 Of course, welcome to all of you who have joined us live today, or maybe you're watching the recording, but we like to start every episode of the nonprofit show extending our sincerest and deepest gratitude to our presenting sponsors. You can see their logos right in front of you, and I really like to say that, you know, these presenting sponsors, many have been with us now for an entire year so many came to us right in the beginning of the pandemic. When we decided to show up and be of service and conversation to you. But they're really here to support you and your missions and your causes across the globe so check them out, give them a like and share some love to them they will be most appreciative. And of course Julie I'm so appreciative that you came up with this kooky idea. I'm the CEO of the American nonprofit Academy, and I'm Jared ransom, also known as the nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven group. And today's guests we've already had such a lovely conversation with her offline so I'm really thrilled to announce and share AJ Steinberg joins us today. I'm also known as the queen be a fundraising welcome to you AJ and thanks so much for saying yes to being a guest on our show. Thank you so much for inviting me to join you it's been fun already. Good. Well you're, you know, you have me one of the toughest topics. We want to get your ideas, and that is volunteer committee engagement. It's like a mindblower and unfortunately we only have a 30 minute show we would need like a 30 year show to get all of your knowledge. Well you know what this is going to be the highlights and it's enough to get people really thinking, and really maybe changing some of the habits that they have when they're interacting and choosing their volunteer committees. It's a loaded it's a loaded pistol I don't like to even use that metaphor anymore it will just say it's a hot match in a tender dry thing you're dealing with people who are donors, huge supporters who want your organization to succeed. And if you do a bad job of shepherding them through the volunteer committee experience, you're going to lose them. I mean, that's an asset you can't afford to lose. And so many ways right. Oh, yeah, and they can also be you know they can be your best PR mouthpiece, or they could be your worst PR nightmare. Yes, that experience. Right, I remember the old adage which is still true I believe that when you have a good experience you maybe tell one or two people. When you have a bad experience you tell 15 or 10 right like I forget kind of how the numbers go but I think we are more. Mm, I don't know. We have more passion to tell a negative story, unfortunately, or negative experience, most are really positive one. And that is key because very rarely does somebody sit on a committee and feel inspired. And that's the problem is that passion you feel when you're angry, and you feel that you have been dismissed. It's a lot bigger than just sitting there being bored during a committee meeting. Right, right. So smart, and that is absolutely. I think you're. Yeah, that's crazy right. So let's start kind of from the beginning and, and talking about building that volunteer committee. Right. Well, it makes me laugh when people talk to me and say well you're the queen bee of fundraising. I have to tell you I am not the queen bee. That is not why my company is called queen bee fundraising my company is called queen bee fundraising because I look at your event committee or any committee as a beehive. So beehive can exist without the queen bee. And the queen bee is the influencer the people who bring the worker bees to the hive, the people who have the strong driving personality to keep everybody else inspired. Hence the queen bee of queen bee fundraising is all those committee chairs who are out there. And I would say that if you have a hive there's always queen bees worker bees and then there's drone bees queen bees are there to influence and bring the worker bees and inspire the worker bees are there to pick up the workload. And drone bees don't do anything but pollinate. So you know who the drone bees are your board members. Okay, because we know they don't do the hard work. Usually, I mean when you have a committee and there's a lot of work to be done. They'll go uh huh uh huh uh huh but very rarely will they pick up the slack and move forward so the queen bee is the chairs and I say chairs because I always believe that any committee is better with two chairs. I was going to say so you know I've seen trending really a coach, you know a co leadership, and I wondered I was going to ask are there more than one bee and queen bee right can you have a co queen bee. Yes, and it can be male, but interestingly enough, unless it's a board or board related committee, I find that most volunteer committees are headed by women. I think that's part of the volunteerism that we have ingrained in us. The reason that I like to always have two queen bees is first of all it's more fun to have somebody to knock your head around with and come up with ideas. It's less scary than having all the responsibility on your shoulders. I like to have one queen bee whose last year's queen bee, and then bring a new one on her continuity, and we're not reinventing the wheel every time which is