161: Nonprofit Outcomes Toolbox & Optimize Your Social Profiles – Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio

tony_martignetti_300x300-itunes_image2Tony’s guests this week:

Dr. Robert Penna, author of “The Nonprofit Outcomes Toolbox.”

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

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

160: Nonprofit Outcomes Toolbox & News Sources/New Source – Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio

tony_martignetti_300x300-itunes_image2Tony’s guests this week:

Dr. Robert Penna, author of “The Nonprofit Outcomes Toolbox.”

Maria Semple, The Prospect Finder, consultant in prospect research and author of “Panning for Gold: Find Your Best Donor Prospects Now!”

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 for friday, september twentieth i’m your aptly named host. Oh, you know that i hope you were with me last week. I’d be put through mitral regurgitation if i heard that you had missed cause marketing one oh one trish in naper, principal manager at alcoa foundation and mounir panjwani, business development manager at do something dot or ge shared tips for getting started in cause marketing and internal social networks. Scott koegler, our technology contributor and the editor of non-profit technology news, explained how internal social networks compliment the external networks like twitter and facebook this week. The non-profit outcomes toolbox dr robert penna, author of the non-profit outcomes toolbox, discusses the wave of reliance on outcomes measurement and gives concrete steps and tools so that small and midsize shops can stay ahead of this increasing trend toward outcomes assessment. This is part one of our interview from a previous show, and part two is going to be next week. Also, news sources new source maria simple are dyin of dirt, cheap and free ideas in prospect research and the prospect finder she’s got advice for you on which news sources are best for your research and a new free offering from the foundation center called foundation directory online, plus her sixty second style stop. We’re going tow! Try having one minute tips on style like travel, food and leisure from guests. I’ll be anxious to know what you think about these sixty second style stops between the guests on tony’s take two my block this week is planned e-giving saved our ass and also i want to tell you about bb con coming up, i’m going to be there will say a little about that got contests that’s in tony’s, take two my pleasure now to give you my interview with dr robert penna and the non-profit outcomes toolbox. My guest now is robert penna. He is the author of a complete i’m sorry, the non-profit outcomes toolbox, a complete guide to program effectiveness, performance measurement and results published by wiley and sons he’s, a consultant, and his work includes the application of corporate sector, outcome based tools and insights to the work of non-profits he’s done work for the n e casey foundation, the national geographic foundation and the ford. Foundation he’s, an adviser to charity navigator on outcomes. I’m very glad that his work and his book bring him to the studio. Robert. Welcome. Thank you very much for having pleasure to have you. Thank you for coming all the way down from albany. No problem. Live in the studio. In the studio. We hear an increasing amount of talk about outcomes, outcomes, measurement. Why is that? I would save it for basically two reasons. The ones historical. The fact is that traditionally and this goes back easily to the beginning of the last century. No one ever asked non-profits to be quite fair, no one ever asked non-profits to either show evidence of or to demonstrate that they were having an actual impact. That was sort of a field of dreams and concept. If we make it available, things must get better. And it was taken on faith that train people with good programs with enough money would bring about positive change. Nobody actually quite asked that all started to change in the late seventies and then into the eighties, and quite independently of one another in various spaces. This concept of a focus on results in outcomes. And evidence of the same started a crop up, and it began to coalesce and particularly as we are in an in an era of limited resource is it becomes more important than ever for non-profits to be able to say here’s actual evidence of what we’ve accomplished, as opposed to a story about how big the problem is or how hard we’re trying in his forward. Ken berger, president, ceo of charity navigator who’s been a guest on the show, says that measurement is a battle for the very soul of the nonprofit sector. Ah, it’s taking on that great a prominence? Yes, it is that actually that line comes from a from an article ken and i co co authored it really is because there are those apologised who honestly believe in its ah term used before a fair exchange of differing ideas who honestly believe that non-profits and their clients should not be held. Tio this kind of accountability that the concept of just making services available truly is the mission of the non-profit space and that as long as they’re doing that, they’re doing their job. The problem is that for all of the money we’ve spent thes problems haven’t gone away, and so the question is, shouldn’t we be putting our our resource is into those programs into those organizations that have proven that there having the most beneficial impact, as opposed to giving it to other places that are perhaps not being as effective? The problems are too big, and the resource is of too scarce not to do this anymore, but it truly is a battle within the sector because there are those who just don’t believe in it, and we’ll get to a little of what their arguments are, maybe obliquely only, but that some of the ideas are so nebulous that they can’t be measured that like a child feeling a more positive ah feeling about education or about going to school, sort of nebulous ideas like that, but actually, those, um, sort of feel good outcomes can be measured. Well, first off, i would argue that if an organization is focusing primarily or almost or solely on feel good outcomes, they’re rethinking what they’re doing. Number one but number two there are proxies. There are proxies in terms of attitude, in terms of behaviour, in terms of various other kinds. Of things that can be looked at and can be taken as fairly accurate measures of whether or not if what you want to changes in attitude, whether or not that attitude has changed so it can be done, and we’re gonna talk about some of the ways that non-profits get there and the way that we can measure these things, um, is the butt is the story is the non-profits story the compelling story is that is that dead? Well, it it shouldn’t be dead, but what it should be, what should happen is that should be put in its place. Okay? The idea of telling a story is not a bad one, in fact, that there’s a whole chapter in the book that talks about using narrative as opposed to just factoids, because people remember stories where they have a tendency to forget much more vivid right stories vivid. But the problem is, if the if the story first off focuses on how big the problem is and that’s all it, it focuses on, and there are a number of non-profits i won’t name any, but you could probably think of them. You get things in the mail. And they show you the picture of x, y or z and it’s always how big the problem is, when we’re telling that kind of story and that’s all we’re telling we are in a way, avoiding entirely the question of, well, what do you doing about it and what other results that you have that you have achieved so that’s one one reason why the story has to be put in his proper place? The second is, and i don’t know whether we’ll get into this today, but a lot of non-profits wind up telling the wrong story for the wrong reason and ofttimes to the wrong people so that something has to be carefully handled as well. Okay, we have just another minute before a break, what if not a named example? What do you mean? Telling the wrong story? A lot of non-profits will focus on an emotional story that will highlight, for example, a success story, and it will be about this client of that client, but inadvertently, what they’re doing is they’re focusing the attention on that client. What we don’t know is, is that story cherry picked? How representative actually, is it what they’re not talking about is thie the the work that the organization as a whole does it’s it’s, shall we say, it’s it’s, macro impact. They focus so specifically on the story of this particular client at that particular client, it becomes very easy for their overall message of what they’re doing to be lost, counterproductive in counterfeit. His book is the non-profit outcomes, toolbox, it’s, robert penna. You’ll find his blogged outcomes, toolbox, dot com, and he’ll be with me after this break, so stay with us 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 intellect no more it’s time. Join me, larry shot a neo-sage tuesday nights nine to eleven easter for the isaac tower radio in the ivory tower will discuss what’s important to you society, politics, business and family. It’s provocative talk for the realist and the skeptic who 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, larry 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 everytime was a great place to visit for both entertainment and education. Listening. Tuesday nights nine to eleven. It will make you smarter. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com dahna welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio talking to robert penna about his book the non-profit outcomes toolbox right before the break, robert, we were talking about, um, for too much focus on problems. But the non-profit sectors exists to solve problems. So shouldn’t they be talking about what the problems are? Well, again, it has to be put into its proper place into its proper perspective. And this is not, you know, women, teo, bash the sector. Okay. I mean, we have to be honest and say this is a historical perspective and very early on this was how attention was brought. Tea to issues were literally going back to the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds. Um, people, for example, he’d carry nation she’s well known for wanting tio bring about prohibition. Well, what she talked about was all of the ancillary downsides of alcoholism, all right, and the folk. But the focus was on drink. The focus was on people drinking too much. And the idea was they didn’t think, think it through to say, well, what’s really gonna happen. What other causes here. It was just focused on the drinks. So we had prohibition and guess what? All of those issues did not go away. The issues of broken families, the issues of domestic violence, the issues of unemployment, the issues of of poverty didn’t go away just because, well, we got rid of alcohol for those period that period of time. So part of the problem of the focus on just the problem is it tends to lead to simplistic answers because the concept is that progress is a lack of the problem when, in point of fact, really, the outcomes approach is that what you want to do is bring about some positive change that goes beyond merely an absence of the problem. So that’s one of the problems with focusing on just the problem, the second thing is that it kind of takes you off the hook if you think about it, for having to say, really what you have done to alleviate the problem or what success you’ve had in alleviating the problem. If every time i come back to you, pick an issue, homeless puppies, i come to you and i sent put something in the mail and tony, you know, look at all these starving puppies, and i say it was ten thousand starving puppies and you know it, justin in manhattan or something. That’s, a problem. And you emotionally are expected to resupply with a cheque will. Now, next year i come back and i say, well, now, there’s ten thousand homeless puppies. This still ten thousand homeless puppies will again. What it keeps focusing on is the problem. It does not focus on am i having an impact on alleviating situation. So that’s, a real son of short way of describing why that tends to be a ah sort of a circle, you know, like the snake eating its own tail. It really doesn’t get you where you need to pay. And you alluded to earlier the fact that we do still have deep seated, entrenched problems that we have been working on for generations like homelessness, entrenched poverty, etcetera. Exactly right be a hunger of broken family, you name it, these problems, or of worldwide. And so you might even get thes these appeals from any place on the globe. But it tends to in a lot of ways, i think the lead to a sense of defeat because, i mean, think about it if every single year you get the same appeal from the same organization showing the same picture of the same a person in need. The question starts to hate begs the question, well, what’s happening with my money, what we’ve been at it for so long, and we’re still seeing the same right? The one problem? One gentleman i speak speaking to someone’s ago, he runs a non-profit e program in ohio, and he said to me, well, do candy said, you know, we’ve been fighting this war on poverty for, you know, forty something years, and i’m not so sure we have anything to show