 Welcome everybody to ED Chat. Thank you so much. Listen, I would love if you would let me know where you live and give me one or two key words that describe what you do, who you help, for example, veterans, homeless. So you do that type it in the chat room. That would be great. And thank you all for coming. Those of you who are off camera, you're not showing up on the screen, but thank you all for being here as well. Awesome, thank you everybody. Come on in. Vermont PG is from Vermont Sports to help people with disability. Thank you. I have a disabled sister. Thank you so much for doing that. Dawn from Akron, Ohio Family Service Agency, beautiful Kimberly, Wisconsin. We're training. Oh, it's going so fast now. Okay, I gotta keep up. Resource Center, okay. RK from Seattle, Washington, Claudia, Napa Valley, Domestic Violence, Jody, Community Foundation. Oh my goodness, it's coming in so fast. Hi, Eli. Thank you for joining us. Amy, Assistant Living in Michigan. Awesome. This is so fantastic. We got Jean. Oh, Jeanine. I should know that. That's my middle name. I love that name from Texas. How are you? Hormone Society. Thank you for taking care of our animals. I have a golden doodle. So I love animals. BJ in New Jersey, medical nonprofit. Oh, I'd love to hear more about that. This is fantastic. Angie, Ohio, Community Action Commission. Love it. Yuri, thank you for spelling that out for me. New Mexico, bring international emergent leaders from around the world. Wow. Thank you. Amy Williams from North Carolina, mental health. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Mental health is so much needed right now, especially doing this COVID season. John from French, I don't know. I guess it's from French, culture and heritage. You know, there's people from around the world that will be on here today. Louisiana, Amanda from Louisiana. Wow. Dr. Trish from Tennessee. Memphis, I have some friends there. I hope for healing, counseling. All right. Hey, Nicole, thank you for joining us. Amanda in Louisiana, I think I said that. A law lab, need that. Always need that. Wow. Okay. If you see anybody that's in your city, make sure you connect with them. Send them a chat individually and make sure you connect them. ED Chat is all about us connecting with each other. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen just a moment. Share my screen so I can just get into a little bit of housekeeping real quick. Thank you, guys, continue to mention where you're coming from and the type of nonprofit that you serve. One second, I'm going to move this chat over so I can continue seeing that part. Yes. All right, everybody can see my screen, right? Okay. Awesome. Thank you so much. Continue to chat. Let us know where you're coming from. One or two keywords that describe what you do. Awesome, awesome, awesome. I want to welcome everybody to ED Chat. We are so glad you are here. So, so glad. Again, continue to type in where you're coming from, the type of nonprofit that you have. One or two keywords that describe what you do. Just want to let you all know when we thought of ED Chat, we thought of this is a place that we can bring EDs together. You could be a board member, executive director, or decision maker to talk about technology and other tools that you use to advance your mission. But it's going to be much more than that. You'll see. We're going to talk about things that affect all of us today to day. I'm Aretha Simons from TechSoup. I'll be your host today. I'm a TechSoup webinar producer and the TechSoup Community Connect organizer here in Orlando, Florida. So you didn't know I was right here in Orlando. Hope somebody's in Florida, put it in the chat room. Let me know if you're in the central Florida area. I've been a nonprofit executive director. I've helped people start their nonprofit. I've been a grant writer, a grant reviewer, a board member. So I've worn many hats as you do. And so I understand what you're going through. I understand some decisions you have to make. And I just want to let you know that we are all in this together. So before I go on, I do want to let you know, for those of you who are new here at TechSoup, welcome because some nonprofits have just started. They're just joining. TechSoup is much more than a tech marketplace where you can get some awesome deals on hardware or software. We have an online and an offline community where we foster collaboration and peer learning in our nonprofit communities. We have technical support. I don't know if any of you have taken advantage of our technical support, but if you download a G Suite, I had somebody call me and say, hey, I have a problem with my GC. You can call TechSoup and we can help you with all that. Plus, there are so many extra resources, our blogs. I read our blogs every day. We have some excellent writers. A lot of them have journalism degrees, the webinars, the articles. All most of this is free. The courses, when you finish with ED Chat, make sure you go on and sign up for the courses. Most of them are free, as I said. Plus, we have our apps for a good division where we collaborate with experts who develop apps that create relevant solutions to help communities around the world. And now, we have ED Chat, where it is all about you. So I wanna do a little bit of housekeeping before I start it. Everybody is on mute. I will ask you to unmute yourself, or we may unmute you. I have Nicole working behind the scenes. Thank you, Nicole. We'll unmute you if we have a question or you wanna dive in and speak live. When you do, set your name, the type of nonprofit you have, and then give us an answer in one to two minutes because we wanna give everybody an opportunity to speak. If you don't wanna speak live, then continue to engage with everybody right in the chat room. Everybody is welcome to speak. We want to bring our best, our kind self in the chat room. So make sure that we are holding ourself accordingly. Listen, I'm gonna be quick and tell you more about ED Chat. I wanna pause for a moment because we keep saying that this is about you. And it is, every day we're talking about how can we help nonprofits? And you do so much in the community and it's okay that this is kind of like our community, our