 This is Sal for Lease. Sal joins us. He's the CEO of Dot Drives and we will be talking with with you all about working with boards. So that was one little nugget of insight of what you've been working with. And so thanks for sharing that with us. Before we get started, we do like to start every episode by saying thank you and extending our deepest and serious gratitude to each and every one of our presenting sponsors. We here at the nonprofit show are so extremely grateful to have your continued support, your investment, and really your dedication to the conversation at large. So thank you to our presenting sponsors. And of course, thank you to Julia Patrick, who is not here today. She has another commitment. Julia is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. And in fact, her commitment is all week long. So if you're tuning in this week, and she's not next to me, she'll be back next week, but she has left me in good hands. So I'm Jarrett Ransom, also known as the nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven Group. Now, Sal, welcome. And before we get started, I do want to say that you and I have already, as I call it, had some really nerdy conversations. And I really enjoyed chatting with you. For those of you watching again live, as well as recorded, this is Sal for Lee. Sal is joining us. He is the CEO of Dot Drives and welcome again. But I would love for you to tell us a little bit more about Dot Drives. Yes, certainly. Well, first, thank you so much. And it's unfortunate I don't get to meet Julia, but maybe the next time. So real quick, Dot Drives was actually birthed as a result of even one of the topics we're going to discuss today, which is how do you better engage your board? I probably need to explain that I also wear another hat. I lead a nonprofit organization. And it was after leading that nonprofit organization for close to 10 years, after coming out of 20 plus years of business. That was the catalyst for launching Dot Drives, which is a software application that was created really because of the desire I had and others around me peers to see better efficiencies and certainly greater effectiveness for nonprofits, whether it was donors or their board members or whatnot. So that's why we're here talking today. And that's why, as you mentioned, Dot Drives exists. And so talk to us about the length in with the sports outreach, because you did say you wear a couple of hats and and I'm going to be transparent before we even open the digital doors. Sal and I had a very transparent conversation about just how many hat hat I should say plural. It's like, you know, stacked on here. Many of us in the sector do wear but share with us about the sports outreach, because this is this is that other hat. Yeah, so I thought you were going to say it, but I'll say it about just, you know, if you find yourself crying in the middle of the afternoon, join the club, right? So, you know, when I left the corporate environment at 40 over 12 years ago, I never realized what I would be stepping into. And it actually the workload, the responsibility actually amped up. So part of that's probably my own fault. But part of it is just that innate desire to meet needs. And I think that's what a lot of people get into callings around the nonprofit space. That calling for me was sports outreach. So I stepped into a role and I've been fortunate enough to help reorganize that organization and grow that organization. And we work internationally and domestically, we are a Christian organization. So at the core of what we do is evangelism, discipleship. But we also say we step on the field and off the field. And as we step off the field, we meet the needs of anybody and everybody, whether it be educational, public health, feeding in certain countries and environments, anti sex trafficking, I could go on and on our name. Our name really doesn't encapsulate who we are because we are 30 going to be 34 years old. So and we we serve anybody from any, any area, any background, any faith. So that's kind of our the sports outreach side of things. And then of course, as I mentioned earlier, decided to do something to help not only myself, some of the struggles I was having, but a lot of peers who we were recognizing didn't really have a simple tool at their disposal. A lot of great things out there. And if you have a great product, great. But a lot of us didn't have something that spoke to our workflows and what was important to us. And I'll just say what's important to me is it's all about really meaningful relationship, whether that's with your board members, which I think we're going to talk about, or your donors, or your team for that matter. And I love that connection. So when I did a little due diligence before Sal and I jumped on a phone call a couple of months ago, I want to say, because we had one of your teammates, Josh on to talk about that drives and he was phenomenal. We had a wonderful episode with with Josh as well as he talked a little bit more about drives. I myself grew up as an athlete. I'm still very much an athlete. I have actually gone to Uganda and have experienced the community and the residents of that community. And it's just phenomenal. So to see your website for those of you that haven't checked out, Sal will share his contact information again. But all of this really does stem from, you know, that the connection and those relationships. And so the connections and the dot, I mean, how does this exactly work? Well, so I'm actually going through another, let's say life change, season of change. When I was in business, probably the one strength that I was blessed with was the ability to connect things to connect people to connect systems to, to see that things could operate more soundly. And that was an area that excited me and I enjoyed it, you know, the difficulties and what not. And I will say I'm now moving from this fixer mentality or this fixer behavior into what I hope is an encourager. That's something that God's working on me right now at this season in life. But the point of connecting the dots, it's so critically important because in any organization, in any organization, business, church, nonprofit, what happens is you have so many different things happening. But you have to have certain processes in place to bring those things together. And the greater and the simpler those processes are, whether they're communication, whether it's in the case of that