for it. And part of the reason is that from the beginning, what we have to show for it was not the accent the accent was on making money available and making programs available. You’ve heard a thousand times there, the concept, the underserved community, right, which you could argue about whether they’re actually underserved enough but that’s a different story. But the question is what it seems to lead to. It leads to the implication that if you make services available, things will be better. Well, that’s not necessarily true. Just making them available, zach. Will will result in the outcome that you want exactly, and for years social investors you know, traditionally called funders, we’re investing in making services available rather than investing in change, and if you’re investing in change, then there ought to be sameer marks of the change. The whole concept of moving your your your your head away from the idea of being a thunder what’s being an investor is one of the first the first steps what’s a funder and interested in a funder, is interested in the dispersement of funds. In terms of the process, the paperwork who’s it going to what’s it being used for what’s, an investor interest is an investor and investor wants a return let’s talk about some more of the language differences that you point out not so much differences, but the important language around outcomes measurement that takes up roughly the first third of the book or so gent generally outputs versus outcomes outputs of what you do outcomes of what happens because of what you did okay example of an output and output is training class, and the outcome would be that somebody got a job by virtue of having been trained and more importantly, kept the job for a reasonable amount of time. When and this was this was rampant in the late sixties and seventies. Excuse me when thanks to largely to government, we got into being counting and compliance organisations were measured onto in terms of how many fannies their head in the seats, how many training training class they help? Well, that was great. But then it turned out in some cases people we trained for jobs that no longer existed or the training was insufficient, or there really was no placement attached to it. So we had organizations claiming success because they’ve had x number of fannies in the seats, or because they held so many training’s or the game, but someone certificates. But the end of the day was anybody hyre did anybody did anybody’s life improved? Well, don’t ask me that question when i focused on that were protest on how many training on the output not come from the outcomes spring from the outputs. Yes, yes, you need the outputs in order to get the outcomes and they have to be the right outputs. But again, if that is only just your focus is there’s a saying that a colleague of mine, a colleague of mine who wrote a book, if well, you fundez activity that’s usually all you get? Yes. Okay. All right. Impact, impact flows from outcome. What? Tell us about it and that’s down the road that’s down the road. In other words, for example, let us say that what you were talking about was bringing possible water. And this is something i was engaged in a t united nations potable water, fresh water supplies to certain kinds of villages. I was pronouncing potable. Is that okay? Potable vote on a laudable somebody made a tomato, somebody from and why you were calling correct one of us. I have to. But i was so it’s possible that anyone, when you’re with the united nations. So that’s a hyre i’m just tony martignetti non-profit radio it’s hyre hyre hyre stand. But you had a situation where okay you’re you’re bringing fresh water and now you could think of a host of reasons early on why you might want to do that. One of the more interesting ones to me was to alleviate the burden on the women and girls in the village usually whose job it is to do nothing while david hole water one of the reasons why their educational opportunities were so so stunted was because, well, gee, somebody’s got to get the water and that’s the woman and children’s job rather a woman and girls job. Well, let us say that you bring it in and let us say that some girl does get to go to school. Well, perhaps if twenty years later, when she’s an adult, she actually has a business and gets out of the out of the village, that might be an impact. But the problem with the focusing on impacts these long term impacts is very often the causal chain is extremely weak. The causal chain is broken and it’s kind of hard. Teo teo to take credit for some things. I mean, we’ve all heard the stories of the head start program that’s taking credit because thirty five years later, one of their graduates became the head of some, you know, ceo of some company. Well, you know, thanks, snusz because back in nineteen forty seven, he was with us in today’s end of a corporation. I don’t know about that, but i honestly would say impacts agreed to have these are the kinds of things you see in mission statements and vision statements, the long term impacts, what organizations need to do is figure out how to translate those things into measurable, achievable, significant, meaningful outcomes. Okay? And shortly, we’re gonna talk about the outcome statement and contrast it with the mission statement and talk about what the elements are and how to get to ah, no a ah, a proper and and viable outcome statement. So yeah, and and just around impacts you say in the book impacts or what we hoped for, outcomes are what we work for. We’ve talked about that means your outcomes or what you’re working toward the impact of the the longer term we we we talked about funder donorsearch versus investor, anything else you want to say about the about? Maybe non-profits looking at themselves as invest, ese. Well, that’s, that’s a very good point. I mean, when someone gives you a gift christmas gift. Okay, now we’ve all had the relative who gives us something. And then every once a while checks oh, yeah? Are you using it? You? Have you been? Did you like the sweater? Most people that give you a gift, they hope you like it, but they really don’t have any kind of control. Now. My grandmother used to give me cash. She would slip me cash in by hand like a handshake, and she would always say, spend it like you earned it. My grandmother never did that. You didn’t know i’m sorry. You know, my grandmother borrowed but no that’s, um, we’re not related event starting now, but the idea is when someone gives you a gift really the in most cases, the strings got, you know, the the very there, the influence they have over the use of that gift, et cetera. Well, the problem is, when you think of yourself, if you’re a non-profit as a grantee of donor of a donation or giving, okay, the implication that the onus is on you to deliver something back to that to that donor to that investor is i like to use use the term is much less clear than if you see them as investors and you see yourself as an invested because right from the start from the basic language, what we’re making clear is that you owe them a return investments give returns exactly. And so the mindset shifts that i mentioned before the first one is moving from the concept of thunder to investor. The second is moving from the concept that what we’re investing in is the provision of services opposed to we’re investing in change. And then what are those changes and how do you define them? And the third thing is that we are going to be satisfied with an account of activity as opposed to actual evidence of results, performance and effectiveness thes air three crucial mindset shifts that the space has to eventually and will adopt, and the sooner non-profits get on this, the better off they’ll be. You quote stephen covey saying, it is incredibly easy to be very busy without being very effective. Well, we’ve always have seen those people who can, you know, go to the office in the busy all day, and at the end of the day, what have they actually accomplished? And the answer is, you know, not a heck of a lot and that’s, you know, that’s, the wife, i’m with robert pennant he’s, the author of the non-profit outcomes toolbox. Let’s, talk a little about the outcome statement versus the how does it contrast with the mission statement? The well, mission statements of very often pie in the sky and aspirational mean they ought to be yes, and an inspirational okay, okay, but the idea is that the idea that we’re going to solve a problem in our time, we’re gonna end poverty. We’re gonna end homeless. Is thies air the kinds of things that you very often see working their way into? Ah, emission statement or vision statement. The problem is that how do you then actually turn around and effectuated if you basically go to an investor and they said, what do you know what we’re going to? We’re going to end and homelessness well, you’re probably not. So when you don’t, what do you could do? You come back and say i failed an outcome statement is based upon a couple of key characteristics that good outcomes have among those are all right. It’s, meaningful it’s not a cosmetic change. It’s sustainable that’s. A very, very important one, right? It’s achievable. All right, there’s. An old statement. Everyone talks about the weather. No one does anything about it. Why? Because global warming aside, it’s. Tough to do anything about the weather. All right, but if you ah, couch your your goals in not slam dunks you want, they want them to be doable with a stretch. You clearly want to push yourself. All right. But the idea is that you want it to be something that can be achieved in your lifetime on dh something that can be measurable. The sustainable part is particularly crucial. I think of my involvement. I’m a lifelong scout on fifty. Eight years old and your first join the boy scouts when i was ten kayman eagle scout well, i never made it that i was in the order. The arrow you want? Ditigal oh, no, no, no it’s different. But i have a son who was in the order of the arrow and he’s an eagle scout like vicarious thrills. But we i remember ah, project where are we going to clean up a lot. And tha this lot had been used as a dumping ground. The scouts came in and we weed whackers and rakes and tree pruners. And we’re trying to look like a park who had done right and we congratulate ourselves. Up, up, up we all went home in that night’s peace. Somebody dumped a refrigerator. It wasn’t a sustainable achievement because we didn’t have the facility for either blocking it office, stopping people from dumping again. So the concept has to be again in terms of a good outcome, one of the characteristics and aki one is this concept of sustainability, but again, to go back to your question about the difference between a mission statement of vision statement and an outcome statement a lot. Of organizations all right have a tough time differentiating in the book i refer to ah, vision approach. You may recall the book in the book, i had a picture of some futuristic city, teo illustrate that my belief is that mission statement envision statements are both great things that good ideas, they’re visionary, they belong up on the wall, but they don’t belong in terms of you every day action plan, they’re different from an action plan it’s the difference be between having the long term goal of i wanted to be fit. I want to be trimmed and having an actual diet that you’re that you’re following. All right? Um, you know, there are numerous examples we could weigh could point to okay, i’m realizing now, since we’re talking about since i’m talking about being an eagle scout, i’m really you know, i didn’t measure the the outcomes of my eagle scout project, which was teo. Make sure that address is street addresses were visible to emergency services in my little town of altum panned new jersey, which had maybe three thousand homes or so, so we looked at every home and where there wasn’t a visible address. From the street that a policeman or fireman or the ambulance could find could see it easily. We left a note in the in the mailbox, and the note was signed by the police chief, the fire chief and the head of the angelus score. But that’s just that’s just activity. I don’t know what the outcome’s were. I don’t know if more lives were saved police response times, we’re reduced fire response times are reduced. That would have been right that would come into the out moment. And what? And if you had done the eagle project as an outcome, you know, an outcome based thing that was specifically the kinds of things that you would have wanted to look at. Now that was response time reduced, you know, i don’t know anything is dramatic, is we’re lives saved, but certainly were response times reduced. You could even you could even have done it as looking at things like ups, you know? Did ups have fewer lost deliveries because they were brought to the wrong home? All right, i have thiss factual case up in albany way way. Have to hold on your case. Feeling bad about my eagle project from thirty five years ago. This is tony martignetti tony martignetti non-profit radio we have to take a break after the break. We’ll be tony’s take two for two minutes and then i’ll return with robert penna. Stay with us now. We were going into a break. I’ll have the second half of that interview next week. You could tell you know he didn’t hey didn’t like that. I said i was an eagle scout and then he said he wasn’t an eagle scout. So that’s why, i think that’s ah that’s reflecting now, that’s. Why the bashing of my eagle scout project? That was a good project that i’m i got i got raves from the first aid core and the fire department in town. I remember that was a good project. All right, yes, we go away. I’ll have some live listening love. We got lots of live listeners tony’s take two and then maria simple she’s in the studio news sources. New source. Stay with me for all that they didn’t think the tubing getting ding, ding, ding ding you’re listening to the talking alternative network get in! Dahna duitz are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. Hi, i’m ostomel role, and i’m sloan wainwright, where the host of the new thursday morning show the music power hour. Eleven a m. We’re gonna have fun. Shine the light on all aspects of music and its limitless healing possibilities. We’re gonna invite artists to share their songs and play live will be listening and talking about great music from yesterday to today, so you’re invited to share in our musical conversation. Your ears will be delighted with the sound of music and our voices. Join austin and sloan live thursdays at eleven a. M on talking alternative dot com. Yeah, you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Duitz durney i’m dana ostomel, ceo of deposit, a gift. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’ve got live listener love nashville, tennessee i don’t know if you’ve been with us before nashville. Welcome new york, new york and new york, new york couple people from right here in the city and los angeles, california. Welcome live listener love to all of you. We also have someone masked in the us there’s someone else at least one of the person in the u s maybe it’s, the national security agency. I don’t know, i can’t tell, but you’re out there live listener love to all of you moving out to asia. Always lots of loyal listeners in asia, none ing china and guangzhou china ni hao and also happy mid autumn festival hope. Hope you did you save me some moon cake? I would love for you to send me some moon cake, if you will if we’ll make the trip over malaysia, we can’t tell what city maybe it’s kuala lumpur maybe not. But malaysia live listeners love to you. Welcome. And seoul, korea anya haserot will have mohr. Lots of live listener love time for tony’s. Take two. Last week i had a client tell me planned e-giving saved our ass. It’s. Exactly what? They said, and save them from what in four of the past six years planned giving saved them from shortfalls in unrestricted giving unrestricted cash planned giving got them to goal in those four years, including, of course, the recession and that’s, because the vast majority of plan gif ts and you would expect at least seventy five percent sometimes as high as ninety percent of all your planned gift doesn’t matter what kind of mission you have to be bequests and most bequests are unrestricted gif ts so that as you build your program, you gettinto lots of wills, and i’m just talking about will bequests in will’s not any of the other other many types of plant gifts just talking about wills as you get into more and more of those. The fact is that people pass away irrespective of the state of the economy, whether we’re in a recession, whether stock market is high or low, people pass away, and those requests that are in those people’s estates represent a lot of unrestricted cash for you. Not that you khun budget for it that’s unwise. But as your plan giving program grows, there will be revenue from bequests each year. And i say a lot more about that. On my blogged at tony martignetti dot com. Also going to be at bebe con on september thirtieth, this’s the blackbaud conference it’s at the gaylord convention center in maryland. And we’re running some some contests while i’m there. I’m going to be there interviewing for this show, doing about fifteen or so interviews. And i’ll be on stage on the exhibit floor, but they set up stage for for metoo podcast from and the contests are that i’m giving away two hours of consulting teo either people who were at the show or who are on twitter that day so you can tweet live that day, september thirtieth, and you have a chance to win or if you’re at bebe con, you can you can enter to win and there’s more about all of that on my block. Also a tony martignetti dot com there’s, a post devoted to be become twenty thirteen that’s coming up on the thirtieth of september and that is tony’s take two for friday, twentieth of september thirty seventh show of the year maria simple she’s in the studio today she’s the prospect find her you know, her he’s, a trainer and speaker on prospect research fact she spoke today we’re going to talk a little about that. Her website is the prospect finder dot com her book is panning for gold. Find your best donor prospects now she’s our doi end of dirt, cheap and free you could follow maria on twitter at maria simple welcome to the studio. Maria. Hey, tony. Good to see you in person. I know it’s. A pleasure, it’s a it’s. A bigger pleasure than usual to have you here. Have you hear? Face-to-face you did a little speaking gig today. What was that in the city? Ah, yes. So wilmington trust hosted some of their non-profit clients and colleagues and had an opportunity teo, to do a topic on prospecting on a shoestring budget. So it was a lot of fun as our die. And you’re the perfect person for that. What was what were what was a question? That you got any common questions or ah one that you hear a lot that you want to share? Probably one of the common questions was just sort of related to, you know, what are the resource is that i typically would go to and is it worth paying for? The resource is, you know, people always want to know is always good to just use the free resource is or sometimes should we be paying for them? So and i had a chance to to talk about the new foundation center’s project that we have, which we’re talking about today, so that was good that we were able, teo dovetail that in you and i have talked a lot about free resource is, of course, as i said, you know, a couple times you are doing end of dirt cheap and free. Um, do you think you’re do you think you’re really hindering your program if you’re only relying on free resource is well, what i think you’re doing is you’re probably spending a lot more time staff time on trying to hit a number of different research resource is, whereas ah lot of the fee based resource is will compile a bunch of things under one and so on what you’re what you’re not spending on resource is you probably are expending on staff time unless you have a volunteer doing your research. Ok, ok, go let’s, talk about our some of new sources that with news sources that we talked about and then well, later on, we’ll get to the new source. The foundation center thing. Yeah. You have advice about newspapers? Yeah. So of course, one of the things that you want to be able to do is sort of keep on top of what’s going on in your local economy what the local business owners air doing, for example, who the movers and shakers are. And then certainly, as you’re doing reactive research, that means you have a name of somebody you’re looking to research. One of the sources that you definitely want to check out is news sources. So i generally will try and check out newsreel ated to where they live a cz their primary residents. But if they’re snowbirds, so for example, if you have somebody from the northeast and they spend their winters in palm beach, eso you would want to be able to check out well, what are they doing? Philanthropic lee there. Okay, cool. So you know where they’re where they’re located in you? Then you look for local news sources. You just searched the newspapers in the vicinity. Is that well? That that’s. Definitely one way of doing it. I love using, as you know, libraries. And, you know, i’m a huge proponent of our library systems. And so, in fact, if you did have that snowbird down in palm beach, i you can go to the palm beach county library. And they have magazines and newspapers that you, khun research online for free. So they will include the local re newspapers for palm beach area. And even if you’re not a cardholder, they will give you a temporary pass. A research passed to be able to research their sources. So it’s fantastic. You can get that online. Yeah. Get the free research past online and be anywhere in the country. I believe so. Yes. So you just there’s. Ah, button. You click and you just request it. And so it would give you access to those newspapers if that’s indeed where your prospect was living for temporarily do you have ah, earl for since ah, approaching winter and palm beach is a popular snowbird place. Yeah, well, it’s, palm beach county, p, b, c library dot or ge is thie site. You want to go to bbc library dot or ge? Okay, you could put that on facebook page for sure. Okay. Um, okay, interesting. So, what is the advantage to going to the library? Is it because they they’re aggregating versus trying to find the sources on your own? So going through a library resource is going to mean you’re not going to pay for the full article. So very often, if you go directly to a news source, what they’ll allow you to do in a lot of cases is to do the search to come up with a set of list of search results, but then you won’t be able to see the full article without paying for it. Whereas if you go through the portal of a library, you typically will be standing are doi in-kind now it zoya i said, like, five times already today, we’re not even family it’s, very smiths. Incredible. Well, you know, your shoe string budget, right? So you’ve got to be able teo to figure out a way to access news sources and not paying arm and a leg for them. Go through the library so you don’t pay for your feet. Content? Excellent. I’m definitely include that we i post takeaways now on facebook page on dh. That will definitely be one of the one. The bullets. Excellent one. Is there something else you want to add about this? No. Okay. Okay. Um, now, are there fee based places that you can find local news sources? Yeah. I mean, there are and i would say for for the most part, though, non-profits that are doing research on more localized basis unless you’re really looking to get into international research, right? Sew something like it used to be called dow jones interactive. I can’t remember what they switched teo, but that news source, for example, will be able to scan newspapers worldwide. And in case you do have, i could see you in more of a college or university setting where they may have alum living all over the world, and they have to be able to see what’s going on in those sources. But i think for the for the average, your audience, the other ninety five percent who might be more local you khun definitely do that. Of course, you’re your listeners who are overseas would want to take advantage of some of that, so you can definitely google news resource is fee based news resource is, and you’ll come up with some alternatives to looking on a paid basis. Okay, now we have just about a minute before we go away for a couple minutes. This presumes that you confined addresses on people or at least if not an address a locale. Teo, how do you how do you find those locales? What do you get that well in? In a lot of cases, when i’m doing my research, for example, i will be told that somebody might have a second home somewhere else. So during the course of my research, i know to be looking for that piece of information. S oh, if i know they have a secondary piece of property in another state, i’m always trying to find out what the news sources are and checking out what they might be doing. Philanthropic lee. Sometimes they’re participating in golf tournaments, galas and so forth, so it’s, kind of good to know what they’re supporting when they are doing their their snow birding, right, okay, because you can help find the vicinity. All right, we’re gonna have a lot more on this on dove course. Also, maria’s, sixty second style. Stop at the very end, so hang with us. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Buy-in 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 countries. 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. Time. 