club today, if you will. It's okay to come and just let your hair down just for one hour of comment chat about things that's going on in your nonprofits. Somebody may say one word that could change your day-to-day or give you one tool that you can walk away and put in your toolbox. So that's why we created this community. And as you were coming in, you told me the nonprofit that you help or the individuals in the communities you help, disability, the law lab, animals, there's so many I can go on and on, but the bottom line is that we are all in this together. And when it comes to doing good, none of us have to compete. So I hope you have your coffee, your water, your wine, wherever you are, it's five o'clock somewhere and you can sit back and relax and take this time to just soak it in and connect with other executive directors and decision makers. So as I said, we are all in this together. So we would love for you to invite other EDs to the conversation. And I know a lot of you sign up to become a featured nonprofit. I will be reaching out to you this week because we want you to come on and do our squat challenge, not squat challenge, our squat challenge, the squat analysis challenge, your sweat, weakness, opportunities and threats. We'll get more into that at our next ED chat and then I'll reach out to the ones who asked to be feature speakers. And of course, we want to hear from you. What are some of your ideas and what are some of the things that you want to chat about? Once you go ahead and put that in the chat box, what are some of the topics that you would like to chat about? Let us know. When you finish this chat today, there'll be a survey that'll go out. We want to know what things you want to hear. Good, time management. Jared is saying time management. Caitlin saying strategic planning, that's a big one. I'm gonna go ahead and stop sharing my screen. That is a big one because, and that's one of the reason why we're doing the squat analysis. It's gonna help you with CRM. A lot of people are saying CRM, tools for communicating with residents. Oh, that's good. Offering employees, health insurance. Wow, keeping mentally, people mentally engaged. Great, staff retention, big one. Oh, we gotta bring some experts. And some of you may be experts in these areas. Let me know. Email me webinar at TechSoup.org. If you're an expert in this area, because like I said, all of you wear different hats. So we want to know some of the hats that you wear. You may be some of you are lawyers. You all different types of people. You don't just serve the community in one capacity. So let me know. Wow, this is a lot of great topics. Reasonably priced telephone options. Hmm, telephony, I don't know what that means. Telephonic, you gotta let me know, Becky, what that one is. A lot of people saying strategic planning. This is great. Good information. Awesome, awesome, awesome. So, you know, there's this host on television. Everybody know who she is. She's always saying, how you doing? And that's what we want to know today. We want to know how you are doing. How are your board members? How are your volunteers? Would someone like to come off mute? Do me a favor, go in the reaction section and press raise your hand. Do the raise your hand button. I don't see the raise your hand button. There it is. Yeah, push the raise your hand button and let us know how you're doing. How have you managed through this pandemic? I mean, what's changed for you? Nicole, if you see anyone that would like to come on, you can unmute them. The people have to unmute themselves. Okay. If you want to come off, I do see some hands. Okay, great. Starting with Trish. All right, Trish, thank you, Trish. Hey, hi, y'all from Memphis. We've switched to a completely virtual setting because during the pandemic, some of our clients didn't want to come into the office. So we've done that. And then it's turned into now, they demand nothing but virtual. So it's been kind of good because our overhead is a whole lot less. So Trish, let me ask you, are you using Zoom, right? Zoom, phone calls, text messaging, things like that. Abby, do you all know that Zoom is one of our partners so you can get a discount on Zoom? So if you don't know, I hope you do take advantage of that. Yes, we just paid, well, we paid for a full account. My Rotary Club paid for a full account in December. And then I noticed a couple of weeks ago on TechSoup that it was what, $59 for a year. Now wait, what? Yeah, so. Always, always check with TechSoup. Whenever you guys are interested in any kind of technology, again, we're not just software or hardware, computers. There's over 100 partners that come to TechSoup and say, hey, we wanna make sure we get this to non-profits. So I see Jerry with your hand raised. Jerry, how's it going? Wonderful, thank you very much. I'm a pastor of a small Baptist church in Oregon, Illinois. And so far, every week, because of the pandemic, every week is different. Every week you have to change up some way to try to keep up with the demands of the government that's sending out all the different requirements. But also to meet the needs of the congregation and stay within the boundaries that we have and try to keep that engagement. And so that's been very, very challenging over this last year for sure. Praise the Lord, we've been growing even amidst the challenges. And this has caused a lot of the churches to step out of their comfort zone to engage technology a whole lot more especially. And so TechSoup has been a good partner of ours for a long time. The only challenge I've had in the last year was trying to understand how to install Microsoft Office 2019. That's been a very big challenge. That's the five that I'm very happy with TechSoup. Uh-oh, well, as I said, we have technical service. Thank you for letting us know that. You can always call. We have experts, you can have one-on-one. A lot of people don't know that. You think you can just download the information and you're on your own. No, we want to help you. We can help you walk you through it. We are here to help. And I'm glad- If I have you utilize TechSoup's $30 installation support. It's just, it's still just so, and I compliment you that you guys put that in place