 Let's get going. We've got an exciting show here for you today. And we have a lot to talk about. I suspect, Gabby, that you're gonna be back on with us because I can't imagine that we can get through everything. We're gonna be talking to Gabby Van Alstein who comes to us from Boardable. So we're really excited to get her take on how we can take care of our remote staff. Really a big issue. Gabby, you're coming to us from, where did you say? I'm in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Okay. And boardables based in Indianapolis, right? Correct. Yep, correct. So you can talk about these. Yeah. I love it. I love it. Well, before we dig into today's topic, I wanna thank all of our sponsors. Without you, we would not be here having this amazing discussion as we've done for now more than 300 episodes. So we want to extend our gratitude and make sure that all of our viewers know who is behind this amazing machine called The Nonprofit Show. I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. You're probably wondering where Jared, my sidekick, is. She's gonna be out for the rest of the week newsflash on vacation, which is like an amazing thing. We're very excited about her. Interestingly enough, she bought a travel package from one of our earlier sponsors, Winspire. And so, you know how we're always talking about auction items and travel packages. So when she comes back, we'll get to hear about what her experience was, which was kind of fun. Okay, Gabby, talk to us about your role within the boardable community and company. Yeah, sure. I'd be happy to. So hi, everyone. I am director of talent and culture at Boardable. And so this is a, it's a wonderful role. It's really a dream opportunity. And what I am responsible for, first all of the major human resource functions and at Boardable, we're growing so quickly and doing so many amazing things that a lot of that includes hiring. Also responsible for things like talent development, responsible for the intentionality and many cultural initiatives. So recently we just celebrated our biggest product launch. So in charge of making that an inclusive, remote event that was fun and engaging, responsible for things like recognition programs, as well as organizational structure, coaching of managers or partnering with managers on supporting their employees through concerns, performance reviews, the entire gamut. So really it's human resources with an emphasis on culture and people development, people care. So we have had Jeb Banner, your CEO and co-founder of Boardable on. I think we had him on maybe the first month we started. And I had heard I'm like super into board liaison functions and board management. It's like one of my big buttons. And I had heard about him. We were introduced and we became his groupies because we just saw so many pieces of the pie in the nonprofit sector really being impacted by the board management aspect. And so we were just so intrigued. But my question to you was was your organization already doing a lot of work remotely before the pandemic or did this just like amplify a trajectory for you? Yes, that's a great question. So surprisingly, not a significant amount of remote work. We've always been flexible and we care people so someone needed a work from home day or something like that. We were fine with it, but really with the pandemic, I mean, it completely changed the way in which we work and we were hiring so fast. We needed to grow so fast. And as we started to venture out into that talent market realize, hey, we've got to think about expanding this. And then even my hire was a statement. This is the way in which we're going. And for someone to help design and enrich that hybrid or remote experience to have a talent director that's not in the office, right, would be a good thing. And so right now we have employees in 15 different states and three employees in Canada. So out of our 48. So pretty significant, yet remote experience for a relatively small business. Yeah, and a business that is, I would say new and innovative on their product line. I mean, you're doing a lot of new and different things. So this is a big part of that. How do you all define the remote part of this? I mean, is it the sort of thing where folks are required to come in at a certain period of time or once a quarter or how are you navigating this? Yeah, yeah, well, that's great. So one of the things I love about boardable and you met Jeb and we aren't overly prescriptive, which is really, that's our culture. So we're very much about inclusivity and acceptance of where you are. And so remote would be anyone that doesn't work within close proximity to our office, which is located in Broadriple, right? So that's how we define it. And then as far as expectations, we have the Broadriple office and it's there if you would like to use it, but there's no expectations on making it to the office a certain amount of time, certain number of times per week. But what we are doing and we are intentional about, and we'll talk about when we get there, Julia, but being intentional about that culture as we grow and as we hire more people remotely. So what we're doing is, we're creating an annual event or we'll get everyone together at the office. And that attendance is expected for that as long as it's humanly possible. So that'll be a week for the team to get together. And then we're going to encourage and fund departmental get-togethers