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. Dahna with the prospect finder maria simple, and we’re talking about news sources, and then we’re going to get to a new source shortly. Maria, this part of the value of this is if you find that someone works in a place that’s different than where they’re living, right, so then you’d want to be doing this local local news search in both places. Yeah, i think that would be very valuable, you know, especially when you’re talking about metropolitan areas where you’ve got people commuting on hour or more to get to work. S o they might be doing some philanthropic efforts in the locale where they work as opposed to where they live because they well, the commute is so long, so yeah, absolutely. The’s online research access cards that you can you can sometimes get. Do they have ah, limit to how long is that for a day pass? Or how does that work? Well, ahh, yeah. I mean, they all have different rules around them, so you would definitely check out with the individual library. But for the new sources that i typically will be searching and and that search is actually a lot of newspapers across the country i go through my local county library, i have my county library card. It has a bar code on the back of the card, and that barcode is what allows me the access to being able to search things like a pro quest, which is a new stand that’s available online and another one news bank, which is available online. So again there it’s it’s, searching across multiple newspapers across the country, but that’s that’s mostly in a situation where i i i’m not entirely sure where people might be residing elsewhere, but if i know where they are, then i will definitely go straight to that newspaper of the town where they’re spending other time. And you and i have talked about this before the value of having a local library card like you’re talking about. You use your local library? Absolutely. It gives you access. Yeah. You’re saying so? Yeah. Lots of sites that yeah, and you don’t even need to be, you know, on site at the library to do the research. You anywhere. You have an internet connection, you can be doing the research. So that may be money. Well spent just on a local library card. Knowing that you could get ah, access. Yeah, well, if it’s your local library card, you won’t have to spend any money at all. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so long stuff had one. But if you if you find that your your local or county library does not have a good card, another source to think about is your alma mater. Because sometimes your universities and colleges will allow you access. Teo to resource is online. And another alternative is you can buy a library card. Ah, if you if you live outside that county or region, some libraries will allow that to happen. So in the fees range hundred to two hundred dollars. Okay. And if and if it’s a place that’s. Ah, popular spot for your your prospects. That may be money well spent. Absolutely. Local library. Yeah. Excellent tip about, um, it’s. Amazing about your alma mater. Another way, another backdoor way. Teo, get library access. Yeah, right. Cool. All right, let’s, move to the foundation center. They have something called fbo. They’re calling fto free foundation directory online on dh. You checked it out for us? Yeah, i did. So, of course. Staying with our sort of library theme, right? So foundation center, very specific library on doing donorsearch research on dh, whether you’re doing the search at the foundation centers library in manhattan or and any of their cooperating collections, you may be aware that they have fto foundation directory online, which is a fee based resource that they make available for free through the library’s. However, what they have now done is they have basically taken a portion of that data base and made it available, or certain search functionalities across the board available for free through a link on their website. So you don’t even have to be in one of the co operating collections. Okay, excellent. And what does it? What does it offer this this limited free service, right? So i did. I definitely found, you know, some some pros and cons. So what do you want? First, the pros of the calls start with the positive. Okay? Absolutely. Okay, pro it’s free, right? So i have to promote that for sure. Andi, i think i find that it was good for both reactive and proactive research. And we’ve talked about that before. Reactive. You’ve got the name of a prospect? Proactive, you’re just in there trying to find some new prospects. I loved the fact that you had access to researching the entire nine nineties. The text of irs nine nine text searchable its search text of the nineties is searchable, right? Do you know if guidestar they’re popular nine ninety site, do they do they have that feature? I think they might have that feature as well, but this is the first time that i’m seeing foundation center making that available for free. That’s, right? Well, oh, yeah, i don’t know if guides to write, i may be confusing. I don’t know if guide star has nine nineties of foundations yeah, they d’oh, d’oh, d’oh, andi. Also, what you can do is you’re getting a glimpse of the fto product, right? So you’re getting a glimpse says to because you’ll get a certain amount of data that you can get for free and then as soon as you go to try and do a little bit more, it’ll say, well, you need to be a subscriber, so at least it gets you in the mode of understanding how to use the tool and do the research and then and then, you know, you could decide either subscribe on a monthly basis and at what? They have various levels of subscription, or go to the local cooperating collection and used their source there. And then you can use it for free. Absolutely. Latto one of cooperating court. Cooperating collections. Yeah. So those were the real pros that i found let’s. Give the what’s the girl for this. Ok, so the girl for this is fbo dot foundation, center, dot or ge? Okay, i do love thee, even even if it’s even if it’s available elsewhere. I just i love that keyword search of nine nineties. Yeah, it’s. Really, really cool, eh? So what i did was i did a little test of the keyword search. First of all, just like you would be doing a keyword search on google if you had a phrase you want to make sure that you’re putting quotation marks around anything that’s a phrase, right? So i was testing it for the phrase foster care i was trying to see. Well, who are the funders that might come up funding foster care and you can also narrow it down by st. Right? So i did a search for who was funding foster care in new york and came up with a bunch of foundation hits, so then i thought, well, let me see if this really worked. So i went into a few of the nine nineties, and i searched for the word foster inside of thie nine ninety and lo and behold, there it wass and it appeared as one of the grants that they had made was for funding foster care. Excellent. Excellent. Now, if you don’t use those quotes, you might end up with it’s on foster brooks. So the comedian who used to play a drunk, actually what i what what had happened was i did the search without putting the quotes first, and i got a ton of hits and i couldn’t believe it and i thought, something’s wrong here what had happened was they picked up on embedded in the nine nineties companies that were foundations that were invested in foster wheeler as a company. Ok, so i thought, okay, so i’ve got to refine it further and once i re ran the search with foster care in quotes, then i got better hits. Excellent love this love the keyword search. Okay, yeah, that was great anymore. You want to say positive before we get to the what you saw some problems with? Um, no. Go ahead. Okay, good. What do you have on the downside? So, on the downside, you know, some fields are definitely fi base to research. And i think the biggest downside of all was that you could not export the results so you could not come up with that list of foundation hits and and download them to a spreadsheet to have something that might be very share a bowl with other staff for board members before you decided to do this research and behind the food that’s behind the export. So you have to take notes? Yeah. Yeah. You have to take notes, or yeah, you could construct the spreadsheet yourself. I’m sure, but okay. I just kind of found that that might be a con, but as i said, you know, you can definitely go on a monthly subscription or use it at the cooperating collection. Okay. That the only downsides? Yeah. I found more pros and cons. Actual. Excellent. All right, cool. I was like, i love the foundation. Center for people here in new york. It’s it’s right on the lower fifth of it, i think it’s at sixteenth street and at all the cooperating collections. Not only is it free to use, but they you are very generous with showing you teaching you how to use it. The librarians are there and they will spend as much time as it takes. And it really doesn’t take much because it’s a pretty simple system i ous i recall teo teo use but the librarians are very generous with their help. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Okay, cool. Let’s. See we we’re going. We’re going toe, i guess. Wrap up. I asked er i asked you for a sixty second style stop. What do you s o? We’re opening this too. You know things like travel, leisure, food, what’s your just sixty seconds what’s your what’s, your what’s, your style stuff. So i decided to pick the topic of travel for and there’s a fabulous website and mobile app called hop stop dot com and i had to use it today. As a matter of fact, i need to figure out how to get from my location in midtown to your studio here and it told me exactly which subways i had to take to get here. Is it only for public transportation hub? Stop no, you can. You can select to be told how to walk to a location, how taxi and approximately what the taxi might cost. So you you’ve got a lot of different options that you can play around with and yeah, it’s pretty cool. I see people using hop stop dot com. My objection is that when they’re new york, if you live in new york, if you live in new york, i don’t think you should be using hop. Stop. I think that’s cheating. I think you’re supposed to use the other tools that are more difficult. It’s just it’s a part of living in new york. You’re supposed to do it the hard way, not the hop stop where you’re supposed to get the apse that the empty a the metropolitan transit authority has, you know, they use a map that from the subway token from the token booth, if you have to go paper, i just object to residents using hop stop. But if you’re visiting someplace hop stop is really cool. Perfect. We got some last minute live listener look that maura liberation last minute live listener love japan! I never want to leave you out tokyo, sugisaki, yokohama sutjipto or sugito? I’m not sure konichiwa to our japanese live listeners where’s, north carolina today in the u s didn’t north carolina and check in miree simple, thank you very much for coming to the studio. Thanks for having me always it’s a special pleasure today, as i said, you can find maria on twitter at maria simple and you’ll find her blawg her sight at the prospect finder dot com next week. I have part two of the non-profit outcomes toolbox, no more berating my eagle scout project, but we do mention easy bake ovens, so you wantto you want to listen for that? Remember easy bake ovens. I’m going way back like foster brooks references from thirty years ago, you got to keep up. Also, amy sample ward is back, our social media contributor and the ceo of non-profit technology network has tips for optimizing your profiles to boost your search results and stay consistent with your mission, and she will have a sixty second style stop. I’m interested in what you think about that little nufer teacher, do you have a sixty second style stop? I’ll i’ll share yours if you got one you want to use, you hit me on facebook or or twitter or even on my block does contact page. Let me know what you think. I’ll let you know if you have one you want to share over nine thousand leaders, fundraisers and board members of small and midsize charities, the other ninety five percent listen each week you know how to reach me. If you want to talk about sponsoring the show and we have a sponsor starting in october, be welcoming them. Our creative producers claire meyerhoff sam legal, which is our line producer, shows social media is by deborah askanase of community organizer two point oh, and the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of the new rules our music. Listen to that bye, scott stein. I hope you’ll be with me next friday one to two p m eastern. I’ll be here in the studio. I hope you will be listening. Live one, two, two eastern at talking alternative dot com e-giving didn’t think that shooting the good ending. You’re listening to the talking alternative network, waiting to get a drink. Cubine are you a female entrepreneur? Ready to break through? Join us at sixty body sassy sol, where women are empowered to ask one received what they truly want in love, life and business. Tune in thursday said. 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. Sold every thursday ad men in new york times on talking alternative that calms. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. You’re listening to talking alternative network at www dot talking alternative dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. This is tony martignetti athlete named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent technology fund-raising compliance, social media, small and medium non-profits have needs in all these areas. My guests are expert in all these areas and mohr. Tony martignetti non-profit radio 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 needs better leadership? Customer service sales or maybe better writing are speaking skills. Could they be better at dealing with confrontation conflicts, touchy subjects all are covered here at improving communications. If you’re in the new york city area, stop by one of our public classes or get your human resource is in touch with us. The website is improving communications, dot com that’s improving communications, dot com improve your professional environment. Be more effective, be happier. And make more money. Improving communications. That’s. The answer. Talking dot com. Hyre