recognizing the challenge that Microsoft has presented us now to capitalize on the Microsoft Office product. So thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. And thank you for letting us know your pastor. I know that a lot of pastors and a lot of organizations have had to make the shift. And we were used to doing everything face to face. And then we are forced now to use technology. We're forced to Zoom. We're forced to make those phone calls. And technology is not gonna go anywhere. So we all have to make a shift and then catch up because it's just growing so fast. So I see Jim. Jim, hi. You can unmute yourself. Sure. Hi, everyone. Hi. I'm Jim. I'm in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan up by Lake Superior. And you just touched upon something we're a health conversion foundation. So we provide health grants all across the Upper Peninsula. But you just touched on something that I would like to expound upon. And it is the use of Zoom go-to meeting in all of these different platforms. And what I'm really concerned about are two things. Number one is I'm concerned about Zoom fatigue. That is just real now. I've noticed more and more over the last couple of months, it's more difficult to keep people engaged on Zoom calls. They're preoccupied, they're leaving, they're not engaged. And then the second part of what I'd be interested in learning from other directors is when we get back to, you know, so-called normal, whatever the definition of normal is, I still think the element of face-to-face is incredibly invaluable. And I guess I'm a little bit worried that we've fallen into this false sense of security that we can rely on technology. But yet, for many of us who work with donors, the face-to-face contact is incredibly important. Yeah. Oh, you've got a lot there. I have some answers. Anybody else want to chime in? And I see Yuri and Becky, I'm gonna come to you in a moment. Anybody want to chime in? Susan, you want to answer? Jim, as you guys are raising your hand, I will say that, yes, Zoom fatigue is real. However, we know Zoom is not going well, but there are many other platforms that are developing that is different from Zoom, where you can still have that face-to-face. Zoom is being used in a medical field for your counseling sessions to talk to your doctors. And so we know this sort of technology, and we're hearing the word hybrid, where people are gonna go do face-to-face sometimes and sometimes online, but we know it's not gonna go anywhere. Becky, I see you have your hands raised and then I'll go to Yuri and then Susan. Hi, Becky. Hi, I'm in the Seattle area, east side of Lake Washington. We actually have a virtual office before the pandemic, and we were able to hold a virtual auction with donor perfect ready-set auction. And we hosted a virtual holiday tour, and we made money and we did all our meetings online. So we've made great strides and had connectivity. We had social hours, trivia, bingo. And so that helps, but I'm looking for telephony options that are reasonable. What is that? You wrote that in there, I was like, what is this? Well, telephony is telephone service. I need a virtual telephone. We don't wanna change our phone number to go to Google Voice, for example, because we have it on all our printed material, all our websites, everything. So I'm looking for something that will allow us to keep our phone number and yet to work on a mobile app and on a laptop. Okay. In the chat room, you can use phone.com. Grasshopper. Does it allow us to use our existing phone number though? See, that's a problem. We can't change our phone number. I need to be able to port it. Laura said yes, you can. Okay, phone.com, phone.com. Okay, thank you. This is great. And someone said you can port Vonage. So there are many other people, great ideas, you guys. Yuri, how are you and how's it going? Hello, and thank you so much for the opportunity to be here in New Mexico, beautiful land of enchantment. And as you mentioned, each one of us, we have totally different programs and struggles that we're going through. Yes, Zoom is not going anywhere. And for example, I started as executive director of this organization a year ago before the pandemic started. So I started in January and all of a sudden in March, we went to the lockdown and we had to switch everything to virtual. So one of my main problems that I'm dealing with right now is having a strong CRM. And so I used to have three staff members and now it's just doing everything by myself. So even though that we're not receiving of course, so just really quick about the organization. So I can of course have other people talking is that we bring emerging leaders from around the world or main funds come from the State Department. They've had this program for the past 80 years with the State Department bringing emerging leaders and doing best practices in different cities around the US. So we're doing everything virtual actually. We continue having the programming virtual, which it has so many challenges. And thank you actually, I do have the Zoom and I purchased it through you guys. So thank you so much for that. So that's saving me a lot of money, but now it's kind of like getting ready with everything that is happening and doing the programming with my international visitors. Because we have the State Department, we have the interpreters and everybody else, Lea Sons, but yeah, so CRM for me in particular is kind of like it's been really struggled just to find the right tool where I can combine everything. You know, I can combine my, the software that I can plug my members and I can have MailChimp, which that's what I use. So kind of like having everything combined. So thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. You're welcome. We do have some CRM platforms here and a lot of people are typing in chat rooms, Salesforce, we offer Salesforce, but that'll definitely be a topic that we will definitely cover. A lot of people, customer relations management because some people don't know what CRM means. So yes, thank you, Kimberly and Nicole for putting that there. Susan, how are you doing? Oh, am I? Yes. I am trying to keep up. We're doing two things with my organization. One is continuing