throughout the year. So however often that is, we're still working that out, but at least twice a year, we'd like teams so the marketing team can get together and they can choose if, because if they have an employee in Indianapolis and one in Maryland, well, hey, you know, Ohio might be a better place to meet than Indianapolis. And so that's kind of how we're working about it. So thinking about an emphasis on these in-person meetings and then every Friday, we have an all team meeting that's virtual. So you're always able to, so you need to have a good cadence, right? And that's what we're trying to do of the totally remote friendly things and then ways for the team to get together in person that's not asking too much in terms of travel and things like that. I love that. I think it's really important to know, especially with a company like yours that is innovative, it's in a space that has never really been served before. And so the innovation and communication of all the things you're doing, the accounting department can learn from marketing, can learn from programming. I mean, I can see where you do need that linkage if you will to the other departments. And so this is kind of dovetails to my next question, Gabby, and that is how in the heck do you communicate culture with a remote staff? I mean, that's huge. Yes, yes. And yeah, so I have a lot here and I'm always happy to engage in additional discussion about this, but so very important. So kind of for the purpose of today's chat, I view it as different sectors, right? So one, you have the candidate experience. So communication culture with remote staff needs to start communicating culture with remote candidates. And so we need to think about that like before they're even onboarded, they need to understand like, hey, this is kind of how we live out our core values. This is what we expect of you. And so we have an initial call where every candidate meets with a member of the talent and culture team first. And we'll discuss, we kind of understand where they're located. We'll discuss expectations, especially if they're in a different time zone, regarding time there. We'll share the story of portable, right? And so that we can ensure those individuals are aligned and excited about our growth and the problems that we solve. And then we also do a few things to ensure that they get an understanding of our culture. So, I will always invite that interview, that candidate to download a free trial of portable and then reach out to us with questions about the product. I invite them to, and I share like, as you're researching, as you're looking over after this call, I want you to email me anytime with any questions you have about that. And then we just really, we'll have team members throughout the interview process meet with them. And our team members are kind of trained to ask them at every step of the way, what questions you have about portable from my perspective, which I'll be a peer to you in this role, what questions you have about portable from my perspective, which I'm an HR person. So we think all of this gives a little bit of insight, right, into our culture and how we treat each other. So that's the candidate experience. And then once we make a hire, that's when the cultural communication really starts. And so we do a few things we have, we create, we hire in cohorts. So we really, yes, we really like new hire. So if we're hiring three roles, we like them to try to start on the same week if at all possible. Yeah, so it's a new idea. And what happens is they already start building relationships with each other. Right, okay. And then they go through, we have a two week onboarding program. It's not two full weeks, but during the first two weeks, they meet every director from every department. They get a product support, a product demo, they get a tour, they understand how our sales process works. So they get this 360 tour of our company and they get to meet with individuals throughout our company that do these awesome functions and these awesome things. So they ask questions, they start building relationships in that, during those first two weeks. We also give them a project to do in the first two weeks. So they have to give a product demo, affordable. So we understand that they're understanding the product, right? And that they're excited about it. Let me back up also in that we send a plan with all this communication to them about three days before they start as well. And so they see about our culture, they have links to our org chart. They have links, we created an employee wiki and it has resources on there for new hires. There's a page, there's a page of resources for DEI things. There's all these different pages on there. So they have access to all this insider information and it can help start to ease their anxiety about starting a new role and it helps them understand put faces with names. So we're starting on that relationship building within their first week or even before. And then another thing that we do is we use Slack pretty heavily for the ongoing like communication during the day. So we introduce them, we even have a one pager doc for like fun Slack channels that we recommend you joining. So we have a dogs versus cats. We have album of the week because we're a very music oriented culture. We do those things. Every new hire gets a call, a 30 minute call with our CEO Jeb within the first, yeah, within the