one of the big mistakes that nonprofits make continuity and transition right by kind of an ease of transition and a sharing of of institutional wealth and knowledge. And real wealth, because I look at everybody who sits on a committee, every single person is an asset, and they bring more assets to the table so you're saying well that's kind of monetizing people in a real weird way but it's not because every single person who comes to a committee brings connections, potential ticket sales if it's a gala, resources in terms of donated items and potentially they'll be moving up in the, in the silo for stewardship. Queen bees are the ones who bring their friends in to sit on the committees. And that's why having two queen bees doubles your assets that you're going to be having within any committee. Absolutely. And that's important. I love that you said that because I always, you know, you look around and you're like, is this making twice as much work when you have two decision makers in the for profit world. And, you know, we, we don't really hear a lot about co chairmans or co CEOs mean it seems like it creates more problems and it's worth but in this situation, I think you're right and maybe it is because it is more female, you know, lead. It's an interesting thing. In the real world you have professionals who have been hired to sit and to perform a task. I always, when I'm teaching my workshops I always say never forget that these are completely untrained professionals. They know neither event planning, if it's an event committee or they have no idea about fundraising best practices. Are you really going to give them the reins to all the decision making. My suggestion is no, if you have a kindergarten class you're not going to let the kids decide what the syllabus is for the whole day because it would be basically snacks and nap time or whatever. Or give them permanent markers. Why would you do that to your committee would be writing all over your face and on the wall. It's very important to remember that it's a team. And that is the one thing I have seen so many committees fall apart the worst committee ever sat on was the over management committee where the committee members come in they sit there. And the executive director didn't let them give an opinion she just told them what had been done the past month. The best committees that I work with our love fest and I'm not kidding they're strangers when they start out. It is a high fiving chest bumping. Can you believe we did this kind of an experience. And that's where the inspiration comes, but we don't just let that come from the two committee chairs. The, the executive director and I always know where we want everything to end up pretty much it doesn't mean that we don't have different past there, but we need to be good at guiding committees, and giving them objectives. I always say this is three things, the three little words that committees want to hear those three little words you want to hear our organization, communication, and appreciation because you cannot lead a committee without first being super organized. That means you know where you want to go, you know how much you want to accomplish, and you know which of those committee members that we really want to pump up because this is a stewardship opportunity. And because if you can communicate what you just did in the organization phase, you just blew it, you lost all the momentum and the opportunity and appreciation because we can't do it without these volunteer committees. Now, I want to ask an elephant in the room question right. Yeah, it's a big one is a whopper. Um, how do we find these amazing queen bees like how the where where are they you know where is their hive and how might we engage with them because you know we talk about the nonprofit sector and there's 1.8 million nonprofits in the US. There are so many amazing leaders looking for amazing queen bees right and so where are they and are there enough to go around. There are enough to go around if you treat them right and don't scoot them away to somebody else's hive. Yeah, so part of this is cultivating relationships. When you start out and you have no queen bees you say we just don't have any chairs nobody wants to step up what you need to do is start a relationship with somebody who is a supporter a strong supporter who has leadership qualities and to be a little bit mercenary who has contacts and assets that they can bring to your committee. And then you need to massage some egos. I'm a big believer that queen bees are divas. And that's okay. We need divas because divas are those influencers. We need to let them know. I always say this, everybody thinks that you are an amazing candidate to be the chair for this. Because when they hear the words everybody thinks you're amazing. It's hard to sidle out of that I've had this this used on me and I'm like, oh no I'm stuck with somebody said that I'd be amazing. So you fix your crown and then you say, okay, yeah, which I should. Oh, because I am the worker bee, I am the worker bee, but the queen bees are there so what you want to do is you need to be genuine, you need to relationship build. Find the person that actually is an influencer with assets to bring once you bring the first queen beyond because you look and