to support a women's center in Nairobi and the other is to reinstate the Oakland Women's Center in California as a virtual entity. And I'm not quite sure about how to do that yet, but my main area of concern right now is trying to get my board engaged in fundraising. It's been pulling teeth. It's talking around the issue and I'm not really sure anymore what to do. Wow. I definitely can have some thoughts, but what advice would you all give for executive directors? Because I know that's like the number one topic, board engagement. How are you keeping your board engaged? And sometimes you have to know when to fire them. Am I wrong for saying that? Type in the chat room. Carol, thank you. Same problem. Fire them, right. How are you keeping people? Dr. Sean said, not wrong at all. You need a new board. People are saying you need a new board. Some people are saying this is my pain. Not wrong at all. Okay, I'm gonna unmute April. April, I know you're not on camera. I'm gonna unmute you. So I hit the X unmute and how are you doing April? Can I ask a question first? Yes. You know, you made the, somebody said fire them. Isn't an executive director's prerogative to do that? Well, every, there's different types of boards the way the board is structured. So you have to look at your bylaws. What does your bylaws say about, you know, getting rid of people, resignations and things like that. So you have to look at the way your bylaws are structured. Bylaws are different. You're welcome. Didn't occur to me. Yes, yes. So April Havelin, I'm hoping I'm pronouncing your last name correctly. You can, yes. That, I, well, the pandemic has been a difficult situation everywhere, but we were in America with victims of trafficking. And so many of our women don't know how to read and write. They started in the broth and they're five or 10. And so they never went to school and don't know how to read and write. Many of them don't have a smartphone. And so we have WhatsApp groups in Nicaragua and Honduras, but the only country that we work in Bolivia, we work in three countries. Bolivia is the only country where they had Zoom or understood Zoom and could use Zoom. So I definitely have been doing a lot of Facebook Messenger, you know, the technology and the internet, you know, it's expensive to buy a plan for your phone even just for a day or even, you know, they'll buy 30 minutes worth of data. And, you know, you can't communicate a lot with no data. And so the biggest challenge has been helping the leaders in each country to help the people on the ground. It's been a very big challenge, but I spend a lot of time talking to the staff and the volunteers in different countries, but it's hard from when, you know, I couldn't travel until October and get to any of the countries when March hit. So that was a challenge. But one of the things that I want to look out for, and I was wondering if anybody in this chat room might know, we have trouble in both Honduras and Nicaragua with children that still are trying to go to school virtually not having a device. So we're looking for use cell phones, you know, smartphones or tablets that we could source to help the students be able to stay in school because many of the kids had to drop out of school and lose their whole school year because they had no access to a smartphone and they had no, Honduras now has free Wi-Fi for students in elementary and secondary school, but you have to have a device. If you don't have a device, you can't do it. We have like seven children with one cell phone that wouldn't hold its charge. So they're all sitting around on the floor with the phone plugged in trying to do their schoolwork in one household. It's a big challenge. So does anybody know somebody said they love Zoom? I don't know, but it's spelled differently, X-O-O for transferring funds internationally. Okay, so, but there might be, yeah, it is spelled that. X-O-O-M is a great option, Yuri. So Yuri, you can chat individually with April. If you know of any other resources that she can use. And thank you, April. I see RK, your hand is raised. Can you unmute yourself, please? Let us know how you're doing. Hi, my name is Rizwana, and can you guys hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Okay, I represent the Seed of Life Foundation. We actually started in January of 2020 and we didn't realize the COVID was gonna hit us. But we create awareness regarding nature, deforestation, deforestation, importance of trees and conserving wildlife. We started as a hobby and then because of 2020, we went full-time and we work in US as well as in Africa. And around Kenya, and we have volunteers and we go to the schools that are underprivileged in those towns and educate them because they really heavily depend on cutting the trees for fires and destroying that. So we go there virtually and we have also volunteers over there and we provide education, train them and then in their schools, we plant a school garden and they're all edible foods such as vegetables and fruits. So then the children get the chance to take care of it and whatever comes out of that, it provides the community empowerment independent of the government funding. Well, thank you for sharing that. Jim, I see you put your hand back up, am I right? Or you just didn't lower it? Okay, I think you just didn't lower it. Is this Shalina? Did I say right, Shalina, David? Yeah, it's close, but it's okay. It's a hard name, it's Shalini. Shalini, oh, that's beautiful. I just wanted to just respond. I forgot the lady's name that was talking about the board engagement. If I could just answer that, if that's okay. Yes, please. So just from my experience, I'm not an expert, but when it comes to like the termination part of it, I found for in my experience, it's easier to instead of terminating, it would be better to do something like term limits. If you set term limits in your bylaws, then every three years or two years, however you set it, it's automatic that board member rotates out and so it's easier than terminating it. And what I do, especially for board members that are involved, I don't, even when that term limit ends, if they have to step out, I ask them to join the advisory board because they have a lot of input