drives a CRM, whether it whatever those things are team meetings to collaborate, you have to be very consistent and conscientious about putting those things in place so that you connecting everybody so that you're working towards a specific goal. Otherwise, you have just all these dots doing their own thing. And that's not going to result in impact or be very productive. Yeah. One of the things we've talked about a lot on these episodes, Sal, is really that return on relationship. And I feel that, you know, we all bring relationships to the table. We all bring a different skill set to a relationship. And we can all continue to add on layers to that level, right? The depth and breadth of each relationship can go to so many different heights. So dot drive, you know, really provides a way to connect back to that connection of these dots to drive the mission forward. Is that kind of what we're what we're looking at here? Yeah, I think you summarized it well. And I don't want to just hop on the actual application, although it's obviously my baby and I love it. I really want to turn our attention to a process because it's just a process. It's just an application that we created to encapsulate a process. And the process is consistent engagement, understanding whether it's that donor or that board member, and being consistent and having a process that keeps that relationship healthy. And because at the end of the day, that's what's going to produce is that healthy relationship. So whether we're talking about that drive or any other process one might have, it's about having that process to have the healthy engagement to make sure that that's front of the mind that you are specifically and consistently engaging. In this case, I think we're going to talk a little bit more about the board. But how are you doing that consistently? Because if you're not doing that consistently, you're not going to see the results. And I'm so glad that you said that. And it is about the process. It's more than dot drives. But talk to us a little bit because I think when you and I were on the phone, probably nine times out of 10, I will have a nonprofit leader tell me, oh, my board, they don't do anything. I can't get my board to activate. I can't get them to engage. So what are some ways that I mean, let's let's dive deep. And I want you to just jump into the deep end with me, Sal. But like, sure, here, where can we take this conversation as it relates to the board? Okay, I love it. And we'll never get it all in. So maybe you'll watch that. You already gave me all the disclaimers. And I know I've got somebody over my shoulder, executive producer, but you just opened the can of worms because let it out because here it is. So we all know that every nonprofit has a board, right? And those may look very different. But at the end of the day, for you West coasters, just think LA, just think LA, that's easy to remember. And it's love and advocacy. So when I think of who's coming on my board, or why did they come on the board? It should be those two those two terms that identify that person. And it's from that place that I'm going to engage them. Why would somebody come on our boards, Jared? If they didn't love the mission, if they didn't love what we were trying to accomplish, why would they come on? Now, I've heard scenarios, well, I, you know, I asked the CPA because I need to make sure this and that I get that. But at the end of the day, what I'm going to tell you, I'm a disruptor in this field, because what I'm going to tell you is, do you know, even if you brought that person on for that purpose, they needed to love what you wanted to do. But sometimes it's those people that are your strongest advocates. I've seen the most type A, you know, non-public people yield just to be honest, the highest level of returns. And it all came down to your level of engagement with them. The executive directors now, I know this isn't going to gain me any friends, but I'm one too. The executive directors, the executive directors that say that, and Jared, you and I have had this conversation, it's probably nine out of 10. And I've been guilty myself. Oh, my board doesn't do this. My board doesn't do this. My board doesn't do this. I've got what I think is one symbol remedy. Own it. Own it. You are the executive director. These are very busy people that have come alongside you. The reason why they are very busy and the reason why you have them on your board most of the time is because they're influential. They're professional. They have tremendous skill sets, but they're also being pulled in a lot of directions. It's your responsibility. It's my responsibility to engage them consistently so that they are not the ones that have to lead this out. That's not their role. And so the way I've learned to do it over time, again, this didn't happen overnight, was to just make it very practical and make it a process. So if you want to ask me, like, okay, Sal, it's time to get in the weeds, the simplest thing I could tell you is an annual sit down. An annual sit down. I mean, how many of us actually even do that? We may meet at the board. We may send an email, but do we sit down with that board member either face to face or like we're doing right now over the video and talk through what excites them about the mission? What can we align with so that they want to use their gifts or their influence to be that advocate for your mission? But if you fail to do that, and I think it has to be very systematic, I think it has to be once a year. I think you put it on your calendar. I think you share it with your board. You let them know this is the direction we're going to go in. We're going to have an annual sit down and it all starts with that. And I could go into more details for sure on that because that's what begins what I call the board engagement process. I love that. And I hear also from from board members on the other side saying, you know, I would do more. I don't know what to do. I don't know what's needed to be done. I don't know where I can best help. So I think having that sit down, you know, is wonderful. So here's a question. Is that really only the executive director or could it also be like the director development maybe working in tangent or in conjunction with the executive director to make sure that each board member, you know, knows one what needs to be done. And two, I also coach to say like, we, the professional want to make it