see who has worked on committees before, who is a donor, who's a board members wife, I know that sounds sexist and I, it could be a board members husband in this day and age but in the real world nonprofits and people can yell at me all they want I just find that in these committees there's a lot of women who really get things done and that's a powerful thing for women this is not a negative thing it used to be the ladies who lunch way back in the 60s 70s 80s 90s before really powerful working women, it was the Gulf and tennis set. They had the time. I believe I belong to a guild. That's one of the biggest money makers for Children's Hospital Los Angeles. They make millions of dollars for this. It's all used to be really wealthy wives. And then they started bringing people like me on who actually worked and have skill sets. And now it's a real this incredibly strong machine because they brought on everything but I diverse sorry. So basically you find your queen bee and once you have the queen beyond. So you know what it's, we'd really love to have a second kind of wingman for you. Who do you feel would be an excellent co chair for you who would really be fun for you to work with and really add to this and let them choose the second in command. So that's interesting that you, you say, let them choose. I think that's really, really wise and I suspect that most nonprofits that are putting together volunteer groups. They don't, they don't ask they kind of assume. Okay, these are going to be the two people we want to work together. And it's not very much fun if you don't get to work with somebody that you really mesh with. And that's when there's dissension anytime that you have a well oiled machine of a team of a team for your committee. That's when you really have enthusiasm and the passion is we were talking about which makes a difference for people will ask their friends to come and they will ask for people to make donations. Because they're enthused when two people don't agree, then there's dissension in the ranks and then there's kind of some small talks and then the teams break up into little clicks. And that's a miserable situation to have to work into especially for the nonprofit professional who's leading it who's supposed to be the leader if you're a good leader you're not going to let that happen but so there's a big difference. And remember the beekeeper is the nonprofit professional who is there with guiding the committee. So as part and parcel to that then let's ask you how you can keep your volunteers on track because it's so easy to say, Okay, we're going to have our annual luncheon. Go get them tiger and then before you know it they turned it into like a 50s soccer theme. Okay, so those terrible ideas like the 50s soccer things. Okay, this is going to be awesome because I use this not only for my committees. I use it for my husband and my kids and, and anybody else. So when you have terrible ideas and being thrown out and everybody else is starting to nod their head like oh 50s soccer for 50th gala. Oh, such a great idea and you're thinking, Oh, God, no, oh God, no please that's a terrible idea. My strategy is praise delay, distract. My strategy is let's use a soccer thing you know this is going to be a black tie gala you know you need to raise $500,000. And these are older people, and they want to do a sock up and suddenly people are starting to look interested in the sock up as the beekeeper. I'm the third person sitting there. I will use start by praising always acknowledge the idea. I think that's a stupid idea because you're going to disenfranchise that important person. So you praise it by saying, That's a unique idea. That's an interesting idea, never say it's a good idea, but acknowledge that they've been heard, and then delay, take the decision out of the room and say, I'm not sure that that kind of a theme would pass our board, or the executive director has very strict limits on what themes we can do. Let me take this to them, and I'll get back to you if that's even a viable idea. So you've praised it so they don't feel you're just dissing them. You're just delaying it because you don't look like the bad guy and make them feel mad in the middle of the meeting and then distract them by saying, In the meantime, we do have this other theme that we were talking about before. So you can use that with your kids and your husband praise whatever they've just done, or if they want to do something stupid delay it and say well I can't make that decision now and then distract them and say, Oh look a squirrel, and they'll be fine. I love this this is taking the whole, I'll take that into consideration at a whole new level. Because what we want to do is, everybody should feel heard. And in fact that's usually the reason when, like I said, we could talk about this for 17 hours but when you have disgruntled members, what you should be doing is calling them up and either pick up the phone, and you should say, Listen, I know that there's something bothering you. Why don't we talk about this and find a way to make this into something that works for you. Julia is so good at that. She is she will pick up the phone and say let's let's talk. Yeah, yeah. So you can pick up and pick up the phone you didn't have anything but phones back