first month. They also have like a private session with them about culture that they get a call with Jeb. And then one of the things I love is we use the Slack bot called Donut. And when you're hired, we add you to Donut and every three weeks it randomly pairs you with another boardster, boardable employee and you have a coffee meeting with them for 30 minutes sometime. And it's up to you too to schedule it. It just pairs you. That's all the bot does. But it's been great for getting, you know, like someone that never would have talked their roles never crossed. Yep, it's fantastic. And then we put new hires. We put their picture up on the Friday meeting and we announced them and we talked to them. We have a shout out Slack channel where we recognize them. So we get them involved there. And then we also have a Slack channel for these cohorts. So they can ask questions of the talent and culture team of each other anytime throughout their onboarding experience. So a lot of that integration into our culture starts right within that first month or so of being on the team. And then, oh yeah. So, okay, my first thought is this is a hell of a lot of work. I'd love to know how long your employees are staying with you. And then I'm also struck by the notion and this may seem like pretty much of a duh comment but you had to define all these things before you could communicate them, right? Yes, yes. You know, that's a heavy lift for a lot of nonprofits. Well, for a lot of organizations. Yes, and I want to share to you if anyone would care to connect with me like I'm always happy to share tools. So I can share a copy of a Google doc and then you can take that. I have a doc that I actually took from I worked in SAS before this. And so we had worked on defining just some general expectations, right? About remote culture. So like, we expect you to be on the calls on Friday if you can, if you're not on PTO, if something's not happening. We expect generally you to work out with your supervisor what time you're gonna be online every day and communicate if you're gonna be out. We expect you to mark on the PTO calendar if you're gonna be out that day and put in a way message. So these general expectations, like we define those, we have a doc, we have this wiki that's like just a Google site page that I built that is just like it retains all these things and we keep adding more references there, right? We even created like because we're big on inclusion, right? So we created a dictionary like a glossary for SAS. So people know when we use acronyms what we're talking about and common terms. So it was, and we'll put things up and I'll put sometimes whip work in progress, right? Like so I'm still working on that new higher FAQ, right? Like so, and we're pretty vulnerable, we're pretty transparent, so they know that and our team will be like, hey, I have a great suggestion. Another idea to save some work is to open source. So I started our SAS glossary and I was like, I slacked it out and I asked, hey, please add whatever you think I'm missing, right? And so then you just have to, and people love to collaborate on things like that in the five or 10 minute break they have in between the meeting, I'm gonna add MRR because I didn't know what that meant or whatever. So it's been fun, yeah. You know, my one thought I have is and then I have so many more questions, but one thought I have is that in some ways the pandemic has forced you forward on these issues. I mean, not only just the structure of working from home, working remotely, however you want to phrase that, but just the actual trying to figure out how to present your information and how to manage it. Yeah. It's pretty innovative. Yes, and we're to find it too. That's a big thing too, right? And we're a product companies are always thinking about how do we make this easy for customers to find? You almost have to take that mindset. If you're HR or any kind of leader, how do I, where do I put things so that my team can find it easily? You know, when we have these docs and when you're working remotely, especially with employees in different time zones, you need to have references there for them, right? Because you can't communicate everything in person and in real time like you used to. So asynchronous is really important. A tool that I recommend and love is there's something called Lume and it's free for a general membership and you can record up to five minute videos. And so if you have an important message for your team and you know that you're someone in the Pacific time zone, you want to get it out before you know, you're done for the day or whatever, do a little five minute Lume video and send it. You know, we haven't done too much with this but I'm playing around with the idea of like introductions like record a Lume video of yourself because there is so much importance and this is just a minor point too but back to like the communicating culture. For new hires, we'll put together some things like, you know, we'd love for you to customize your Slack and your email with your picture. Like because that helps forge those relationships and helps us feel closer as a culture and also on your Slack, you can put a profile, put your phone number on there please so that, you know, someone needs to contact you. So I think that's really, I think like thinking about it from like, okay, here's a mixture of communication. How do we get the right balance