089: Get Monthly Givers & Strategic Organizations Raise More Money – Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio

Tony’s guests this week:

Bob Wesolowski, president of Caring Habits

Starita Ansari, president and chief change officer at MSB Philanthropy Advisors

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

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Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host it’s friday, april twenty seventh twenty twelve i sincerely hope you were with me last week. I’d be devastated to learn that you missed the to melanie’s. Melanie schnoll begun from morgan stanley we talked about how to look good when you’re recruiting board members and die end of the day. Melanie west from the wall street journal writes the donor of the day column. She and i talked about how to pitch her to get your donor’s covered in that column this week. It’s get monthly givers bob wesolowski, president of caring habits, helps you get habitual monthly donors through electronic funds transfer. You may know that as ft, who were the best prospects and how do you ask them? How do you upgrade donors? And when should you say thank you that was pre recorded at philanthropy day two thousand eleven, hosted by the westchester county chapter of a f p also today, strategic organizations raised more money. Starita ansari is president and chief change officer at msb philanthropy advisors. She wants you to organize thoughtfully around your mission. Looking strategically at your inputs, outputs and outcomes to boost your fund-raising revenue that’s also pre recorded at flying through the day last year on tony’s, take two between the guests. I don’t know what’s going to be on my block this week because i’m recording in early april, but i will look back at a few recent posts. You can use the hashtag non-profit radio to join the conversation with us on twitter. Right now, we take a break and when we come back, give monthly, get monthly givers, 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 crawl. Offset. Two, one, two, nine, six, four, three, five, zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom, too. 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. Yeah, geever. Oh! Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on tony martignetti non-profit radio. Now i have pre recorded interview get monthly givers, and here is that welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of national philanthropy day, hosted by the association of fund-raising professionals westchester county chapter with the edith macy conference centre in briarcliff manor, new york. I’m with bob wesolowski he’s, the founder and president of carrying habits, which is dedicated to building and operating monthly e-giving programs with elektronik funds, transfers and bob’s conference topic is techniques in monthly giving bob wesolowski welcome. Thank you very much. What do non-profits need to know about just generally before we get into details about monthly giving? What? What are they not doing that they ought to be doing? Perhaps? Well, i think the big secret for for this group is that many organizations have heard about monthly giving programs. Goodness knows they’ve been around since the early nineteen eighties, but many organizations have stayed away either because they think they need to be larger or because they think they need tohave more technology to do it successfully and that’s just not the case. Okay, so what can the smaller organization due to encourage monthly gift? Well, i think there are two groups within the smaller not-for-profits i think in in every case all organizations have a core group of constituents. They essentially make a contribution every time you ask. They may be donors, they maybe board members, they maybe folks who are somewhere in between. And so the first thing that will do is help the client identify who those particularly loyal donors are and work with them first. Ok, so loyalty is where you want to start in developing your prospect. That’s, right? Monthly giving that’s, right? I think we live in a world of finite resource is in a in a perfect world. You could send solicitations to all of your donors all the time. But with with finite resource is you have to pay, choose your battles, all right? And when we’re looking at loyalty, which i’m sure is determined by the consistency of the giving that’s correct over many years over is that right? Not necessarily. I think typically when you start to look at a group that says, where should we go? One of the things that will look at is data over the last twelve to eighteen months and will help to identify those donors who have made perhaps two or three contributions over the last twelve to eighteen months and that’s generally pretty good starting point, all right, and only interested in the size of those contributions or does it could be very small and still qualify as a prospect? Duitz this process is geared mohr towards lower donors, donors whose annual giving might be, at a minimum twenty five to fifty dollars, and certainly no more than five hundred dollars. And the reason we put a limit on five hundred dollars is that in many cases, once you get into that kind of atmosphere, those donors are mohr important, they feel more important, they need to be stroked a little bit. Mohr and in general, they don’t like the anonymity that goes with the monthly giving program. All right, are we interested in ages that important in developing our prospect pool? The only if a number assuming non-profit has the well i know relies a lot don’t, but assuming they do have a jj age is an important consideration agent demographics is important when you consider whether you’ll all for the donor, a recurring credit card contribution or a recurring funds transfer contribution. Okay, but the key factor is loyalty to the organization. Once you’ve got that loyalty than their candidate, once you start to look at the demographics, then you’ll have an idea as to whether you want to offer your donor’s credit card or funds transfer or both. Ok, maybe we’ll talk about how to segment in in a few moments, all right, so we’ve developed our prospect pool. We know we don’t have to be a large organization, we don’t have to have special technology and sophisticated technology. What do we do now? We have our prospects pool identified. We have found that most organizations get involved with this through a direct mail campaign. They’re certainly larger ones that do telemarketing, but direct mail is generally the best way to start with us on dh it’s a simple, simple ask the kind of thing that these folks duel the time now there’s some clients who may d’oh three or five four direct mail appeals per year, there are others who do eleven or twelve buy-in if the group is doing fewer solicitations per year, let’s, say, three or four, we’re certainly not going to suggest that they devote one entire repeal to monthly giving. What we would suggest is that this is included as an option. On the other hand, if a group is doing ten or eleven or even twelve direct mail’s solicitations in a year, there are so many going out that in that case, it’s generally far easier to dedicate one of those solicitations to a direct mail campaign. All right? And if it’s not a dedicated direct mail piece about monthly giving, can it be a simple as as a ps yes, in a letter. So how would we would we work that a little? Well, i think what what happens is that and it’s kind of interesting if you go back and look at the pbs and the npr market has, in contrast, goodness knows they’ve been doing this for the better part of two or twenty or thirty years. And i think where a lot of those organizations tend to fall down is that they look at the program in terms of the benefits to the donor. It’s easy. To do no cheques to write no stamps, to buy no trips to the to the post office, in fact, they are particularly core reasons to contribute to an organization. All giving is his mission mission based. And so the first place to start in that solicitation is if you become a monthly geever you help us lower our administrative expenses, if you become a monthly giver, you give us income that we can rely on month tomorrow. So there’s, this kind of fund-raising is no different than any other fund-raising we don’t, we don’t rely on the ease of giving when we’re saying send us a check, you know, or there are, or the ease of giving in other ways, i mean it’s, it’s, mission driven, it’s, almost love of the organization. And by the way, here’s an option that happens to be easy. That’s. Exactly right. Ok, so we can do this in a ps we could say your gift this your gift could be a recurring gift. Would you then include a form for people to fill out? Or is it better to drive them to a website toe? Have them sign up there for monthly giving. Or what’s the best. You certainly want to include the form because donors tend to respond to the media in which you, you contact them. If you give them direct mail, they’re going to respond to direct mail. If you contact them with an email blast, they’ll respond on on the web. Okay, so you certainly want to do that it’s also important to because over the years the banks have been particularly effective in convincing donors of and organizations about how wonderful credit cards. In fact, we have seen changes so that there are different requirements to enroll a donor with funds transfer as opposed to credit cards. That is to say, if somebody wants a recurring gift with a funds transfer that is out of their checking account or savings account, there needs to be a signed authorization in place for credit card you can simply click through. Yes, this is what i’d like to dio and it’s over and done with the garden tending the ending the ending ding, ding, ding you’re listening to the talking alternate network, get in. E-giving you could 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 hi, this is psychic medium. Betsy cohen, host of the show. The power of intuition. Join me at talking alternative dot com mondays at eleven a. M call in for a free psychic reading. Learn how to tune into your intuition to feel better and to create your optimum life. I’m here to guide you and to assist you in creating life that you deserve. Listen every monday at eleven a, m on talking alternative dot com. 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 talking alternative radio, twenty four hours a day. Hi, i’m kate paler, 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. Yeah, let’s, go back to something you mentioned earlier about age being a factor in whether you’re asking someone to do the credit card or the electronic funds transfer from a from a checking account. How does that how does to break down across ages? In in general, what we have found is that donors who are younger, better educated, maura, fluent mohr, disposable income i prefer elektronik giving that is to say, credit cards. Donors who are older, less well off clearly go for funds, transfers. And so, for example, if i would look at a typical catholic client where the age of the donor population might be average about seventy two, seventy three years old, i wouldn’t be surprised if seventy percent of the donors gave with funds transfer as opposed to credit cards. On the other hand, if i was to look at an organization like the union of concerned scientists or some of the other groups, you might expect to see a fifty fifty split. Or you might even see sixty, forty or seventy thirty split in favor of credit cards. And is that just because the older population is less comfortable revealing credit card information? That’s. Exactly. Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And in fact, we in an interesting side note we were work with a church congregational church up in aa connecticut. On one of the things they found is that the five o’clock service every day, every sunday was the one that was most crowded. They would have a couple of hundred people in there. That was the one with the younger folks and their role in their thirties. They all had the three year old, four year old five year olds. When it came time to pass the plate around. Even though that’s where most of the commissioners were, those collections were the lowest. Everybody had debit and credit cards. When we introduced a monthly giving program for them, contributions went way up. Where do you find roughly the age demarcation line between willingness to do it by credit card or preferring the electronic funds transferred by checking account. Roughly. Where does that age breakdown? Somewhere in the fifties? Okay. Okay. All right. So we were, uh we were talking about the marketing of really, the solicitation of this direct mail is your preferred method. Can you can you can this be successful? By through email solicitation or that that was not, it certainly can. And in fact, one of the things that i’m going to talk about my presentation today at the conference is that there are any number of organizations out there who have one line giving capabilities and somewhere along the way, someone suggested that they include a monthly giving option in there. Some of these groups would would argue that because they allow monthly contributions, they have a monthly giving program. I would differ with that because in many cases, yeah, you have monthly monthly donors out there, but it’s not really a programme groups don’t know what to do with them, they don’t know how to solicit them, they don’t know how to upgrade, they don’t know how to include them in their program. So it’s just starting to feel their way through. I’m with bob wesolowski, he’s founder and president of caring habits. We’re talking about monthly giving, and i want to tie this into something that i saw about doing earlier here on the exhibit floor, bob was fly tying and he’s a fly fisherman and he’s going out on sunday, we’re interviewing, we’re talking on. A wednesday and bob your comment was that the if you if you do your own fly tying, you’ll pay more attention to what the fish are are after is that? Did i get that right? And that’s exactly right? Okay, and i see an analogy in fund-raising i think if you’re if you’re writing some of your own feels you’ll think more about what your donors and prospects are interested in hearing. That’s true, i think you have to know your donor’s a lot better if you’re going to be writing the copy yourself. Okay, so we’re fly fishing for ah moflow e-giving donors we are okay. We’re looking for the players out there and and i’ll confess that when i saw above on the exhibit for doing the fly fishing time fly tying, i thought he was making jewelry. I thought he was a jewelry maker because he had these precise little tools and a light and a little vice holding his the piece he was working on. I thought you were making hearings, but no, not this time. That’s how much of a sportsman i am right? My head is somewhere in a jewelry store. Let’s, see? So then we now have our donors. How how do we thank monthly donor? Do we thank them every month? Is that annoying? How do we go about stewarding these donors that we now have? We have seen a distinction between our religious clients and non religious groups in terms of how they thank donors. I think by and large, if you look at the religious organizations that we work with and that’s roughly fifty percent of our clients, they feel compelled to send a written acknowledgement every month. Even though these charges will appear on the donor’s, a credit card statement or bank statement, thes groups have been doing these hand written acknowledgments or some kind of acknowledgement for decades and it’s very difficult for them to get away from it. On the other hand, when we look at the non religious groups, i think there’s an implicit understanding by the donors that this’s recurring they do not want to get thanked every month. And so, as long as they see that acknowledgement on their credit card statement each month that’s. Fine. I think the other thing that also happens for some of the larger religious groups is they may start out on that path of giving monthly acknowledgments, and in some cases it may take a year, two years for five years in some cases where they finally get enough negative feedback from the donors who say enough alr right, we know it’s gonna happen every month. Save your time saved savior effort. Don’t bother with this stuff. We know it’s going to happen. What about an annual thank you letter? Something like that right at annual is absolutely very important. Very important. You guys, i think you don’t want to be the organization that that cultivates and solicits and obtains a monthly giving process. Donor-centric to say thank you. Just i know the gift is going to come, so why don’t i have to say thank you once a year? Yeah. And i think what’s really important about it is that once you get a donor who becomes a monthly donor, i think it enables you to change the nature of the relationship. If if you look at a group that’s doing four five direct male contribution solicitations each year, every solicitation is give me give me give me it’s it’s a constant ask once you have. That monthly donor, you know, that they’re going to be there for years in most cases, and so you don’t need that constant ask you can begin to provide mohr programmatic information and begin that upgrade process. Okay, so that’s important too? So someone starts at ten or fifteen or twenty dollars a month. Over time, you’d like to be able to upgrade them. Tio i guess twenty five or fifty dollars? Absolutely. And when is the right time to start that conversation after they’ve initially committed to the monthly donation monthly gift? When is the right time to talk to them about the possibility of upgrading? In our opinion, that needs to be either on their anniversary or a program anniversary and let me provide an example, i think you know, if you’re going to be doing sending these things out let’s use example again afore five direct mail solicitations in a year, you don’t want to be as a fundraiser, you don’t want to be in the position of having all of these anniversary’s coming up throughout the year, so typically what a client will do is is group everybody in and say june one, march one that that’s going to be our anniversary date so everybody who was in the program, graham as of that date that’s their their anniversary program and later on today, i’m going to be doing this this presentation with a client buy-in pat chambers daily who’s with the dominican sisters in amityville, long island and the way said they set up their program, they do the solution solicitations every march. All right, donors tend to enroll somewhere between march, and by the end of may or june, they’ll get a group in there on let’s say, we’re in march two thousand eleven. March two thousand twelve will be their first year anniversary because they consider march to be their anniversary month. And then when their two year anniversary march of two thousand thirteen, everybody in the program gets an upgrade, and so they’ll figure the two years into the program, the donor’s comfortable with with what they’ve seen there in the fold. And now you can begin that upgrade process. Okay? And how much is it appropriate to ask them to upgrade to or do you give options? How does that work groups do it in different ways? But if if you’re a small local not-for-profits it’s. Not uncommon to ask for ten percent or flat. Twenty percent. Great. When? When pat started her program nine years ago, it was simple. Would like everybody to upgrade twenty percent. Okay, um ah. Is it appropriate to ask the donor tto decide how much they’d like to upgrade? Or is it better to give them a target? Teo shoot for it depends on the resource is available. There are a lot of clients out there. Smaller organizations that just don’t have the resource is toe late. Laser in specific e-giving amounts. Okay, from a direct male perspective. That’s. Right. So if they’ve got the capability to do that, then certainly they will laze iran e-giving amounts. If it’s a smaller organization, then they’ll simply go in with that percentage amount. Okay, for center, ten percent. Ok, how do we handle the fees there? Are there going to be fees that the charity is going to be paying on these credit card transaction shins? How do we handle that? With respect to the crediting of the donor? Do they get credited for the net or just or the gross gift? As an analogy? Let’s take a check deposit if a donor writes a check to a not for profit, not for profit does not deduct any banking fees associated with that. They credit the donor for the full amount, and the same is true for monthly giving programs. Okay, if i give if i give ten dollars, i get credit for ten dollars and you’ll get credit for a hundred twenty dollars for the year. That’s exactly right? And any banking costs is simply their cost of doing business. Ok. All right, what else should i be asking you that? What else would you like to convey about the annual giving one of the monthly monthly giving one of the things which is also very, very important about this is that, um, assuming the client is brave enough to go out with these upgrades and i say brave enough because often what clients will find is that the average upgrade amount going from a one time donor-centric upgrade amount that we’ve seen over the last twenty some years is about an eighty five percent upgrade. So a lot of times and not for-profit will look at that and say, oh, my goodness, look at tony. That’s more money than we ever thought we would ever get from that guy s so when it comes time to upgrade their say, how, how is it possible that he could give more and so there’s an awful lot of reluctance. Once we get the client over that hump, there are two parts to that successful upgrade. The first is to ask, but the second part is a soft ask, which says, i’m sorry, i can’t upgrade my monthly contribution at this point, but i’d like to make a one time contribution. Typically, clients find that when the donor makes that one time contribution, it is as large or larger than what the upgrade amount would have been. They back off from that simply because there’s a bit of reluctance to make that long term commitment at that point, but they still want to make the contribution to the organization so it’s important to give that option absolutely and in fact, one of the things that pat’s going to talk about today when she finally started providing donors with that soft ask the onetime contribution on there, she has found that in every year that she’s done that and it’s been eight years in a row. There have been sufficiently large contributions that they have paid on their own for that appeal. Okay, excellent. What concerns you, bob about? About? Ah, annual giving monthly giving. I’m sorry, whillans e-giving that we haven’t talked about what? Well, maybe looking into the future. What? What concerns do you have for non-profits that are that are doing this for thinking about doing this, particularly for smaller organizations. One of the real concerns that we see is credit card security and credit cards are excellent. Yeah. Over the last seven or eight years, the credit card company, starting with visa and mastercard, including amex and discover, have put in place a set of security standards. Pc i the payment card security standards, which