then. Yes. You know, it's so interesting because we had a j a question I think it was on last Friday show to the famous bathroom episode. But it was about refund refunding a donation. Was it last week or maybe the week before but I forget but it was a it was an upset donor that asked for their money back. Or even was so upset. The question was, should we give them their money back, you know, and let them, you know that phrase bless and release let them go on and do something else. And the concept was, I felt that the basic structure was, you're not communicating, and you started off this episode with communication is the number two piece of this. I love, you know, wrapping that back around saying yeah, these are egos, they're not being paid. Right, they got a lot of other things going on in their world. And so you better communicate and figure out, you know, not everybody has to agree but you have to be, you have to feel worthy I guess. And it's really shocking how many people if you take the time to ask them what's wrong. What happened. Aren't mad at like you said bless and release for them, it's talking release. It's, I've said it and now I'm actually saying it out loud. It sounds stupid and I'm going to move on through it. Yeah, we're through it. Now I'm really interested in this question because I don't think I know we wouldn't have asked you this question a year ago. The question is, how do these volunteer groups. How are they working together when they're still work from home, or they're, they're hesitant to meet, you know, IRL in real life because they maybe they haven't been vaccinated or whatever. How is this now working. I think it worked easier in 2020 because we had no choice. That's the really interesting thing when you have no choice. Everybody is in the same boat. We're all empathetic. We see the cats when I'm at home, the cats walking in front of my screen or the dog is and there's kids pulling at you so we're empathetic to that. I think now we're going to have a tougher time with it because I think our tolerance level for those who don't want to meet IRL maybe less, but some people actually love zoom now because they can save the hour drive time to and from whatever meeting in real life. This is going to be tricky and I'm not sure that there is a really cut and dried answer to this. It's something that we're all navigating. But my comment has been because I've been talking to people about different ways to do this. I'm in a group called Toastmasters if you know what that is, it's a speaking group. And the older members can't wait to get back to real life and the younger members are like, well, this is really convenient for me. So we're trying to even navigate. Yeah, right. It's exactly I get it both ways. It feels good. I'm in my office today. It feels good to go and actually get dressed up and do it, but there is something wonderful about doing the laundry while you're doing a podcast. You know, but he's discounting that. But I think what the people need to be sensitive to is the demographics of your committee. If you have a millennial committee, most likely you. And so one of the things that we really did come up with was moving back and forth between in real life and digital. So to do that, we would say, we're going to do every other meeting digitally and every other meeting in real life that way everybody felt at this point that they were being accommodated. Sure. Well, that is such a wise observation, looking at the demographics because I hear this a lot in committee work with with predominantly older women who complain that they haven't been able to find that next generation to pick up the slide. But when you look at what they're doing, they're not really cultivating that. Oh, man, you know what the thing is, if they look in the past 10 years, they've had the next generation sitting on their committees, but they discounted them and they never came back to the second year. Yeah. And I'm talking all the time, just in general, to my clients. You're giving the same event to the same age demographic who is going to pass on within the next so many years. And if you haven't engaged their heirs in a meaningful way that money will go away when they inherit it. Planning for estate planning but that's a whole other. That's another episode. Yes, it's, it's, but we all see it there's some we're all tied in if you look at committees separate than donor management stewardship communications, you're missing the boat, every single one of our silos are not silos they are all intertwined and should complement each other and talk to each other that way. In our last few moments then I'm going to ask you to get out your crystal ball. If that is the case that we're not moving forward to engage that next generation for all these things that you've talked about. Are we going to then see a reduction of events and fundraising events, because we don't have the, the, the labor or those teams, moving forward events. I think that what's going to have to happen there'll be some pain from a lot of organizations who have not been flexible. If you're a smart organization and I am the prophet of saying this and my crystal ball is that you need to start separate events. You need to have a younger committee, have their own signature event, let them