it most times you don’t need teo, but again, if the data set a small enough, you know, sometimes that doesn’t make sense. And because it’s just a one time transfer of information, there are times where from a budget standpoint where that makes the most sense you mean manual manual king makes the most sense, exactly, exactly for the kids to think about it from the beginning of the process, you don’t want to get too far down the path and then start bringing up the topic and then realize that there is going to be some investment in terms of some programmatic interchange. So, you know, having those discussions upfront, understanding the implications and then being able to make the best decision based on what makes sense for your organization is aaron schmidt is chief product officer at billhighway, which you’ll find it billhighway dot com, how are these services typically paid for what? How are the fees work? That’s one of the great things about cloudy as well as, you know, in the past, he typically installing, you know, large systems on your different client server based systems ten again, twenty years ago with a significant capital investment upfront and then ongoing maintenance and licensing xero and the cloud, you know, move to a much more subscription based, you know, pricing model, and you really don’t have to make those significant capital investments up front and it’s more of ah, pay as you go model, which can be very attractive to smaller organizations that, you know, just historically haven’t had the funding the ability to make those up from capital investments for the large systems there? What do you really just kind of changes the playing field and allows any organization tio have the power of ah, very what do you paying for as you go? Is it per transaction or it’s a monthly retainer based female? How does pay as you go work it’s all different? You know, some organizations will charge you more of ah, per user fee. Some organizations, we’ll charge you more of a transactional based model, especially if they’re involved at all in the processing of online payments or donations. So it’s really gonna depend on on the provider and what the specific functionality is, you know, that they’re providing, but the beauty is that pay as you go model, getting rid of that that up front investment what’s interesting about cloudgood puting is it’s it’s, analogous to where we were thirty years ago twenty five, thirty years, roughly in computing, where it was mainframes and people had, you know, dumb terminals and you had to go to a terminal room, of course, because he asked, and it wasn’t just tom it’s exactly how to think of it. Is all you need is that dumb, you know, internet browser and another one of the beauties you could be anywhere in the world longs you have that intercut internet connection, you know, tying back to again that that mainframe like environment you got, everything you need is a great difference is being, of course, now it’s all desktop, you don’t go to terminal room, and your organization doesn’t maintain that mainframe. You’re just paying for access to it up in the cloud exactly. And in the sharing of that, that cost across all the organizations customers is what’s so critical where before an organization had to absorb that completely by themselves, you know, again in an industry that they’re not experts in and spreading that cost out across all of ah, cloud providers, clients, you know, just really benefits everybody way have just a couple of minutes before we have to wrap up. Erin, we’ve been talking about your internal processes accounting, but this can be these processes can be integrated with the external your bank. How does that work? Absolutely. And today again, we talk about the differences the back in the client server days, you know, into the true, you know, web based world and it isn’t general systems have been they’ve gotten better and better at integration, and you need to look for solutions that embrace integration, you know, as part of our culture, a lot of systems today that kind of claim to be good at everything and that’s just not the case, you know billhighway for example, a great financial management tool, but we’re not a great cms toole were not a great here, and you’ll see a memory with hold on hold on crn when i was customer relationship management, what cms concept management comes and think about your front end if a lot of your revenue comes in from from donations, you think about the the website that your donors are used to going teo make those donations, we have just like forty five seconds before i have to wrap up, so my charity has a relationship with td bank can you’re saying that i can integrate my accounting system using cloud computing and be integrated with my account or accounts at td bank after the limit? The counting systems are get embracing this integration and you see examples really across the board where payment processing and online banking are becoming more and more fully integrated with your accounting system and that’s really kind of were billhighway hang a hat is we’ve actually built in accounting system that sits on top of banking platforms from the beginning of tiny that your bank over here and you’re counting system over here. And and it was it was a batch process to put the two of them together every night or something batch process, and yet people involved reconcile ing those things, and really one of the reasons accounting systems in-kind departments exist is making sure that those two things they’re in synch and you’re expending a lot of time and money making sure that that’s happening and organizations like billhighway have asked the question you do, these things need to be separate, and we believe, you know, very strongly that they don’t, and we believe in, you know, five, ten years, you’re not gonna have ah system doing payment processing and in online bank to log into and then in accounting system, log into your have one user interface to log into that is allowing you to execute all three of those and then be able to leverage the operational efficiency that that that could create. All right, erin, we have to leave it there. Chief product officer at billhighway, which you’ll find a billhighway dot com arika schmidt, thank you very much for being on the show. Great. Thank you. Doing my pleasure. Right now, we take a break, and when we returned to tony’s, take two bonem talking alternative radio, twenty four hours a day. Hi, this is nancy taito from speaks. Been radio speaks. Been. Radio is an exploration of the world of communication, how it happens in how to make it better, because the quality of your communication has a direct impact on the quality of your life. Tune in monday’s at two pm on talking alternative dot com, where i’ll be interviewing experts from business, academia, the arts and new thought. Join me mondays at two p m and get all your communications questions answered on speaks been radio. Hi, i’m carol ward from the body mind wellness program. Listen to my show for ideas and information to help you live a healthier life in body, mind and spirit. You hear from terrific guests who are experts in the areas of health, wellness and creativity. So join me every thursday at eleven a, m eastern standard time on talking alternative dot com professionals serving community. Money, time, happiness, success, where’s, your breakthrough. Join me, nora simpson, as i bring you real world tools for combining financial smarts with spiritual purpose. As a consultant to ceos, i’ve helped produce clear, measurable financial results while expanding integrity, passion and joy. Share my journey as we apply the science of achievement and the art of fulfillment. To create breakthroughs for people across the world. The people of creation nation listened to norah simpson’s creation nation. Fridays, twelve noon eastern on talking alternative dot com 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 lively conversation. Top trends, sound advice, that’s, tony martignetti non-profit radio and i’m samantha cohen from the american civil liberties union. Time now for tony’s, take two my one hundredth show is next week, friday, july thirteenth. Amy sample ward is going to be my guest she’s, a blogger for stanford social innovation review, and she’s, an officer at men and ten the non-profit technology network. I’m opening this one hundred show up to you because i’m so grateful that you listen and support the show, the question’s going to be yours she’s ready to take on your social media questions? You can send them to us to me. Use the linked in group comment on my blog’s use facebook used twitter. Send your questions in advance for amy sample ward anything around social media any of those platforms i just mentioned or any of the other social networks if you’re struggling or if you’re not struggling, but you just have ah, little question to try to get you to the next level, send it and amy sample ward will take it on next friday on the one hundred show, we also have some and ten books and swag teo giveaway for both live and archive listeners were not forgetting the archive listeners in the contests ah, plus all the regular contributors is going to be there, maria and scott and jean and emily all four talking about social media is social networking, and you’ll find all this my blogged at tony martignetti dot com that is tony’s take two for friday, july sixth, twenty seventh show of the year and my ninety ninth show. Right now, i have for you a pre recorded interview with j frost from fund-raising day two thousand twelve, he and i talked about moving people from online engagement to online donor on here is that interview. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of fund-raising day two thousand twelve were hosted by the association of fund-raising professionals, the greater new york city chapter, and we’re in midtown manhattan at the marriott marquis. My guest right now is jay frost. He is ceo of fund-raising info dot com, and his seminar topic is a little provocative, not too provocative, curious, popping the question moving from engagement to action online. J frost welcome, thank you very much. Nice to be here, it’s a pleasure to have you on and to meet. Finally, we’ve we’ve been connected through social social networks through for quite some time, a long time a couple of years, i think, but now meeting face to face. And i’m really not too impressed. So you look better than i imagine. He’s gracious, and i’m obnoxious. Um, let’s. See? Okay, so we wanna engage. People are already engaged with our non-profit but with our charity. But we want to move them into giving online. Oh, yeah, we’re gonna have some time, but generally, what is our process for doing that? Asking, asking them to give go to the next level and okay, so when we talk about engagement, what level are they engaged? Hypothetical? Well, that does really range, right? Okay, organizations are our messaging all the time. They’re out there talking to people about the good that they do, and they do that in different ways. According to this scope and scale and their marketing plan, sometimes it’s is really a nice, rigorous plan. And sometimes it’s haphazard, but fundamentally were engaging with organizations because we we find something that they do appealing here’s, thie even stronger than appealing. I mean, they they move it, they move us. We love their work for some reason. Well, yes, i mean, hopefully radio and and we’re right, especially in social media. Be talking about that kind of passion all the time, so i’m all for passion. But at some point we’ve got to be like the session title implies at some point we got to be willing to say okay, well, i love you too. But now it’s time to get together and compare notes and work on something together. So it’s about asking people to make a commitment. Okay, how do we begin? Teo asked, how do we approach them? Well, i think it’s not dissimilar from all the other things we do in fund-raising it’s just that a lot of social has been about marketing rather than sales. And so it’s a matter of merging those two pieces instead of building a wall between them that i work with the number of organizations where they will build very large followings of people, and talk about a lot of really important things that work, that they do every day, or they share scriptural quotes. Or they will go in and look at a specific program in detail, share images from it all these things are great. They really engage people. Then they failed to just take that one additional step and say, come on over to thiss page here’s a link, and then you can support this next year, next month tomorrow, so what’s the reluctance why aren’t we doing it more? Well, i think part of it is because we’ve been given ah the wrong message for the last couple years about what social media’s should be and how far it can go, right? And in fact, there have been a lot of people that i like to call the gurus and ninjas because they often refer to themselves as good, wasn’t it? Who will say you really have to build that passion? First, we have to build the passion first, and i understand the emotion behind that here’s here’s, the fundamental challenge if we began every organization like that, none with survive every every organization needs to have today’s equivalent of the sustaining gift of the major grant of the the money given at the door of some kind of purchase. If we failed to do that, we lose the ability to sustain our mission, and social is really no different from anything else in that regard, except that the audience is far larger and the acquisition cost is far lower, right? Right. Okay, so we say thie advices asked, but we’re accustomed to doing very different work related but leading up to but were afraid to make the ask right to convert someone into a donor that’s who we’re talking about, right, even and even a modest donor, maybe a fifty dollars, a year donor. What’s what’s your advice? I mean, well, let me ask you this way, does your advice vary based on whether we’re asking through facebook or we’re asking our twitter followers? Well, i don’t know that would vary that much by the channel. Specifically, it might be by the kind of content we’re sharing or the event itself or the ask itself. I guess what i’m saying is that we need to be willing to marry the different parts of the program so instead of them operating in silos, we gotta find a way to, for example, have the e mail campaign fed by social. So a part of this is organizational structure. It’s absolutely, or you don’t want marketing communications not to not be talking to development and institutional advance, right? Absolutely. And in fact, i think a lot of times we we’ve given the social aspect to people in it because we saw two somehow alien and complicated, or we’ve given it to the marketing department because we saw it as a channel for broadcasting. And while those the people in those in those skill areas are terrific, they have terrific skillsets great contributions, they make two organizations, we need to have somebody who’s willing to actually say, okay, glad you love us now would you be willing to support this activity? They need to be involved in all the messaging, all those components, okay, so who should be saying it? Well, in that case, what we really need to do is have a social media department, which is made up of people were fund-raising including fund-raising all right, so we need to break down the organizational silos and also the conceptual silos about what social networks are for and how far we can go with them. And and i’ve seen this pretty consistently. I went to a conference last year where it was a room full of people going to a session on social media that i was conducting, and we did it kind of. A show of hands afterwards, how many people had a fundraiser in the team that was responsible for a social media messaging and it was less than ten percent? And i saw something happened just recently it another conference in very similar result. So i think that we we have to we have to find a way to marry these concepts very early in the program, and then we will use that technologies as the bridges between them so that if, for example, we won’t go to facebook and to say, will you give today? We would say there there’s here’s, the program that we’ve been talking about? It’s really important, we need your support for it where you click this link and come over here and do so so that’s it. Then we’re going to use another platform to collect the information, to collect the donation in the same way that we do now through email or our website. So it’s a process of moving from one place to another using the correct messaging within that context of that channel. Okay, so let’s talk a little more, even in more detail, so that people can start to activate themselves. Two break down their own pre conceptions. Misconceptions about this limitation around around social media. What? What is what is a preferred method of doing that let’s say on with your with twitter followers? How might we start to get them? We’re putting out bursts, they’re very engaged. We’ve got a good number, let’s say we’ve got a couple of thousand followers, but that’s as far as we’ve gone and we don’t really know much about them other than that they’re following us on twitter way don’t know, we don’t know who they are beyond that, right? How do we start to message while they’re there? There are a whole bunch of elements there there, really interesting. Okay, one is the task, interesting questions all the time i had to, but they’re running on you to get in there. Open ended. So interesting answers. Where do i start? Which apple do i pick first? Well, one part is about knowing who the donors are. Okay, let’s, focus on how do we get more information about who are two thousand? Twitter followers aren’t right exactly. Well, there were a couple ends to that one is, of course, when we go in, we when we have an existing following, we could start researching those people by simply looking their profiles and then connecting that to other kinds of profiles for example, their web pages there, they’re linked in pages and that we’re gonna learn quite a good deal about them. A bigger challenge right now is finding information on people already in our file who are on these social channels, but we don’t know that they are there, and there are some tools now to do that there. Is there a couple of companies unfortunate don’t think they’re in the hall here today, but they’re a couple of company named them it’s. Ok, well, i know one is small act, for example, small act small act, which what they do is they will take a file of email addresses, and they will then upend the social handles so instead of wonderful. So instead of just trying to figure out who might be on facebook and then say, well, you post something for us, you find out the people who had the greatest influence and then you reach out to them directly. Now can we give listeners another another company that does that just to give them a choice? Don’t i want? Or i would, but i’m forgetting. The name right now and there are only two. But if i’m happy to tell anybody if they contact me after, ok, if it occurs to you in the next fifteen minutes so shattered i mean, i shout out random phones right time i’ll do that. So you’re invited to do that as well. Listeners know that it’s mostly randomized. Okay. What? What other advice? I mean, you see now, it’s? Not really channel specific. But you said i might question opened up a whole bunch of interesting topics are now we know more about who the people are, right? What else? What else was interesting? Well, another piece of that is how our people actually raising money. I mean, are they raising money by direct if they are raising money at all? Are they doing it by direct, ask or by empowering people to ask on their behalf? Clearly, the answer is number two. Eso an example. That’s very easy now is charity water charity water has been very successful in having people donate their birthdays where a person will say i would like tio instead giving me birthday presents this year will you go to my form, make a gift for charity water to bring potable water to people who don’t have any. And that’s that’s been very successful, they’ve raised. I understand over forty five million dollars to date there are now embarking a one billion dollar campaign. So i think fundamentally, what they’re doing right, and it’s been done by other organizations, is by empowering their donors to use some tools off line and use the social environment to go out and spread that message with those links to their pages. Charity water also happens to be very good about showing impact. Yes, absolutely. I think that’s a big that’s. A big piece, obviously on the programmatic side, they’re showing that your dollars could make a direct impact. Its but even when it’s not quite as tangible, i think organizations have done very well in these ways. Another example that i used today is something like humane society, the humane society, united states. What are they doing? That’s right in this context, they again have causes page, you know, so people can make a donation that way. They have their own contribution pages, etcetera. So they’re driving traffic to these places so people could make a donation. But really, what they’re doing is they’re fostering that relationship and empowering the donor. And one really basic level is to go and react and respond and engage with every single person who posts something. So if you were to go right now and send a tweet to somebody, the commission society, you’re going to get a response, you know? And i don’t know of any other charity in america that does that. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Are you feeling overwhelmed in the current chaos of our changing times? A deeper understanding of authentic astrology can uncover solutions in every area of life. After all, metaphysics is just quantum physics politically expressed. I am montgomery taylor, and i offer lectures, seminars and private consultations. For more information, contact me at monte m o nt y at r l j media. Dot com are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? 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And for small and midsize shops, that could be very challenging, but i just don’t have the do they. Well, let me push back on that we’ve had that conversation for a long time in fund-raising about the thank you call and ah lot of us know jerry panis, who talks about this stuff, and i’ve done some sessions with him at the institute for charitable giving this last year, a lot of fun because he has so much history and so much experience with different organizations, and he often tells the story listeners who don’t know his last name is spelled p a n a s yes, and you’ll see it either is jerry are usually jerrold with a j that’s, right? Yeah. Okay, please. Lots of books to his to his credit center, etcetera. But he talks about these organizations that that decide to thank their donors by phone. And this is a long before social media. So just one levels you pick up the phone and just say thank you. And so he was talking with a few organizations about this and the importance of making i think he said ah, thank you. Phone call to everybody who gives that leased a thousand dollars and one person said while we do it for everybody who gives one hundred, and he thought that was great, of course, s o he said, well, how how do you do it? And that’s that’s terrific. And and they said, well, actually, we do. And i think they said about fifty six thousand like this a year fifty six thousand phone calling organization it’s a big organization, but here’s the question, why are they big? I would argue that the reason why they’re large is because they built that level of engagement because they thank everyone because there because the most important thing is the person had told jerry and the rest of group, what is there that’s more important than saying thank you? And but and the reason i mention this in social media context is because in social media that’s, exactly the currency if you say something great, i retweet it, and that means that i think it has value and i care and you probably care that i that i’ve done that, but institutionally, we have failed at that we will often broadcast really good content that we think it’s in the interest of our of our constituents, but we haven’t been very good about saying, wow, thank you for sharing this content or that was a really great thing that you said we really appreciate your carrying our baton it’s very easy to dio i’ve been mystery shopping at non-profits on twitter, okay, couple years, yes, we’re all going all post content about them, oftentimes with their handle to see what they’ll say, and this is various things they have a job opening at a gift that’s been made to them there posted some terrific content, and then i’ll wait to see what they say. Now i’ve done this organizations i know nothing about. I don’t know anyone there, i’ve done it with organizations i know but haven’t given teo and i’ve done it with organizations where i give including a couple, whether in my will and they know it, and i would have to say that at least ninety nine percent that time there is xero response to anything that i posted about them and and really that’s just like the thank you. What? Why? Why not decide to make a mental shift and simply say that while we don’t have all day to subic, sit around, say thank you, we can take ten percent of our day on social to say we’re going to talk with people in a way that tells them that we care and that’s that’s actually an outstanding example, including especially, i think, the ones that you have in your will and they know it, but there isn’t a closer relationship, and they’re not monitoring their social networks. Two see that you’re you’re commenting on the relationship, and they should be commenting back. And part of that, of course, is is roger that the person who’s working on that social account is now pushing housing and pushing and and not looking and you know it’s not their fault. It’s their job to create content, but not to monitor what what’s coming back or to monitor the relationships with donors because their job is all about the content. It’s not about the dahna relationships, but no donors, you know, no bucks, no buck rogers, yeah, that’s my philosophy on fund-raising all right, ah, look, i’m just going to open up the sort of generally mean other advice the charity’s khun can execute. For me, that’s a that’s a pretty simple one monitor your channel, monitor your name across all the networks that you’re on that’s right and respond when the name is someone that’s should be recognizable to me, so cross check what other simple advice like that? Well, you can use the same philosophy to try and gather new donors knew or at least knew constituents, knew interested parties, so it goes beyond the kind of follow the followers or follow the followers followers thing to looking for people. We’re talking about the things that matter to you. So in the case of the kind things that way, there is our currency, maybe it’s philanthropy or if i’m in a cancer organization to look att at, people were mentioning cancer, and then to reach up into the to them directly and talk about what is of interest to them. Tio applaud the kinds of things they’re posting and that’s going to drive traffic back to you. I mean, i think it has a direct economic effect, but it also has a has a way of showing them that were really authentic and what we’re doing, we’re not just selling something, which i think should be appealing to the people right now who are monitoring our channels, that the folks who are largely managing our social media right now have their heart in the right place, which is to say they care that that we’re having an honest and authentic conversation. The problem is that there aren’t necessarily in a position to have it with the people who are the most invested with our causes, so if we can improve that, that and then e-giving some incentive direction, encouragement to go out and try to find more people who care about the same things, we could really broaden our audience. Another piece that’s of great interest to me is about global amglobal fund-raising organizations, the united states have been largely focused on domestic fund-raising forever and that’s been in for very practical reasons. If you live in new york, there’s a lot of opportunity in new york, so maybe you’d go outside to the tri state area. If you live in california, you have a national charity. Maybe you’ll reach out to new york and perhaps texas in chicago and d c in a couple places florida, but you’re going to stop. In the places that, you know, we have a critical mass of donors, and a lot of that is driven by where you can travel and who you have addresses for here’s. The thing about global social media is that if i post something now, not a person in beirut could read is easily a za person in boston or tokyo as well as texas. So if we start trying to send messages out in a way that says, we’re welcoming not just the people here who care about this stuff, but we’re really welcoming everyone. We have the opportunity to completely expand our audience for our work and because that we aren’t inhibited by those addresses because the mail weii there’s really nothing, nothing inhibiting us from continuing to stuart these donors once we activate them, empower them and that’s again. Why we need to have stewardship and solicitation is always a piece of this fabric because otherwise we’ll never have the opportunity to say great glad you liked us. Can you come over here and support us? And the same thing is true. Domestically, we for a long time been focused on donors who kind of looked like our boards, the past and that’s been a pretty homogeneous place. But today, because the nature of social media and its audience it’s so widely diverse, especially the audiences that are going to become more mohr, the biggest part of the american fabric in the next few years that we have an opportunity to talk to them right now in a way that we never could’ve with our list. Ten years ago, you wouldn’t have had the access right right here, we have to leave it there. Great j frost, a pleasure. He is ceo of fund-raising info dot com pleasure to have you as a guest. It’s, great speaker. Thanks, tony. Martignetti oh, my pleasure. Thank you, tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the fund-raising day conference two thousand twelve in new york city. Our host is the association of fund-raising professionals create a new york city chapter that interview from fund-raising day just a few weeks ago. My thanks to aaron schmid and also, of course, to j frost and the organizer’s of fund-raising day twenty twelve. Next week, as i said, the one hundred show. Get your social media questions in for amy sample ward. Use any of the networks that that i’m on linked in the blogged facebook twitter plus scott koegler maria simple jean takagi and