between phone, Zoom, Slack, email, in person, right? Like you need to think about all of these, all of these dynamics coming together and the balance that you as a company feel is right and then how you encourage that and model the way really, you know what I mean? So as a jar, we're leaning into hybrid. I needed to get this Wiki site up for resources for all these people. And a lot of new hires are like, this was so helpful. And it's there for employees too, but it's like, hey, who remembers how to log into the 401k? No one ever does, right? So it's right there for you if you need it anytime, day or night. So it's almost a little bit self-service, but then you need to be intentional about adding in the human element. So even I'll have after a month of new hired class, I have a 30-minute convo with all the new hires. And I say, hey, we're learning, we're growing. What went well? Where can we support you better during your onboarding? What surprised you about boardable and asking those questions to help guide you in those cultural communications? So what surprised you? And then, you know, if there's something that's surprising that's important, I need to look back and say, how do I integrate that into the onboarding or into the candidate experience? Like what was that an indication of? It could really change, I would say, it almost could head off potential problems with future staff additions. Let's talk about something else that we were kind of digging into in the Chitty Chat Chat. If you signed on a little early today, how do you recognize issues and then take action with your staff when they are working remotely? I mean, when you ask the question around the water cooler, how you doing, that you get one response, but when you're working digitally, you probably get another. And so how does that look? Yes, and that's a, this is a great topic. And so, and this kind of is like the third. So I was talking about those chunks with communicating culture. So you have the candidate experience, the onboarding, and then the third chunk, right, would be your current employees and how that employee experience looks for them. And so one thing that I really think is important is occasional one-on-ones. And so whether it's, I do some and I can't get around to everyone. When I came on board, I met with every single person, right? But during a quarter, I'll challenge myself to do at least four one-on-ones which is random and I keep track, but employees that are just selected, just to say, hey, what's working, what's not, dig into cultural questions. How can I support you? How can I, you know, what can I, what questions can I answer for you? To the coolest thing and not a lot of CEOs do this, but our CEO has these random right one-on-ones with individuals too. And then from those issues will arise. And I think it's important for your talent partner to have a really strong relationship with executive leadership and directors. So as I'm hearing things, as I'm meeting with individuals, right? You know, I never break trust or, you know, but if there's something that I can surface or if there's themes I'm finding, we need to bring that in. So talk about those issues and trends. Another thing we do is we survey our team weekly and do a weekly pulse. So like an NPS. So on a scale of one to 10, how happy are you this week, right? And so we monitor that trend over time and then we usually have a question and it's an open-ended question. I change it every week. So like, you know, we've done fun ones, like please upload one GIF on how you're feeling this week. And it's a little, you know, animated picture, but we've also done ones like, you know, hey, you know, what's your biggest frustration right now? And things like that. And so, you know, those kind of informal and anonymous things are really helpful. The one-on-ones are super helpful. And then I'd keep a pulse on presenteeism. So when you're in a remote, like we have these one-on-one week or we have these all-company meetings every Friday, well, we do take attendance because if we notice, hey, so-and-so hasn't been on three calls in a row, you know, we need to engage that supervisor to reach out to that person and figure out what's going on if there's something like that. So I do encourage, you know, keeping a pulse on things and not tracking every single thing, but most definitely tracking like the important things where, you know, that's expected. And then another thing, and we were digging into this on the Chit Chat too, but, you know, as we've all transitioned to this remote environment, so communication, it's just like, there's a scale of communication, right? From the least to the most rich medium. And in-person is the most rich because you have those immediate, you can read facial cues, you can read body language, you know, you see each other. And then, you know, the least is, you know, what would it be, maybe a text is probably, or email, letter, those are really low. So, you know, and it's based on the immediacy of feedback, the interaction or whatever. So it's a little less hard, like video is almost as good as in-person, but there's delays, it gets a little awkward, things like that. So what we need to do is we really need to have and instill empathy throughout our workforce. And so empathy and, you know, and how our leaders show up and we're big on that. So we have a lot of discussions. I do, like I share like a leadership tip of the