govern everyone who touches a credit card. Processors like ch i not-for-profits software manufacturers, hardware manufacturers and everybody who touches a credit card has to live by the standards. One of the things we find, particularly among the smaller groups, is a rather cavaliere concern about credit card security. They’ll get the credit cards in, they’ll process them. They may not keep them in a locked vault area. Now we have a credit card number. We have its expiration date. Women. Maybe maybe we have the secure code on the back. That’s. Exactly. Religious code. All right. So now these pieces of paper let’s say hopefully they wanted some kind of standard form. But now what we gonna do with these forms? What are people doing? What should they be doing? Well, what they should be doing, what we counsel is to keep those forms for about sixty days, because that will give everyone involved an opportunity to process the contribution and let the donor sayid on their statement. So that’s that’s one poke a bit and just mentioning that now we’re keeping it for sixty days, keeping it secure. So we walked. It should be locked out on someone’s desk or in an inbox. Right? That’s. Exactly right. What some clients are also doing is doing a two part form for their needs where they will have the name and address in the mount of the contribution on the top of the form and on the bottom they’ll put the credit card number and the expiration date. And after it’s processed, they’ll cut off that bottom portion of it. And do a confetti cut through a shredder on the sensitive information. And even i like to really get into detail a confetti cut, not a not a quarter inch strip cut that it’s got people could piece together in five minutes of will. Okay, we have just about a half a minute left. What else did you want to say about the security issue? The other part is that under no circumstances should any credit card information ever be entered onto a pc and excel spreadsheet a database, because when machines get old, they get tossed in the trash. And who knows what happens to those hard drives? Bob wesolowski is founder and president of caring habits, which is dedicated to building and operating monthly giving programs with electronic funds transfers. And we also know that he’s, a sport fisherman and expert fly tire bob wesolowski. Thank you so much for being a guest. Thank you for having me. This has been tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of national national philanthropy day hosted by the association of fund-raising professionals, westchester county chapter my thanks to bob wesolowski for that interview right now, we take a break. And when we returned tony’s. Take two. They didn’t even think that shooting, getting, thinking thing. You’re listening to the talking, alternate network, getting anything. 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 lebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Dahna hi, this is psychic medium. Betsy cohen, host of the show. The power of intuition. Join me at talking alternative dot com mondays at eleven a. M call in for a free psychic reading learned how to tune into your intuition to feel better and to create your optimum life. I’m here to guide you and to assist you in creating life that you deserve. Listen. Every monday at eleven a, m on talking alternative dot com. 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 talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Welcome back, it’s, time for tony’s take two at roughly thirty two minutes into the hour. I don’t know what’s going to be on my block this week because i’m recording this show a couple weeks early in an early april so here’s a romp through some recent posts, two of them our irs is helping you. I was on my block. Iris has some good education courses and webinars on their site, which is called irs stay exempt, and one of those courses is applying for tax exemption that’s something that we get a lot of questions about. How do i create a charity? What’s the first step? What’s the second step and applying for tax exemption is one of the irs is seventeen minutes web courses a short lesson on getting your five o one c three designation so that you’re exempt from federal income tax and donations that people make, too. You can earn an income tax charitable deduction, another one of their courses on their site is unrelated business income, and i’ve also talked about that here, with jean takagi and emily chan are regular legal contributors again. The irs site is called iris stay exempt. And their links to all this on my block, which is tony martignetti dot com another post from february was respect small donors. I used the example of the new jersey institute of technology that got a five million dollar gift from ah couple that had given just twenty five dollars, a year, and they have been doing that for about thirty years, and j it was very smart to always thank them and developed a relationship with them, and they’re turned out to be a five million dollar gift in the state of the survivor of the and that couple. So a very good tale about respecting small donors. Both those posts are, as i said on my block at tony martignetti dot com, and that is tony’s take two for friday, february twenty seventh, seventeenth show of the year. Now i have a pre record interview with starita on, sorry from the same conference as the previous interview, and here is my interview with her on strategic organizations. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of national philanthropy day, where hosts are the association of fund-raising professionals, westchester county chapter we’re at the edith macy conference centre in briarcliff manor, new york my guest now is starita ansari. She is president and chief change officer at msb philanthropy advisors, and her topic today is why a strategic organization is key to fund-raising success starita welcome. Thank you for having me, it’s. A pleasure. What is a strategic organization? The strategic organization is an organization that understands that passion is not enough in order to fulfill. The mission is an organization that looks at inputs, outputs and outcomes, and make certain that the day today activities are in line with the strategic direction, de fulfills the mission, and eventually, the vision. Okay, inputs, outputs and outcomes. What? What are and organizations inputs. Inputs as an example. Staff finances the thinking, the human capital, the output would be let’s say it’s a homeless oh, program. Okay, so the output would be we fed one hundred homeless people arika but that’s not solving homelessness. That’s a service. But the outcome with would talk about how many people we have placed our strategy and our success and eradicating homelessness. Best outcome. That sounds like there’s going to be quite a process in doing this strategic thinking to become a strategic organization. What what? What is that process like? How does how does this planning and thought process take place? First, one of the core values would have to be critical thinking, being able to evaluate trends in the market and and trends within the community that you are serving. The other piece is making certain that the people that you hyre particularly from a fund-raising perspective is not purely measured on how many dollars that are raised, but whether or not those individuals understand the mission and can communicate the passion. So what that means is that the people who you hyre strategically aligned with the mission and that you look beyond the job description. But you look at the talents that people have that khun strategically aligned with the mission, creating a team based a t jik culture that you would have to assess almost at every staff meeting. So staff meetings are not a discussion about activities. Staff meetings are a discussion about the strategic plan all right? And we’re going to we’re going to talk in detail about some of the things you just raised. But how does all this relate to successful fund-raising? Because that’s, your that’s, your topic out strategic organizations are ki tto fund-raising success philanthropist want outcomes, not outputs? Philanthropists want a return on investment philanthropists i do not want organizations that are chasing after grants to keep the doors open then therefore those organizations ends up mission drift, whether it’s, individuals, funders or the government everyone once out comes, which requires people to be very strategic and cost effective and an efficient that’s what strategic planning does it lets you be cost effective and efficient, and how you’re using money to get where you’re going earlier. Guest on this show has been dr robert penna, who wrote the non-profit outcomes toolbox. Are you familiar with his work and that that book i am not okay is outcomes, assessment or outcomes the attention that outcomes air getting that’s really pretty recent wouldn’t you say within just the past, i don’t know three toe four years or so where outcomes have become so much part of the non-profit dialogue? Yes, before passion and services, you’re doing good and feeling good for decades for generations, that was that was enough, right? That was, that was enough. And then all of a sudden the outcome started creeping in after the enron situation and now it’s ashley, part of the playing field, and so our appeals cannot just be appeals that have you no shows the single female head of household living in a homeless shelter calling on someone’s heart we have to do more than that. People in people are moving from s not meaning services, but s meaning solutions, and another guest has been ken berger, the ceo of charity navigator there now, and other other organizations as well that rank or or assess mission effectiveness for non-profits paying much greater attention to outcomes than then had been in the past, so this is all pretty recent dialogue. But who’s who’s responsible for the strategic planning process is that the executive director’s, that the board is a combination is that the i don’t know, chief fundraiser, the school of thought and theory that msb philanthropy advisors proposes is that strategic planning should be an inclusive process and that you create a culture where everyone understands from the janitor threw the chairman of the board the direction that the institution is going. But most importantly, if someone works for a nonprofit organization that doesn’t have a strategic plan, well, then the vp of institution advancement or director development should push the agenda and create the culture because it’s going to be expected of that person when they are soliciting gifts, particularly the major gifts and a plan gives people want to know where is my money going? Not just today. Three, four, five years from now. So everyone should be involved in the strategic direction for the organization. How do we trickle this down too? You mentioned even the custodian. How do we trickle it down? And then also, how do we continue it? This understanding with people who come to the organization years after a couple of years. After the strategic plan, they couldn’t have been a part of it. They weren’t part of the organization. How do we continue the trickle down the culture and continue it? What i’ve done in my career is that i value everyone when the janet of buildings and grounds you takes the time to talk with everyone internally, to let them know the direction you’re going with your fund-raising you never know who has a relation, shin ship somewhere back and help with the plan that you have for raising money in terms. That’s how you let everyone know part two of your question times what happens