emily chan will also be with us all talking about social media all next week. We’re all over social media. You can’t make a click without smacking your head into tony martignetti non-profit radio you know all the places we are, you know you can listen live or archive on itunes itunes that non-profit radio dot net on twitter you can follow me, use the show’s hashtag which is non-profit radio i’m also on four square if you want, if you’re there let’s connect on foursquare, our creative producer is claire miree off sam liebowitz is our line producer shows social media is by regina walton of organic social media, who doesn’t have standing job and the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of the new rules. I very much hope that you will be with me next week for the one hundredth tony martignetti non-profit radio that’s. Next friday one to two p m eastern on talking alternative broadcasting, which is always at talking alternative dot com i didn’t think that shooting. Good ending. You’re listening to the talking, alternate network, waiting to get into anything. Hyre cubine hi, this is nancy taito from speaks been radio speaks been radio is an exploration of the world of communication, how it happens in how to make it better, because the quality of your communication has a direct impact on the quality of your life. Tune in monday’s at two pm on talking alternative dot com, where i’ll be interviewing experts from business, academia, the arts and new thought. Join me mondays at two p m and get all your communications questions answered on speaks been radio. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three the conscious consultant helping conscious people be better business people. Dahna 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 two to eastern on talking alternative broadcasting are you concerned about the future of your business for career? 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048: Charity Navgator – Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Nonprofit Radio

Tony’s guest this week:

Ken Berger

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

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Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio i’m your aptly named host tony martignetti we’re always talking about big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on this show. Welcome to the show. I hope you remember last week i had gail perry and fired-up fund-raising gail is the author of fired-up fund-raising turned board passion into action. She shared proven techniques to motivate your board to step up to their fund-raising responsibilities. This week, a conversation with ken berger he’s, the president and ceo of charity navigator. He has an announcement about charity navigator three point oh, we’re also going to talk about lessons learned as charity navigator has evolved from private foundation to public charity, striving to exemplify what it looks for in the fifty, five hundred charities it evaluates in what directions is charity navigator nudging charities and what gives them the authority to move the charitable sector in those directions? We’re going to talk about all of that with ken berger on tony’s take two at roughly thirty two minutes after the hour, the irs tells us what good governance means terms like transparency, accountability and governance since we talking with ken about some of those are often heard and i think rarely defined. So how does i rs to find them? I’ll talk about that at tony’s, take to roughly thirty two minutes after the hour. Right now, we take a break, and when we return, i’ll be joined by ken berger. Stay with me. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police call a set to one, two, nine six four three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two, one two, nine, six, four, three five zero two. We make people happy. Hey, 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 tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. My guest today is ken berger for the hour, ken is president and chief executive officer of charity navigator. He has held leadership positions at a variety of human service and health care agencies large and small, and has operated programs serving the homeless, developmentally disabled, mentally ill substance abusers, the medically underserved and persons with hiv aids. His senior leadership positions have been in agencies such as johnny o professional service centers for the handicapped, the floating hospital volunteers of america, greater new york and the morris shelter. After nearly thirty years working in the charitable sector, ken berger joined charity navigator in two thousand eight. I’m very pleased that charity navigator’s work brings came to the studio. Welcome, kapin. Thank you, it’s. A pleasure to have you it’s great to be here. Charity navigator is ah, now a five oh one c three charity. Just like the charities that it evaluates. But it didn’t start that way. Why was it founded? And under what form? Basically, a family that was wealthy had become wealthy, wanted to give back and was looking for a place to go for objective information to make their charitable giving decisions, and they couldn’t find such a place. They were entrepreneurs, and so they decided to found this organization with the purpose of helping all donors make charitable giving decisions, and so that they incorporated in the year two thousand, and we were up and running in two thousand two, and you were originally incorporated not as a as a public charity, though well, it was a five, twenty three, but a private foundation, yes. And so for the first six years before i got there, basically the dugan family funded the organization, and then when i got there, one of my tasks was to help the organization transition to become a public charity and to have diversified funding sources and to try to walk the walk along with the organizations that we evaluate so that’s interesting, because you are now what you’re, as you said, you’re what you’re evaluating the same form of organisation, that five or one c three are there some lessons there since two thousand seven that you want to share? I won’t given my background, i brought the experience of of running public. Charities to the organization and so right away. Actually, i have been tasked with some other goals, and i said one of our goals needs to be that we need to be a role model. And so we put in place things such as terms for officers, term limits for board members, you know, they give her get policies for for board members and then just also trying to conform to every single standard that we had been holding, the charities that we evaluated, too, as well as the ones that we were in the process of developing so that we would meet all those standards. We took the thie independent sector guide, the principles of good governance and ethical practices, and we have been working over the years to meet every single one of those standards. So that’s, just a example of how we’re trying to walk the walk and to be clear, you’re in a waiting period now, right between the foundation status and the public charity status would just explain how that works, what we filed to become a public charity and two thousand seven, and at that time, the policy was there has to be a five year advanced ruling period where your transition and the purpose is that by the end of that five years, you need to show that you conform to the requirements to be a public charity, one of most significant being that at least a third of your funding comes from sources other than your primary funder. We’ve already achieved that goal, but it affects the official transition happens in november two thousand and twelve. But during this five year period, we can still receive donations and function like a public charity. Okay? And we’re talking about the charities that you evaluate, how many of those are there? And how do you select those? Those charities that charity navigator is looking closely at? We evaluate five thousand five hundred, and we select them from data we received from the irs. We get data on every charity that files with the irs, and we picked those that base. Basically, we follow the money because we’re our purpose is to be a guide to donors. And so therefore we go. We look at the places where donors give the most substantial amounts of money. And so of course, we only look at those that file a full nine ninety form, not the easy or anything else. And then we pick those that also are in each of the nine cause areas. So we also look for health. We look for education, we look for environmental, we look for religious affiliated all the different cause areas as well so that donors have a diverse choice and we have just a minute before the break. And so when we come back from the break, we’ll talk more in detail about the the how widely used charity navigator is these. But just before the break, these fifty five hundred charities that you’re evaluating represent roughly what percentage of all the all the revenue to the non-profit sector, the public charity non-profit sector, roughly fifty percent of all of the private contributions that come into the sector are within those five thousand five hundred and that’s actually very interesting, just so under six thousand charities, representing fifty percent of the fund-raising revenue of all the five twenty three out of one point two million five twenty three’s five thousand five hundred half, and there are other interesting numbers are going to talk about some of those the way the way it all shakes out after this break. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio, and after the break, can burger stays with us. So i hope you do, too e-giving attempting to bring good ending. Cubine you’re listening to the talking, alternate network, getting anything. Get in. Cubine are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s, create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight. Three backs to one to seven to one eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people be better business people. Buy-in are you feeling overwhelmed in the current chaos of our changing times? A deeper understanding of authentic astrology can uncover solutions in every area of life. After all, metaphysics is just quantum physics, politically expressed hi and montgomery taylor and i offer lectures, seminars and private consultations. For more information, contact me at monte m o nt y at r l j media. Dot com looking to meet mr and mrs wright, but still haven’t found the one. Want to make your car relationship as fulfilling as possible? Then please join us, starting monday, may second at ten am for love in the morning with morning alison as a professional matchmaker, i’ve seen it all. Please tune in and call as we discuss dating relationship and more. Start your week off with love in the morning with marnie alison on talking alternative dot com. Talking alternative radio. Twenty four hours. Dahna welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio my guest is ken berger, ceo and president of charity navigator can right before the break, we were talking about the fifty, five hundred charities that you evaluate, and you said they represent fifty percent of the fund-raising revenue. I had a survey for listeners before the show. Most people thought that the fifty, five hundred represented between sixty one and eighty percent. So people listening overestimated the the value of those fifty, five hundred charities? Is that typical? Do what? What, what? What do people typically think of the of that bundle of fifty five hundred? Well, actually, your listeners are correct in the sense that if you just look at the sector without factoring in charity navigator thereabout three thousand charities in this country that garner about sixty percent of all the revenues that come in each year, so we we are working to rejigger than the ones that we evaluate to conform to those that get the most. So we’re a little bit part of the reason that we don’t get them all is because we’re trying to get all nine cause areas if we just did it that way. We would do all health and do all education. We might not do some of the smaller ones. I see. All right, so i mean, falsely imputing listeners the show. We’re actually right. Where? Where did the question maybe weasel mislead? Okay, so so three thousand. So you’re saying the three thousand largest public charities get sixty percent of the revenue of yes, of the roughly fund-raising revenue off the overall revenue of roughly one point five to two trillion dollars a year goes to three thousand charities out of the one, point, two million. Five o n c three. Okay. And charity navigator is not necessarily capturing those three thousand because you’re looking cross all the all the sectors. Exactly fair toe arts groups that would probably be grossly underrepresented if you just took the top three thousand or fifty five hundred. Yes. Okay. Um, you’re trying to be ah, role model for the charities that you are evaluating on. You said you using the independent sector guidelines could use a little more about what it is that charity navigator started looking at when it started its evaluation of charities. Well, that was before my time and, you know when sharon and navigators started, the goal was to try to find universal standards that every charity would could be held to. And it was difficult to say the least on the one place that they found was available for such information was the irs information that every charity of a certain size has to file. Go to the numbers first. Go to the numbers are should be universal, universally defined across all across all charities. Indeed. So as a consequence, the the initial system that was developed looked at seven variables. Having to do with the finances of the organization’s their financial health into areas one which has been defined as the financial efficiency and the other as the financial capacity of the organizations. And are those definitions that charity navigator devised or those air from somewhere else? Those phrases those are devised by charity navigator. Okay, so fair to say that that was charity navigator one point. Oh, that’s. Exactly what we’re now calling it. Okay, well done. Okay. I have a second career. No. And then you went to you announced two point. Oh, on dh today you’re here to announce three point. Oh, yes. Oh, what? Was what was what was new with charity navigator two point oh, i should clarify right away that we’re changing our terminology slightly right originally to point i was going to be the final zsystems but basically what we what we have learned from the through our research and deciding to go through a change process, we’ve kopperman that there are three dimensions, three critical dimensions we need to look at, so the second dimension brings us to see and to point out that second dimension we call it measures of accountability and transparency, and we have been working on this for a couple of years now, and this summer, within a couple of months from now, it will go live wear. We’ve been putting the information upon our site tabs of information up, but it hasn’t impacted the score the rating score of charities because we wanted to gather it on all charities before we did that. And so this summer, we’re going toe flicked the switch, if you will, and for the first time in our history, our rating system will be two dimensional. It will look at finance as well as accountability and transparency now for the donors that don’t look closely, it’s still going to look the same as it did before. If you type in the name of a chair, you’re going to see stars because the two dimensions air waded into the rating of the charity and that’s interesting waiting i want i want to get a chance to talk about that, too, because you’re measuring variables, then you have to have to wait them. They’re not all equal, okay, there’s a lot behind a couple of stars or several stars. Where do you get the data for cne? Two point. Oh, this the accountability, transparency. Where does that information come from? Well, part of it comes from the nine. Ninety, because for the first time in thirty years, you know the irs has revised the forms partly from the advocacy of the independent sector and other groups like it to have some of those thirty three standards i mentioned on the form, and so today the nine ninety form has much more information on things other than finance things having to do with what are considered best practices, good governance, the ethics of the organization, if you will. And so we are taking advantage of that? So part of the information for accountability and transparency comes from the nine, ninety four, but the other part, which is nufer us and is thie direction we’re going to continue to go in is to look to the websites of the charities because that’s, where the transparency also comes in, how open is the charity to its key stakeholders and how much information isn’t providing openly and the place we want to go is to the website of paris because we’re seeing increasingly that that’s where donors air going toe look, we have the luxury of spending an hour together, so i’d like to get into the sort of the details of some of the work that maybe you don’t get a chance to share very often. And i think, well, i don’t know if people wonder about it, i wonder about it. I mean, you see stars, but and you see a list of people in the, you know, in the about us section on the charity navigator website, what are those people doing? I mean, you’re getting incredible amounts of data from irs sources and now from fifty, five hundred websites that you have to go. Look at how does this all work in your office with zeal? You know, that’s that’s because you’re saying that because they’re all listening, right? Your offices listening. Okay, that aside now well, you know, that was something that was a real mind blower for me coming from running direct service organizations, we have a staff of nine small and so the work is done by our analysts on dh. They gather the information, you know, we have a customized software that they use, and they gather all the data on each of the variables we look at. And, ah, you know, the good news for us up till now is that because the information is fairly straightforward. You need to look at that number in this number over here and pull it in. And then the software does the calculations um, up till now up cn one point. Oh, it took about three or four hours to put up a new charity. And each year it takes about a half an hour latto update. So that’s, how we with the staff of nine, we can do it because it was a very straightforward and very relatively quick calculation to dio going forward it’s not going to be possible to do it that way. Okay? And we’re gonna be talking about the next generation shortly. So an analyst goes to a website. They’re looking for good governance, accountability, transparency what in detail are they looking for? Well, there are only five. There are eighteen variables that we’re looking at in this accountability and transparency section, and i may not be able to rattle off every single one of them. You know that one third of the way, but for the what can you tell us? But for the website, there are five out of the eighteen where we look at the website and so it includes some stuff that wouldn’t be a surprise. Do you post your nine ninety on the website? Do you post your audited financial statement on the website? Do you have your board listed on the website? Do you have your staff leadership listed on the website? Do you have a donor privacy policy stated on your website? Those air, the things that we look at those are the five variables we look at on the website and then the other and then the others are from the ninety okay, do they have to be easily found? Some some sites are a little clunky when things were there, but not so easy to navigate. Is that a factor? We have a five minute rule, okay? Lorts zoho so the notion is if if it’s if we have to go on an archaeological dig, the whole purpose of this is not for charity navigator it’s, because we think that donorsearch should be able to easily access this information as the stakeholders of the organization and if we can’t find it and where the experts said and we’ve gone to all these websites that we can’t find in five minutes, whether it’s there or not, they get a get a no, not there. Now we do have a fallback, which is where developing the capacity for the charities to provide us with links to the information if we can’t find it. So if they say, hey that’s, not fair it’s there, then they can email us the link and will give him credit even though it’s it’s a very, very