based on their experience on the board because you don't wanna put a bad taste in their mouth also because even if they're not supportive right now, they could be supportive in the future. So for termination, that's just been my experience, but for the getting them engaged, some of the things I do is I try to keep them abreast of what's happening because a lot of times, you know, you might have a board meeting like once a year twice a year, once six months or every other month and they really don't know what's happening in the day-to-day. So if you're religious-based or whatever you do like a prayer request once a month when something crazy is happening or I also have like a management committee just based on volunteers and they kind of help me with decisions on the day-to-day operations and so they know what's going on in the day-to-day and that just helps them feel the urge to fundraise a little more because they know what's happening and they know the day-to-day needs and even within the management committee we might meet once in three months or once every other month just based on an issue but those committee members have agreed to sit on a weekly to rotate so nobody's overburdened but one person maybe for a month or two months will have a once a week meeting with me and my person in Uganda, my manager and we'll be directly hearing what are our issues and so that helps them really feel connected and the other thing I felt the same way you felt with the fundraising at one point and but what I came to learn is that it's okay if they're not all involved in fundraising because one board member might bring in a lot for fundraising and one might not but that person might give you some advice and bring a skill set in or knowledge that your other board members are not bringing you and that's valuable too. So you might be able to get maybe that engagement for fundraising within your volunteers and your donors and then kind of see what you want from each board member and then just kind of take it at that like but it's what you value, it's what you need. You made some great points. I'm gonna let Ruth and Maurice speak in a moment but I did wanna say that getting the board members engage I don't know how many board members you all have but trying to call each one individually or setting up monthly meetings. If you had a platform where you can talk to them simultaneously that's what technology is for like using a Slack, an app called Slack will put it in the chat room or using some other platforms like Asana where you can see their progress and what they've done, what they completed or if they're engaged at all you can see if they logged in that way that's one of the ways you can keep track of people and how they're being active. So Maurice, you had your hand up. I'm gonna let you speak and then I'll go to Ruth. Maurice, lawyer. Yes, I'm here, I'm you and I'll start my video. Hello, my name is Maurice, lawyer. Let me see if I turn it this way. My name is, I'm on the tablet, so excuse me. My name is Maurice, lawyer and I am the executive director of the Legacy Foundation here in South Carolina and just quickly, one way I keep my board engaged is I really don't bother them. I talk to them when necessary, I try not to and endate them with emails or contacts. Just kind of give them updates and meet when necessary because not every topic deserves a Zoom call. I can just shoot a quick email and we don't have to worry about burdening them with all that. But anyway, we're doing okay. We had to learn a lot really quickly because our organization is fairly new. We've only been established for about four years. So we started out with the idea of taking elementary school kids on field trips that they would not otherwise be able to afford and different learning opportunities outside of the standard curriculum for our school district. We focused primarily on third, fourth and fifth graders but when COVID hit, all of that stopped, obviously. So we had to pivot and reimagine how we could be of service. So we started doing, in our Strengthening Families program as well, had to go virtual. So we started offering our Strengthening Families program virtually for the families. We then created a virtual tutoring program but third graders that focused on reading and literacy, well, reading literacy and math and we were able to serve about, we were able to serve 40 students at our two elementary school campuses and we were awarded a grant to actually pay out tutors. So that was really important because we were then able to add some supplement income into some of these households. So it's been really rough but we're doing okay. Good, good. A lot of people want virtual, you're welcome. Thank you. Hi Ruth, how are you doing? Hi there. First of all, thank you so much for doing this. This is wonderful to have an opportunity to meet people that we probably never would have an opportunity to meet and to see how many amazing things are happening in our world, especially nowadays. So I run a small nonprofit. I live in Northwestern PA but the nonprofit actually serves orphans and vulnerable students in Kenya and in India. And to answer, I think it was April who was asking about board engagement. I'll just throw in my two cents, which is similar to what a few other people have said too. Let them kind of rise to the top but at the same time create that space but definitely look for opportunities for them to engage. One of the board members has, the fundraising board member on our board has always said that the entire board is the fundraising committee. And that's a good thing to bring to their attention that everybody who is on the board serves in that capacity and has that. And there are lots of different ways to fundraise. It's not always just about money. It's helping to stuff envelopes. There's a lot of different ways to engage. So as far as this pandemic is concerned, like everybody else, we've been doing everything virtually. I have not met with my board. We've been around for 10 years and we kind of stopped having meetings in person meetings about five years ago. So we're very used to meeting online. And it's hard. We try to meet in person at least once a year and of course the pandemic stopped that. But