when someone comes aboard and after the procedure plan has been developed? I believe in allowing people to bring their talents to the table, show them this a t jik plan and welcome insight that’s one of things i think is important to our success is that we have to move to a model and non-profit sector where evaluation is not punitive and that everyone can have can give a fee back to how the ship is is moving through the waters, and so a new employees should be able to provide feedback and lend insight, but how khun the plan then accommodate that when the person is new to the organization everyone knew presumably is going to have their own insights. How does the plan continue forward if it’s constantly being altered with new in new insights from from new employees? What a plan is not being altered. The goals and objectives are the same. What will alter is additional talent that comes to the table to move the goals and the objectives forward. So everyone, the alumni, the community, the politicians, everyone will know the direction that your institution is moving and everyone hopefully will embrace it and bring what they can to the table. Okay? And if they’re not embracing the mission and the goals, then they it’s probably not the right fit to be working at the organization. Is that right and that’s the point i was making before when people hyre individuals purely based upon pon how much money they’ve raised versus not just the money they raised, but their passion and their understanding, the mission, the goals and the objectives of whatever going backto homes, eradicating homelessness? Well, let’s talk about the hiring process since we’re headed there. How do you ensure that you’ve got someone who is going to be committed to the the mission of the of the organization? When does that does that start out at the advertising stage of the interview stage? The resume screening stage? How do we do this? Make sure we’re getting the right people. We’re going to be as committed as everyone else in the organization, i think it’s important at the job placement stage for and this is going to be challenging. Okay, organize a challenge is good, though it helps us achieve for organizations to be transparent in terms of their core values. That way, you know whether and not that what’s of interest to that individual is of interest to you. Okay, so if there’s space i mean, does this belong in a job advertisement or you really start this kind of transparency at the interview stage? When you’re talking to people the first time you should be on your website, your mission statement should be on your website things that that that demonstrate your vision should be on the website and so people could say, ok, my passion is is social justice after i’m committed to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender issues, black and brown issues. Disability issues, issues of women. I’m committed to making the world a better place for everyone and valuing everyone and valuing, it said. And we’re talking about sort of coming out in the hiring process. Hyre talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Hi, this is psychic medium. Betsy cohen, host of the show. The power of intuition. Join me at talking alternative dot com mondays at eleven a. M call in for a free second reading. Learned how to tune into your intuition to feel better and to create your optimum life. I’m here to guide you and to assist you in creating life that you deserve. Listen. Every monday at eleven a, m on talking alternative dot com. 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’ll 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. 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. 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. Talking all calm. Metoo yeah, for may, i would hyre individuals that demonstrate some type of passion, an experience in that area, in addition to being a plan giving officer clearly so clearly, technical expertise is necessary, but your point earlier, it’s not sufficient, correct. Dr starita. Dr starita ansari is president and chief change officer at msb philanthropy advisors, and we’re talking about how the strategic organization succeeds in fund-raising. What about staff meetings you mentioned earlier? It sounds like you’re unsatisfied with the typical staff meeting in a non-profit she’s, laughing. Now you can laugh out loud. I correct, okay. How? Why? Often, people come to staff meetings with a list of things that they’ve done since the last staff meeting. People should come to staff meetings with things that they’ve done to make gold one goal too, an assessment of how long it took to fulfill gold, wine and gold, too. Looking at gap analysis, are we going to meet the delivery ble on the on the time? God, i’m sorry got now on this show, we have drug in jail, so gap analysis it’s okay, you didn’t know, but you’re you’re treading lightly, you’re shutting closely to it. Um, what is a gap analysis on your strategic plan? There you have a critical path, which are the things that must occur in order for goals one and two to happen and let’s say action item three does not doesn’t occur then that puts puts the other goals at risk, gap announces is is looking at where things are falling through the cracks, where there may be human capital gaps because we haven’t hyre someone for position and how that gap is going to impact our ability for the delivery ble and what i’m saying is that staff meetings should should be analytical and should focus on what’s not working what is working and should be so and we should. Celebrate celebrate our successes as opposed to oh, i met with someone at ford foundation i maybe the program officer danny casey, i met this. I meant that i sent out seven proposals it’s clear, now that that sort of really even may be shallow meeting doesn’t promote the work of doesn’t promote the mission orientation in the goal orientation that we’ve developed around our strategic plan, it just becomes a list of activities, like you said, and that’s, what happens? People go through this a teacher planning process, they hire consultants, and the plants sits there, and no one opens the plan to make certain that is involved in the day to day activities, right? So no more of that let’s go around the table until we’ve done in the past two weeks. O r one week since the last meeting. All right, she’s e-giving the hatchet scientist across her neck, which is that’s not i hope it doesn’t mean end the interview. No, i don’t trends you mentioned being ableto assess trends in the marketplace where the non-profit exists. How does how does one how does your organization do that? One way is if you’re in a community. And i’ll stick with homeless, okay? And, you know, there are x number of shelters in manhattan get a sense of what they are doing, what they’re doing well, maybe opportunities for collaboration, what’s your market advantage, what you are doing well, that they’re not doing well. So when you speak to funders, you can communicate your market advantage. Was the trends in terms of homelessness what’s happening because of the economy? There’s an increasing number, single female heads of households that are homeless? What does that mean when a mother and her children are in a shelter? That wasn’t the case before the economy. So that’s a trend that we bets if you’re in the industry, you should be able to communicate the impact that that trend has over the past three or four years on the children in terms ofthe moving around and the ability to perform well in school, because that night in the same school, in terms of nutrition, how does all of that have have an impact on the population that you’re serving? And are we talking here about the executive director of the agency? Or could this be shared with the board? This this type of being out and looking at what’s happening in the community were, i guess, i’m asking, where does the responsibility life for this? In my opinion, the executive director, senor presidente, is the chief fund-raising officer. Okay, if that person is not comfortable being the chief fund-raising officer than the vice president for development, should equip that person with the tools that he or she needs to rise and fly, which means that development officer, or the advancement officer, needs to give the president of ceo the that data, and take the time to train the board on that information. So when they’re doing friendraising, they can speak about the value that their program brings to the community. We have just about a minute and a half left. Starita how about in performance evaluation? We’re looking at employee performance. How does this all work within that? Snusz egypt planning should be part of everyone’s job description oh, really, okay, i think everyone should be responsible, and i think people should be critical. Thinkers and fundraisers should strategically decide who they’re going to cultivate, why they’re going to cultivate that individual what’s the strategy. Look at a question. Which is working? Listen, i’m an annual fund person which works for my institution, is it the fiscal year end appeal over calendar year and appeal so that’s the evaluation piece, and then you take that and you apply that information to your strategic plan on how you’re going to move forward. Okay? Dr starita ansari is president and chief change officer of msb philanthropy advisors. We’ve been talking about the strategic organization and how important being such is, uh, leads to success in fund-raising starita, thank you very much for being a guest. Thank you. It was enjoyable. I’m glad my pleasure. You’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of national philanthropy day hosted by the association of fund-raising professionals, westchester county chapter. My previously recorded interview with starita ansari my thanks this week, teo, both bob wesolowski and starita and also to the westchester county chapter of a f p the association of fund-raising professionals, especially their philanthropy day organizer, joe ferraro. Next week i’ll be back in the studio on west seventy second street with paul gearan from professional survey group. How do you use surveys as a prospect cultivation tool? Had you craft your surveys? Tto learn what others think about your work i may call that survey satisfaction or maybe survey simplicity or i don’t know, serving up surveys. I’m not sure if you have a suggestion, i’ll take it, but you know i love a liberations, scott koegler keg lor will also be with me he’s, our tech contributor and the editor of non-profit technology news. Keep up with what’s coming up! Sign up for our insider email alerts on the facebook page. If you like the show, please like the page, you know you can listen live our archive to catch us archive go to non-profit radio dot net, and that will take you to our itunes paige. You’ll see you’ll see about eighty seven shows because i’ve been doing this for about twenty one months. Now you can listen anywhere on your computer the device of your choice non-profit radio dot net on twitter follow me or use the show’s hashtag non-profit radio use at hashtag recklessly our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is the line producer. Our show’s social media is by regina walton of organic social media and the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of the new rules. I hope you’ll be with me next friday. One, two, two p. M eastern on talking alternative broadcasting, which you always find at talking alternative dot com. I think the dude in the good ending, you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Get anything? 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