week and a Slack channel and a lot of them are about empathy or feedback or whatever. You know, I envision a future where we have some kind of discussion or a group working session where we talk about like, hey, here's how to read, you know, facial expressions. Here's how to dig into things. And then performance issues. I think we need to think about the context of what's happening to that employee behind the scenes even more than we ever have. And whenever I'm working with a manager, I'm always like, hey, is anything going on in their personal life that they will share with you? Well, you know, what is the reason for this? Because the pandemic has added so much stress and so much difficulty. And so I think empathy is huge in recognizing those issues. And then I think just, you know, promoting transparency, vulnerability and communications and candor as a culture. And so Jab will talk about that sometimes. We had a guest speaker talk about that just recently, Max from Lessonly talked about being vulnerable with your team. And one-on-ones are so important with your team. And so even just asking them, hey, how are you showing up this week? You know, what color are you this week? Are you, you know, red, yellow or green? And why? And opening up those conversations and sharing like, I'm having a rough week because, you know, this and that and the others happening and my kids are homesick. And, you know, it's the mix in between encouraging that. So we've all been thrown into this environment where our dogs or kids are jumping into the screen. We don't have makeup on all the time. Work and life have collided and there's no getting around it. So you need to embrace it and care about that person as a person and worry about the professional aspect as a leader. So I think empathy, listening, those are super important things. Okay, well, you've blown my mind on so many things. I swear to God, I like, I love Bloomerang as a product. God, Bloomerang. I love it. That's important. Affordable. I love, affordable is a product because like as I mentioned, board management and all that is just like a huge topic for me. But, you know, I know the product and not the team behind it as much and having spoken with you for this limited time really gets me excited about why and how you're marching forward because you've really, and again, I don't know where you were before the pandemic, but it seems to me like maybe you were in the right spot or you were really nimble and you were able to just embrace all of these things that could make the board experience and board management stronger. But when I hear you talking about this, one of the big lessons for me is that when we engage our team a certain way and especially remote workforce, we get even more and we get a richer experience for everybody. And so I'm really excited that we could talk about this and get your perspective on it, Gaby. Really, really interesting stuff. I had some more questions and we're not gonna be able to get to them because the time has like flown by. I think what I would love to do is put a bug in your ear about coming back in Q4 and talking to us about what you said today and what you think the trajectory has been because we're still trying to figure out, are we going back? What are we gonna do? And so it's fascinating to hear how you all have really been stewarding the opportunity to work remotely. Yeah, thank you. Amazing, amazing. Wow, well, I wanna get Gaby's information up here for everyone because you have been extremely generous with sharing not only your ideas, but you, and I'm gonna repeat this, I hope it's okay, but you did offer up to share some of your information. Really, really a cool resource for us and I think we'll be hearing more from Gaby in the future because this is the topic for the nonprofit sector. You know, we need to be talking about this because if we don't have organized teams and strong workforces, we can't deliver service, right? To me, it's like the starting point. Engagement is the secret sauce is what I always say. So yeah, absolutely engagement. Engagement of boards, but engagement of your team as well. And I would love to connect with anyone interested. I work for a nonprofit. I worked as HR director at a branch value for a while too. And so, and I still teach HR classes online. So happy to connect and kind of think through that world. I've been in touch with some of my HR director friends from IU and how they're going about it. And it's been really interesting. So always happy to connect. Wow, that's super cool. That I didn't know that connection. And that's, I have connections to that as well. And so that's even, I, that's why I like you even more. I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. My trusty nonprofit nerd herself, Jarrett Ransom is off for the rest of the week. We wanna thank our presenting sponsors without you. We would not be here talking with the likes of Gaby. Just amazing, amazing. We wanna make sure that everybody knows we've launched a new show, what was I thinking? But we did fundraising events, TV. We're just talking about the event aspect, virtual, IRL, everything that nonprofits do when it comes to fundraising or friend raising. So check out fundraising events, TV. A lot of really interesting conversations there. We like to remind everyone at the end of every show to stay well so you can do well. Thanks, Gaby. Everybody, we'll see you back here tomorrow.