right. My guest is ken berger he’s president and chief executive officer of charity navigator geever let’s see the, uh three point oh, now you wanted teo announce the next generation and we have some time now before a break. So why don’t you tell us about what’s coming next? Yeah, cn three point oh is when we have a three dimensional rating system and the third dimension is what we consider to be the most important, the most critical that we’ve been striving to develop for years. And that is the results of the work. How is the organization showing evidence that it’s meeting its mission? What? And we define results as it was developed? This term was developed by the gates foundation because the definition of it that is because, you know, people who use words like out comes an impact and effectiveness and so forth that we want to be clear. This is a very open term that includes your activities, you’re outputs as well as your outcomes, all of those things seeing evidence of that and it’s, really we’re looking at results reporting how well and clearly does the organization report its results to its stakeholders on its website? That’s what we’re looking for results versus outcomes on your website i see a little i see references to both and you mentioned both what what’s the difference and what have you settled on? One or the other term? The term we’re settled on is results. Okay? And how does that distinguish from outcomes then? Well, outcomes mean that you have you provide data that shows that you have provided meaningful and sustainable change in the community or in people’s lives. Unfortunately, the reality is in the vast majority of the nonprofit sector, we’re not there. We don’t have that kind of data available. And so we don’t want to create a rating system where we turn around and there’s nobody more there’s, just a small handful. So we want to be realistic about where the sector is today, so we need to also look at they’re outputs and their activities. And there may be some cause is like, if you’re a ballet company, that may be about as far as you’re going to get let’s say so we do aspire further down the road through data from others to tryto get outcome measurement information to actually make a judgement beyond the reporting of the charity. Beyond results reporting and saying ok, is this truly showing evidence that is meaningful and sustainable, we want to give the most credit to those that have that, but we will also want to be pragmatic about the different cause areas and what’s what’s available and that’s very just fair. How does charity navigator intend in three point oto seth results, but that’s again a very vague area, but in the end, you’re coming down to a couple of stars or several stars. How do you how do you do that kind of work? Well, mind you, everything i say now is in the testing phase, so it’s subject to change it’s not been finalized. We’ve set a goal for ourselves to try to have the first prototype of this completed by the end of this year, but again first prototype, and even when we announce it and show it to people, we will continue to tweak it, modify it as we learn and as we tested further, so basically so within that context, i don’t you know, we had we had an original seven questions that we sort of posted on our website while we’ve been testing those and we’re continuously testing and so we’re not. Going with those seven questions, there was, for example, there was a question where we asked, do you admit that you made a mistake and will give you credit? If you admit you made a mistake? We have come to the conclusion that xero point xero non-profits air going to provide that information on, and so we got rid of that one, but basically there are three things we’re looking at. One is, what is your theory of change? Can you explain clearly? What is the problem that you’re trying to solve? And do you have some logic, logic model, if you will, that walks us through how you get from where we are today to where you want to get teo is it’s your road map, if you will. And the second thing we want to see evidence of is data, what kind of data are you gathering to show that you’re on that road and that you’re getting to your destination and maybe even data that shows where we are now, what you’re using as your benchmark toe launch from right, and so and so, and remember, we’re talking data that can include outputs a swell, as on third and probably most important do you adjust? Do you assess as a result of that data? And then do you adjust your work if you are not meeting the results that you were shooting for? So so cn three point oh is based on surveys, surveys that the charity’s themselves are are providing to your emailing them or mailing them a survey and no return the data no house that we’re going ultimately that might happen for one year, what you just said, ok, but ultimately we want to see this information on the charity’s website. This is on the website also, yes. Ok, so in the first year that maybe a grace period you haven’t, i realized provoc only prototype coming by the end of this year with that caveat, though you might start just by having the charity self report, right? Because we know that most charities don’t have this on their website now, but we believe that more and more stakeholders want to see it as do we and that that’s where ultimately will end. So we might say after they give it to us the first year, great job next year, you can’t do it. That way we know you have it. Put it on the website, okay, and that’s. Interesting, because we’re starting toe approach some of the ways that charity navigator hopes to move or nudge the charitable sector, and we’ll get to those in the second half of the show on dh. What other directions those might be. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio. I’m with ken berger. Stay with us after the break, tony’s hoexter. Yeah, you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Are you feeling overwhelmed in the current chaos of our changing times? A deeper understanding of authentic astrology can uncover solutions in every area of life. After all, metaphysics is just quantum physics. Politically expressed buy-in, montgomery, taylor and i offer lectures, seminars and private consultations. For more information, contact me at monte m o nt y at r l j media. Dot com 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. Dahna 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 welcome back to the show, it’s, time for tony’s take two at roughly thirty two minutes into the hour this week, my block post irs tells us what good governance means. There are these vague phrases and notions kind of thrown around the non-profit community and actually, ken berger and i are talking about some of them, and i’m helping to keep him out of jargon jail by defining them. He doesn’t know that, but we’re talking about what they mean and that keeps him out of jargon jail. But often these phrases are not defined like transparency and accountability and good governance, conflict of interest, a document retention. I found a neiers document buried on its website that talks a good deal about what these phrases mean to the internal revenue service and so that’s the that’s what this first segment of the post is about helping you understand what i r s thinks these things mean, and there’ll be another post or two in the coming weeks, just to tease you a little bit good governance to irs, that is the broad category, and it means having in place, quote policies relating to executive compensation, conflicts of interest. Investments fund-raising documenting governance decisions, document retention and destruction and whistle blower claims. End quote. So naturally, what are all those things mean? And i did find a couple of those in this week’s post and i’ll go on and talk about more of them and to find more of them in future weeks. That’s all on my blogged at m p g a d v dot com. And that is tony’s take two for friday, the first of july, the year is the year is half over. Can you believe that? No, no. Can i didn’t bring you back out. Kim burger already doing the rhetorical question e-giving sorry. My guest is ken berger. And he does not believe like me, that the years, years half over. But it is so we were starting to talk about some of these ways. That charity navigator would like to see the sector move, one of them being sharing results on the website. What are some other ways that charity navigator would like to see the community headed in home? Well, i think you know, having done this work for a long time, my observation is that there are a tremendous amount. Of really dedicated people who, you know, give their heart and soul to the work. And and so at the same time, i have seen and lived with very closely some real scoundrels that have run non-profits and they can have beautiful staff, but there’s, some real jerks running these places. And so i actually believe that part of the importance of moving toward results and the like is that the ability for an organisation to engage in the kind of shenanigans that some of these organizations engage in will become increasingly hard for them to dio if they are held to a standard of showing evidence of results, and then the other thing is, when you talked about accountability and transparency, i also think that the notion that the more some light there is, the less you know, you know, the the rats sort of scatter, if you will, that that that that there’s a cleansing elements. So i think that part of what charity navigator has always wanted to do is to separate the wheat from the chaff to separate those that are really not in it for the mission from those that are and, you know, that’s. Probably where we get mohr attention in the media than anything else is to is to is to avoid those scams, and we hope that these directions that we’re talking about and many others are talking about the sector moving in well, garner more trust in the nonprofit sector as there’s more of this transparency and mohr organizations of providing mohr information to people about what they’re doing. I mean, that’s the basic premise and that’s very consistent with what iris is looking for. Actually, they believe that asai said in antony’s, tick to the the organizations that have these policies in place bring the sunlight in and are more likely well from irises perspective more