I have a question for anybody out there who is serving populations internationally. And my question has to do with meetings with staff members overseas. We've tried a variety of platforms and sometimes we hit it right with Skype and then other times it's no, let's go to Facebook Messenger. And it's pretty frustrating when, because my staff is in a rural part of Kenya, Western Kenya and it's just kind of, in a way it's kind of hit or miss. Skype seems to be the best option so far, but yeah, WhatsApp, we've used that before I see somebody RK is saying and Facebook Messenger, we use that as well. But does anybody have any other platforms that they've used that seem to work really well? I see WhatsApp and yes, we do. We have used that and it does work well in Kenya. You're right. Thank you, Susan. Awesome. You guys continue to type in your answers and thank you Ruth. Yeah, sure. Thank you again for doing this. You're welcome. Jenny and then Alex. Hi, thank you so much Aretha for inviting us. We appreciate it. I am with FCAP. We are headquartered in Atlanta. We are the Fellowship of Christian Airline Personnel. We serve on each of the continents right now. So our major issue is time zone changes. You can imagine a lot of our airline personnel are down right now. We are serving a very diverse, both amongst our religion as well as amongst cultures and then amongst job groups as well. So it's getting more diverse. Zoom has absolutely been integral. We've actually had more connectivity in 2020 using Zoom than we were doing in-person meetings. So I can tell you that. So people can make time for an hour long Zoom meeting. I wanted to speak real quickly to the board issue. One of the ways I was brought on and I noticed that there was a big gap in communication between the board and the staff that the board only came once a year. We only kind of spoke to them catch as catch can. We did something called the self audit of common standards for US nonprofit organizations. You can find it at Calvin Edwards and company, CEC, Calvin Edwards and company. And I'll type it into the chat when I'm done. When we let the board know that we as staff were doing this common audit, we found we were deficient in about 49 points. It took us a full year, 12 months to do that. One of the many things that we needed to address was having quarterly board meetings, having monthly staff financial meetings. And in this way, we began having not required monthly leadership meetings of which the board were also some of our volunteer local group leaders internationally. And what this did was bring more communication. They had a better understanding of all the various tasks that the staff had to do. And we kind of left also a vacuum for them to kind of fill in. We gave each of our board members call lists. They each have like 10 people to call around the world of leadership and to stay in touch. So we gave them jobs to do. And I just wanted to share that with y'all and hope that some of those ideas would be helpful to you. Thank you. That was fantastic, Jenny. That was fantastic. Thank you for sharing that. My pleasure. Alex, how are you? I'm doing well. How are you? Great, great. Awesome to hear. So I am an IT director for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Mercer County. And we are fully back in person. And I just wanted to say kind of before I dive into what I do that I noticed that a lot of the people on this call are very experienced working in nonprofits. And I just kind of wanted to share that I'm about four months new into my first on-profit. So that being said, I just wanted to say that I have a lot of respect for each and every one of you, because I've pretty much seen firsthand how many different hats you have to wear just to make ends meet, to get the job done. And it's definitely not a walk in the park. So yeah, I just want to let you all know that. And that being said, when the pandemic started, the Boys and Girls Clubs, which is traditionally recognized as being an after-school program for kids in underserved communities, transitioned more into a fully functional school, really. And basically, when we usually had programs run from, I guess, after school from like 2 o'clock onwards, was now becoming an 8 AM to 5 PM type of school, where we would provide kids with meals, high-speed internet, and basically give them everything they need to succeed during the pandemic. So that being said, it presents a lot of challenges, because a big question is, well, how do you sort of raise the money and pay for faster internet for a site? And TechSoup is actually an amazing resource we use, because all the money that we save is directly put into making a function of our business go smoother. And those discounts are huge for us. So really, I can't say enough how much of a saving grace it's been from us, especially from the more technical side of things. And then I guess my question for everybody, especially the ones that have been in nonprofits for a while, is how do you typically avoid burnout? Because I've seen a lot of people easily put in 50 hours plus every week to make things work. So I just thought I'd ask that question to everybody. Wow. Thank you for, and I'm echoing what you said, that thank you for everybody for what you do. That was a great question. I'm going to let I see how he has his hand raised, and then Jeanine will be after him. OK, well, first of all, on the issue of board engagement and fundraising, I work. I'm a junkie on this stuff. 