choose it let them hone it let them own it. So as we phase out the gala. It may be a concert it may be something else. But what you need to do is segregate them because I adore my 80 year old women on the blank blank symphony that is my client. But they will never accept a 40 year old beautiful energetic woman who wants to take on the world. I'm sorry that's just not going to happen in that group. That's it. Yeah, you know, we're fascinating. I totally drank that cooling. Absolutely and I've lived it you know I lived it as the youngest board member on, you know an opera company and I remember my first, like three trustee meetings. And then members of the board asked me who I had brought. And at first I was like I didn't understand it, you know, and then I realized because of my age, they thought I was like the driver, or the assistant, or the caretaker of the board. I'm having a relationship built with you to start using the overall need for somebody to bring in the next generation. See, and I'm going to go a little deeper and this is completely off script which actually all of our shows are completely off script but I love I am that 40 something year old 42 I don't mind sharing that has a 10 year old son and one of my big things about soap boxes and platforms is how do we demonstrate and model philanthropy and civic engagement to our children. So I would much rather prefer, you know, attending something that's not the rubber chicken circuit, you know, it is a hands on hand for my family. So then I am modeling philanthropy, I'm engaging my child in the act of philanthropy, and then planting those seeds so that in my case he then when he grows older and has the opportunity. And talent or treasure whichever of those three that he you know it is able to give. I love those experiences like that that those are the events that I really am passionate about being a part of, as well as attending so I think there's an audience and there's an event and there's a venue that meets all of our demographics. We just really have to be attuned to what, what is it, and what is it that our constituents, what do they want. Well, I'd like to take that one. I think that there are should be three events at each throughout the year. One should be the high net worth event which is the gala. The next should be a low opt in for the people who are a comedy night or want to be involved, but not at a high thing but but you want them to know about you and get an affinity for you. And the last should be a free family event to get you and your 10 year old son over there doing it and that's those three if you can do those three you're going to be okay down the line. That was steward right steward and cultivate all three of those audiences 45 hours more to talk to you about. You have volunteers no different than a high net worth donor they're giving you in their time every bit as much as somebody just gave you $10,000. Absolutely please do come back on AJ and talk to us about that we can give you 45 more hours but we can give you another 30 minutes. Okay, I appreciate I'd love it. Well you've been great I mean I love. I love so much of what you said I love that you've articulated some things that were like kind of percolating in my brain and so this is great. Here's AJ's information. She's got a really great website so you need to check it out, because I think if you would join this for the 2D chat chat AJ spent some time on the social side of the internet and gathering business if you will from our methods and weddings to transitioning to you know the nonprofit sector so it's really a cool background that you have and I think that's probably why you are so incredibly wise AJ it's been fun fun fun, having you with us again I'm Julia Patrick CEO of the American nonprofit Academy. I've been joined by the nonprofit nerd herself Jared ransom. So we want to make sure that you know we've launched a book club on the American nonprofit Academy website. It's really our opportunity to curate a bunch of books that we think can really help our sector. So a lot of these authors have been guests on the nonprofit show which is super cool. And so we'll keep adding to that, but we're seeing more and more nonprofit C suites and groups want to have some sort of unified dialogue around the book. So we thought this might be a great thing to get started so check us out there. Again to our sponsors we are so grateful that you are with us. We want to acknowledge blue meringue portable mission Matt fundraising Academy staffing boutique windspire moves management nonprofit HR. And of course, the American nonprofit Academy and the nonprofit nerd herself. We are so delighted that that you would be with us today. Well, Jared another great way to start the week. Good. It's Monday, fabulous guest. I know I'm going to do some more research on your website to find some wonderful. I want to call nuggets but it's got to be like drops of honey or something is what I should call. The metaphor goes on. Yes, it goes on and on and on we will definitely get you back on the show to talk about so many other things AJ thank you for joining us today. And thanks for all of you for joining us. We always like to end the show by saying please stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Have a great day everyone.