likely to be tax compliant, but generally that organizations that are open and transparent are more likely to be run not by scoundrels and honest and charitable way. Yes, exactly right. And this all goes back to your mean the mission of charity navigator is to be a donor guide, so let’s write, i mean let’s, steer donors toward the better charities and away from those that are not so better. And then the second and i would say, almost equally important role that we try to play is to drive more money toa high performing non-profits and that ultimately what that means is that more people in the world are helped more communities are helped because every dollar is spent more wisely than it might have been otherwise, i should have said earlier that we are live and you can call on basque can a question if you like, our number is eight double seven for a tow for one two oh eight, double seven for eight xero for one to zero. If you’d like to ask a question of ken berger can one of the other questions that i asked listeners to answer before the show on, by the way, listeners you’ll you’ll find these poles on the facebook page always before each show, very usually just two or three questions never more than three takes a minute or so to answer, and i always cite the cite your responses on the on the show. One of the questions i asked was what percentage of charity navigator users rely on the site as their sole our primary source of information and our listeners were sort of evenly divided between one to twenty. Percent and forty one to sixty percent. A few about a quarter of people thought eighty one to one hundred percent. Do you? You know, you know the number. What? What is that? How many people are relying on it for their solar primary? It’s rough decision. Roughly eighty percent. And was that about what you expected when you when you polled or was that higher or lower what it was? Hyre and it was one of the catalyst for changing the rating system. Okay, say more about that. When did you pull? First? When i do this data research, it was about i would say it was about eight months ago, but it really it clarified things with the board. It made the board see this more clearly than ever that the urgency of doing this because we had always told our users that looking at the finances of an organisation is part of the puzzle of what you need to consider. And then when we saw that it was being used differently by our our users, we determined that the need to become three dimensional as quickly as we can to meet the expectations of our users was critically important to get going on even faster than we had hoped to do before. So you learned you’re even more valuable even though you were asking people toe use charity navigator and other sources, you turned out to be more valuable than you realized. I’m okay with that. Okay, well, this is the charity navigator. Not this is not a personal assessment. Wait, we have a caller on dh she’s on line one. Hello, welcome what’s. Your name heimans highlight is welcome. Hi. I’m founded organisation were called love one forty six out of new e-giving panic it. I’m sorry. So absolutely charitynavigator. We really appreciate everything you guys were doing. Tio help raise the bar with charities and wait love’s opportunity to challenge ourselves with regard to how we assess our our work. And i wanted to ask, what are some of the other integral aspect of our work that we should look at? In addition, teo impact like when assessing our program? Well, you know, i couldn’t in the brief period of time, we have really get to all of it. But you know our website we try to be transparent with everything. And if you go there there’s a tab on the top there called myth adala ji, and it lists every single thing that we’re looking at. In the financial area. It lists the accountability and transparency information. If you want to learn more about our experiments in the third dimension of results, you can also go to my block site, which is ken’s commentary dot organ, and i keep a running tally of the work that we’re doing in that area as well. Okay, so, listen, so it sounds like you can use charity navigator’s site to learn what they’re doing and sort of get us close to that and sort of pattern yourself your own work. After that loosening, that sounds okay. We’re already actually, if i’m charity navigator, but we left for me to improve ourselves. Thanks very much for calling loose. Thank you. Other callers you are welcome to call and speak to ken berger ate double seven for eight xero for one to zero. So can carry. Navigator would like to see the sector b doing things. Ah, little differently and nudging charity’s a certain way. Why do you feel that charity navigator has the authority to nudge the charitable sector? Well, there are a number of ways. Look at it. One is with the the fact that we have three point three million households in the united states that turned to us, most of whom say where? Their primary source of information, i think there’s an indicator that they want our organization to be in this role. You know, i just related to that i got to say that, you know, having run cherries for a long time. There’s something unique about charity navigator. Even if you compare it with let’s say, guidestar, some of these other groups, we really are an outsider to the sector. And i mean that in the best sense of the term, we are independent that’s why we don’t charge anybody. We don’t charge charities. We want to be a completely independent, objective third party and advocate for donors, and they were not aware of there being anybody else that’s in a comparable role at the scale that we are to try to do that. There are other groups that are linked with trade associations and that’s. Great, you know, any standards that the sector sets for itself. It’s. Great, but they’re also needs to be. And we think it really resonates with the public that there is also this independent body that tries to do these things. And and as i said before, we’re trying to model some of this on some of the standards of the independent sector, if we think they make sense, but we go beyond that, we don’t just rely upon what, what the sector itself, you know, says it should do, because we think that donors have a unique perspective and they need to be advocated for is charity navigator, the consumer reports of the charitable sector. Without violating any trademarks were comfortable being in that universe, okay? And now there are other players in there you mentioned guide star there’s, also great non-profits dot org’s, you’re doing some collaborative work with with i wonder both of those i know great non-profits that organ, you say little about that before for a break? Yeah, well, and then that gets to trying to be a role model. We agree with the authors of forces for good that collaboration is better than competition and should be mohr embraced by the sector. And so we’ve been in discussion with great non-profits and actually, in march, we launched a collaborative effort where are users can now write a review on the charity navigator website and it’s not integrated into our star system, but you can also see how users view the charity, and it aggregates all the reviews that are done anywhere on the internet. So if if somebody writes a review on guide star, you’ll see it here you’ll see the aggregated score of all the users that write a review with great non-profits tool and any other site that great non-profits works with so that’s one example of a collaborative effort that we think is going quite well with guidestar were in ongoing discussions, and we’re exploring ways that we might do some collaborative work together because they have some capacities and analytical skills that we’d love to share and hopefully meet our mutual goal of getting as much information out to teo terrible e-giving community as possible, then there are a lot of other groups that were also in discussion with in this space to keep you out of jargon jail for people who might not know great non-profits dot or ge just in the minute we have before break. And you explain what what that site is about one one way it’s been sort of described very quickly is sort of a yelp for non-profits where anybody who’s been a volunteer, a boardmember a donor, a beneficiary, a client, that’s had some association with the organization can actually write a review and rate the organization, they have a five star system, we changed it to numbers so we don’t confuse our users, but and then they aggregate so you can see the aggregated reviews of all of the people who voluntarily did this sort of crowd sourced. Information. My guest is ken berger, president and chief executive officer of charity navigator. We take a break, and after the break, ken will stay with us, and i hope you do, too. E-giving didn’t think dick tooting getting ding, ding, ding ding. You’re listening to the talking alternate network e-giving. Thank you. Cubine. Duitz looking to meet mr and mrs wright, but still haven’t found the one. Want to make your car relationship as fulfilling as possible? Then please join us starting monday, may second at ten am for love in the morning with marnie gal ilsen as a professional matchmaker, i’ve seen it all. Please tune in and call as we discuss dating relationship and more. Start your week off with love in the morning with marnie allison on talking alternative dot com. Talking alternative radio 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 do you want to enhance your company’s web presence with an eye catching and unique website design? Would you like to incorporate professional video marketing mobile marketing into your organization’s marketing campaign? Mission one on one media offers a unique marketing experience that will set you apart from your competitors, magnify your brand exposure and enhance your current marketing efforts. Their services include video production and editing, web design, graphic design photography, social media management and now introducing mobile marketing. Their motto is. We do whatever it takes to make our clients happy. Contact them today. Admission one one media dot com talking dot com. Dahna welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio my guest, ken berger, president and ceo of charity navigator, can i also asked listeners before the show how much they thought their donors rely