40 years as a professional and nonprofit organization, I currently am the director of a zero-interest loan fund that's based in San Antonio and serves a 16-county area. As a volunteer, I'm the president of the board of a parochial school in town, which, by the way, while we pivoted and Zoom was indispensable, of course, as a way to educate our kids, unlike the folks that are working in certain rural and or international locations, we were able to make sure people had connectivity and our teachers were actually trained two weeks before we had a shutdown in March. So we pivoted very easily. We started school in August and only missed one week after winter break this year, because a couple of families kind of let down their guard, went away on winter break, and then ended up testing positive. So we had a bunch of questions and closed the school for a week. Can we put on headphones? So my piece on board fundraising. Every organization I've ever worked with has had a give or get. And that's critically important. I heard it earlier that there are different things that board members bring to their work. And fundraising is a responsibility of the board. End of story. If somebody isn't willing to at least acknowledge that, then perhaps they're not appropriate for your board. Because at the end of the day, how do we survive? How do we provide the services that we do? So that's critical. And the issue of burnout, I found, and again, remembering at this point that I'm no longer working in a national and international basis, but for local, I find that the electronic connecting has actually enhanced our success in fundraising and in engaging the board members. Why? Because people have busy lives. And while we're not dealing with time zone issues, we are dealing with scheduling. And so when we kind of say, we're going to meet, and then meetings go, it's 45 minutes or an hour, end of meeting. So you have that expectation. You start on time. There's no distractions. And you get to the business. Look, board service is two things. It's the work of the organization, and there is a social component. So you have to at least take that into consideration, get the stuff done. And when we can get back safely to meeting in person, build in those social elements once or twice a year, gathering is something like that. But for me, in the work that I'm doing, God bless electronics. And thank you all for providing us a forum to discuss this kind of stuff. Thank you. Thank you, Howard. I think once Janine was next, hi, Janine. Hey, Arita, thank you. This is my first TechSoup meeting. So glad that I found you. Really appreciate all the advice out here. It's like, oh, I have found my community here. Alex, thank you for your nice comments about how do you avoid burnout and everything that we're doing to save the world, make it a better place. So my question that I want to put out there is I have struggled for about three years. It's really hitting a brick wall on trying to find a member management system that can help us learn more about our members. We are based in Washington, DC. We're focused on climate change solutions, accelerating clean energy sustainability, have an international network about a reach of 8,000 people so far, and just trying to help all the people we are connecting in Italy or in Denver, how they can help to connect and really assist us on our mission. So we've looked at MemberPro, which we have a WordPress site. We're trying to think of that with something we could use. Just too much friction. Just too complicated for people to use. So we're looking for seamless functionality, make it easy as possible. We also looked at something called Buddy Boss. Again, just wasn't quite doing it. And then other member management systems like Wild Apricot, oh, they just seem so expensive for where we are right now, several hundred dollars a month. So if anyone does have advice, I'll put my email in the chat or feel free to put it out there. Thank you, Aretha, and I really appreciate being part of this group. And thank you for what you're doing. Thank you. I appreciate you saying that. So we're going to go to, since I've heard from Susan and I'm known for NASA, Ryan, Shalina, I'm going to put you on hold for a quick second. I'm going to go to, did Carol speak already? Carol. No, no, not yet. And I know it's funny because that's somehow outlawed in on my husband's Zoom. So thank you. Thank you really for doing this. This is just great because I'm an executive director and sole employee. And so I work alone and whatever. But so these are a lot of great ideas. And we've always worked. So I work for a couple of different nonprofits. And my main one is national. So we've always been virtual because, and the board engagement thing, I have to say, I think Zoom has been kind of good for that. We use breakout rooms a lot in our meetings. And we started out as a camp. So I always try to bring some fun camp kind of games to my board meetings, even though we're all a little older. But they love it. They love making jokes and whatever. So I was one of the ones also that responded to the fundraising thing because my board is super engaged, typically, and very active in working programs, which is great. They're very hardworking. They don't really get the money piece about. So we're trying to create more programming that can bring in funds. But we also need to have some other funding coming in. And that is a struggle for us. So some of them give financially also and also work hard. And others feel like their hard work is enough. And that's true. But they're the ones that have the connections, really, for finances. And so that is a struggle. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. So we have about 10 minutes left. I'm going to go to Susan, then Jim, then Charlene. Hi, everybody. I'm Susan, different Susan with Nonprofit Wellness. And I wanted to address Alex's question on burnout, since that's what we specifically deal with. I've spent 25 years in the nonprofit world. And my partner, Taisha, is a longtime educator. And so we focus on nonprofits and schools because there's a ton of stress and not a ton of wellness resources. I loved what Leni said in the chat about we get used to being singed around the edges in this world, in this work, but nothing can dampen our passion, right? That's what keeps us going. And I think Alex and for everybody, EDs are a lonely bunch. Like, we're not peers with anyone in our organization. So groups like this are really important so we can be vulnerable with each other and be open about our challenges. And I think for the ED especially, you all have to figure out your own personal self prescription for stress or for burnout or for mental health or for physical health. It's different for everybody. I put in the chat a link to our website, nonprofit wellness.org slash resources, where we have downloadable tools you can use with your team or for yourself. They're like discussion tools really. Like if