on charity navigator and listeners were pretty well split between more than half do fewer than half do, and i don’t know the smallest percentage is only six percent. I think fewer than half don’t use charity navigator, so there seems to be some sort of prevalent use sounds good, you know? You know, one of the one of the challenges is to try to ferret that out as much as we can. You know, if if there are roughly one hundred fifty million households in the united states and we have three million, we still have a long way to go, even though we’re the largest charity rating agency in the country and possibly in the world, i don’t know we still are at the base of the mountain there’s so many people that we hope will have a change of awareness. We think that the vast majority of giving is still almost entirely emotion driven and loyalty driven way think that that emotional, that hard part. Should always be there, but we’re hoping that people will also use their heads and look at some information as well. You’re evaluating fifty, five hundred charities. Do you aspire to evaluate more of those over time? Yeah, we have a long term goal of rating twenty thousand and for the statisticians amongst us that’s eighty five, where eighty five percent of all the revenues in the nonprofit sector go to those twenty thousand over the next five years. We’re shooting for ten thousand, which is where seventy percent of the money goes. So, you know, we want to slowly build towards that. I mean, if this volunteer effort, this wiki style effort that we’re developing really takes hold, it could be, you know, depending on how many people are interested in volunteering to rade organization’s, it could be even more than that if it really catches fire. So this is another of another form of collaboration. We’re talking about collaborating with great non-profits dot org’s, but thiss crowd sourcing and using volunteers? Well, i guess it’s really more volunteers used an actual crowdsourcing, but are you soliciting volunteers? Can people offer their time to help? The short answer is yes, but we have to remember that we are literally building this thing from scratch, and the system is not at all fully up. The volunteers that were using at this point are really more sort of kicking the tires and saying, hey, you know, you should add this to your training program would be good if we have a chat room over here, and the wording on this isn’t clear. So it’s really not toe actually, you use volunteers yet to really rate the charities it’s to test the system that we’re developing. We may not be in a position to really use the volunteers and fully implement this program until sometime in the latter part of next year. So this is sort of the prototype testing face, but we’re willing to and we would love to hear from people. And if if it’s not right now will keep their name and we’ll be in touch with them once we have this ready to go, okay? And of course, the site is charitynavigator dot or ge you could potentially maybe this is your aspirations that have thousands of people doing this work for you. That’s the dream? Yes, and you know, it’s it’s also another way to empower donors and engage them in the process, which is really what so much about what social media and the internet is is giving people an opportunity, tio and the interest, the growing interest in being even more engaged involved in the process and since can mention social media, i’ll drop that you can follow him on twitter. His idea on twitter is at ken’s commentary and also you can follow charity navigator, which is at charity knave. Is that run right? Okay, those are the two twitter ideas for ken and charity navigator. Another collaboration you have is with philanthropy dea on you tell us about that philanthropy. Dea is also a rating organization that is built on the idea of expert reviews, so essentially they will take a group of experts in a cause area and asked the experts which khun b foundation program officers it can be ceos within that cause area who, who amongst your peers or who amongst those organizations you have funded foundation, do you find to be the most high performing in this cause area? They aggregate that information to give a report on let’s. Say top ten or a group of charities that they think meets that criteria. I think they’re doing other things as well. But that’s that’s the part that we were, we are most interested in those discussions. Air very preliminary. They recently were acquired by guide star. And i think guidestar also wants to use that service as a value add for their their current customers clients. Okay, on the on the negative side of charities and charitable giving, you have donorsearch advisories for non-profits that are suspect to say that maybe put it at best. What what are the what is the donor advisory, and how do you decide that one should be issued? We developed this about a year ago, and it was because we found that there are circumstances where something so significant occurs that it goes beyond any rating system. We might develop that there’s something that’s happening with the organization that raises questions about whether any of the information that we can get from them. Self reported information is accurate because so, for example, if the organization’s being investigated by a state attorney general, the organization is in a serious lawsuit where there are questions. About the leadership and, you know, financial mismanagement. What have you, those kind of situations that are so big like that? We think that giving a score doesn’t do justice on until that’s resolved, we put up a donor advisory, so if you type the name of that charity, you won’t see a star. You’ll see donorsearch vise ary and in tow link you to the information that we found about the investigation that’s going on that leads us to say the donors, our advice to you is to take a pause and hold off until we find out how this thing plays out. So you’re not drawing the conclusion for the donors, but you’re giving them all the information for them to draw their own using the primary source material that you have found that raises your suspicion, right? But we are, in a sense, making a partial decision. We have opted not to give them a star rating of any kind because we’re not confident in the information we have just a minute before the break and there’s something else that’s interesting that i’m sorry before the end of the show, really that the charity navigator does and that’s your your annual executive compensation survey. Yes. Executive compensation on irs fray catchphrase popular. What? What is the survey? We take a look at the salaries of the middle large size charities we evaluate of the ceos and we show the trends. What is the average salary on? Then we break it out by different sectors by different sizes of organizations. And then we also highlights some of the extreme out layers on that survey gets a lot of attention. People can find that on the website. Yes, there’s a whole section of studies. And you can find all of that on the website we updated every year. The site is charitynavigator dot or ge. The organization is charity navigator. Its president and ceo is ken berger kayman one. Thank you very much for being in the studio and on the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me, it’s been my pleasure. Next week we’re cultivating and motivating women donors. One of my interviews of the speakers from fund-raising day fund-raising conference here in new york city, which was just last month. I’ll plead replay that interview on cultivating and motivating women donors also in the second half. Of next week’s show, i’ll have holly hall she’s, the features editor for the chronicle of philanthropy, she’ll be with me. She was a guest two weeks ago to question some of the methodology in last year’s e-giving yusa report, and so we’re going to talk about this year’s methodology because this year’s report is out and joining me for that discussion will be representatives fromthe e-giving institute, which sponsors wth e-giving yusa report, so it’ll be holly hall and representatives fromthe e-giving institute, and we also talk about the report’s findings on two thousand ten’s fund-raising and what they mean for your fund-raising this year and beyond, as always, you can keep up with what’s coming up on the show. Sign up for our insider email alerts on the facebook page that you know where to go for facebook and then just the name of this show and you’ll find us while you’re there. Please like the show, become a fan, you can listen to tony martignetti non-profit radio any time on the device of your choice by subscribing on itunes. Listen on your computer, your smartphone, your tablet, you’ll find our itunes archive at non-profit radio dot net. Creative producer of the show is claire meyerhoff, our line producer. Today was janice, the owner of talking alternative broadcasting is sam liebowitz, and this shows social media is by regina walton of organic social media. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio. I hope you’ll join me next friday, one to two eastern here at talking alternative dot com no. Co-branding think dick tooting getting dink, dink, dink, dink. You’re listening to the talking alternate network. Get in. E-giving cubine looking to meet mr and mrs wright but still haven’t found the one want to make your current relationship as fulfilling as possible? Then please join us starting monday, may second at ten am for love in the morning with morning alison as a professional matchmaker. I’ve seen it all. 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Mission one on one media offers a unique marketing experience that will set you apart from your competitors, magnify your brand exposure and enhance your current marketing effort. Their services include video production and editing, web design, graphic design photography, social media management and now introducing mobile marketing. Their motto is we do whatever it takes to make our clients happy contact them today. Admission one one media dot com. Is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy police call a set to one, two nine six four three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two one two nine six for three five zero two. We make people happy. Whillans hyre talking.

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