we talk about wellness, if we talk about physical and mental health, then we build more team health because it requires us to be vulnerable. And as Brené Brown writes about vulnerability is really courage and that builds empathy and that builds trust. So we kind of use wellness as a tool, not just to improve our wellness because we got to take care of society's caretakers, but we also use wellness as like an organizational development tool to like spark discussions amongst your team because that's gonna bring everybody closer together and that's gonna help you take care of each other. We call it team care because self care ain't gonna work for this population. We're terrible at self care. We've never been good at it. We're never gonna be good at it. We're really good at taking care of other people. So let's turn that on each other and then we'll be stronger as a community and a movement. So if you're interested in our resources, please check out our website, but I just wanted to mention that. And also they included me on this ED chat because TechSoup has a blog coming out next week about Zoom fatigue. They interviewed me and other people and so be sure to check out the blogs. Like Aretha said, there's a lot of great, great stuff out there. Yeah, Susan, I called you. Did you, you didn't get my message? See, I'm putting you on the spot. I'm terrible about listening to messages. Did you leave me a message? Yeah, I did. We'll have you come back because we all need you. Okay, we'll have you come back just for the EDs, okay? I apologize. Okay, all right. Chilini, is that right? I know I'm saying it wrong. Oh, no, it's fine. Everyone called me Chilini in school growing up. It's no problem. I just had a quick address for the burnout. Burnout is hard. I've worked sometimes 80 to 100 hours in a week when you're starting out and you are the only staff or you have only one admin, it's hard. So when I reached my point of just everything falling apart, my dad gave me some advice that I took because he had a tough job too. And he said, one is to always make time for family because it's good to have something else to focus on. So as we manage our time for everything we have to do for our work, but kind of budget that time you have for family, whether you have married with kids or whether it's your cousins or your parents or somebody, family and friends, just make that time because you need that time to de-stress. And he used a lot of hobbies. And so he had tons of hobbies and he said that helped him a lot. And when you're a female and a mom, you don't have time for hobbies. So I use, sometimes I use my housework as my de-stressor but you just have to find what works for you because something is different for everybody. And so it's hard to say what's working for you but you have to figure out what it is and you have to prioritize that because you have to be able to de-stress in order to be who you want to be when you're leaving. Awesome, thank you, Jim. I'm gonna take you last. I'm gonna give you 60 seconds and we're gonna close out. Thank you so much. Well, I'll tell you what, it's hard to follow up after both of those because I was gonna address that as well. And Susan said a lot of the things that I was gonna address, but I think where a lot of us can relate to this. I mean, this is one of the big things in the nonprofit world right now and we're losing great people because of it. But there's a couple of things that I've done to try to help with my own situation. Number one is I set up with a number of other nonprofit leaders where I have a listen and learn session with other leaders in our area where it's just an opportunity to just kind of vent. And you're a sounding board and you can listen to what they're going through. And I think sometimes when you know other people are dealing with the same types of issues that you have, it may be on different levels. It kind of helps that a little bit. The other thing that I would say is, exercise your mind and your body. I have found through this that for me exercise, just getting out walking, biking, getting outside and just enjoying fresh air is, I know it's kind of simple. It might be kind of tripe, but it works for me because you just need that to refresh and reinvigorate yourself during these difficult times. Wow, that was a good closer. That was a good closer because you said a lot of things. I'm so glad that you all came today and you found this helpful. I see a lot of people putting things in the chat room. Everybody's in a different place. So what may seem simple to you, maybe harder to someone else. We're all in different areas. And so you've kind of been that sounding board as Jim said, just come and data dump and say what you want to say, free open space. You've kind of been that space for everybody else today. So thank you all for coming. Guess what? You all are our alumni community for the ED chat. So thank you. Give yourselves a hand if you are here. Yes, yes. Thank you for coming today. Please sign up for the next ED chat is on the link, events slash TechSoup.org. We're gonna do a SWAT analysis. We're gonna do a SWAT challenge and you're gonna learn a lot more from people. You're gonna hear from EDs about their strength, their weaknesses, some opportunities that they've missed and then some things that could threaten their organization if they don't get it right. So you wanna be at that one. So make sure you sign up. It's gonna be on a different platform. And there's a link that we put in the chat room for our survey. We would love to hear more about some of the ideas and topics you would like to hear. This is recorded. So it will be available within 48 hours right on the events website under ED chat and it'll also be on our YouTube channel. Thank you all so much for being here today. I don't know what time it is where you are but continue to take care of yourself today. Have your water, drink your water, take care of your families, take care of yourself and come back for the next one you guys. Have a great day. Bye bye. Bye, thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye, have a good day. You too. Bye bye. God bless you all and stay strong. Thank you, YouTube has a Jerry. You're never alone. Thank you. Amen.