as easy for the for the busy nonprofit board member as possible. And I and I coach my client style to say like, spoon feed the board, make it as easy as possible. So do you hear that as well, where the board is saying, I don't know what what I need to do. Yeah, again, I mean, you've just given the other side of the coin there. We do hear that from a lot of board members who actually want to be more deeper engaged, but they're not getting they're not getting that that consistency from the executive director, the president, the CEO, or the development director. So as you said, yeah, I don't think it's exclusive to to, you know, the head head. I think anyone who is charged with mobilizing board members to be advocates of that mission would be involved in this process. So I would very much be comfortable with turning over that that engagement process to to a development officer and actually have. And sometimes it's it's a dual type of situation where it's a even a larger conversation than just one on one, because it may be healthy for the executive director to be involved in that conversation as well. So they're all kind of hearing the same things, you know, each organization is a little different. I, you know, the area I most focus on with our application and when I do any consulting is is primarily grassroots to like, say one or two million, which most of those and I'm not telling you anything you don't know, Jared, most of those are small shops, they might have an executive director, they'd be lucky if they had a full time development director in a lot of cases. So so again, I'm speaking a little bit to that audience. But to your point, yes, it could absolutely be anyone who's responsible for that type of shepherding of board members. Yeah. And I think that's important to know and thank you for bringing that up. Because oftentimes here on the episode, you know, especially when we have someone that does serve with a specific organization, we do like to quantify or qualify, you know, how big is this organization? Really, what are we talking about? You know, what's what's the workforce? Who are the supporters of the organization? You know, and how all of that falls into the success? Because as we just shared, you know, the staff is saying, oh, my board, they don't do anything. And then the board is saying, you know, and I've heard this multiple times, I don't know what to do. I don't know what they need me to do. So to create that system, to create that process, you know, when it comes to engagement, what are some other things that you might recommend when it comes to really engaging with the board? Well, I want to go back because, like I said, we could take hours to go through this because I think it's important if I if I if there's one pearl in anything I say today, it's it's that annual sit down annual survey and I didn't get to the survey part. Okay, so the survey, the survey is going to be the meat and potatoes. So the survey in my case, we have a 13 questions simple 13 questions. I mean, it doesn't get much more simple than this. It's just things like what excites you most about the work of the organization, you're trying to get them to to start to open up. You know, then it could be questions as you know, do you plan to personally donate? Would you like to work on securing grants? These are very simple questions. And what we've done, Jared, and I would recommend this if you don't have a process in place, I can share these with any of your audience. But what we've done is we've taken that survey. Now, just so you know, this survey also is built into our application under what we call best practices. So again, what I'm going to be jumping from place to place for a second, our application was designed to provide best practices. Because what we wanted to do was we wanted to say, we listen, statistically, we know the majority of nonprofits are small. We know this, you just look at the statistics, go Google it. And we wanted to provide a one stop shop for best practices and for processes, because you may be wearing five hats. So now if I'm the executive director and my budget's three, four, five hundred thousand dollars a year, I can use this application. I could say, okay, I'm going to do my donor engagement. Great. I'm going to do my major donor relationship building. We call that a pipeline process or moves management. I see you have a moves management sponsor there on your thing. That's awesome. So it's that process. But we put that all in one simple place because you know, you're wearing a lot of hats, you're out in the field, you may even be doing programming on top of running the organization. So we want it to be simple. But back to the survey, what we've done is the surveys within the moves management process in the application. So you don't have to rethink it every year. You don't have to, you just start again. It's right there. The other nice thing is what we do is we take that survey and we convert it into a survey monkey, give a plug for them. They should support you. I'll try. We use them a lot. But here's a great thing. You can put that in a survey monkey. And what we do is we say, you know, you get a hold of that Mr. and Mrs. Board member, you tell them, Hey, remember, we're going to have our annual sit down. But before that, Jared, we're going to send you a quick online survey. Boom, you send it to them. They fill it out online. You can keep your whole board. You can have all their surveys. You can see where they aligned where they didn't. Great for committees. Great for putting together a committee. If you've got four people who said, Oh, Sal, I love, would you host an event or assist with an event? Well, if I get five out of my 10 board members who say, Yes, guess what I can do? I can bring them together. We'll probably have the best darn event we've ever had. And so and that is such a good opportunity because I know when it comes to fundraising and fundraising, we really do want to lean on our board as advocates for bringing new constituents or supporters into the fold. Absolutely. I mean, we again, as we started out, we could talk about board governance. We could talk about board finance. I think for me, those other ones are obviously critical. But for me, for the health and vitality of that organization, if you don't have a board that's engaged on the development side, I don't see. I don't see how that could be a healthy organization. I mean, they are your, they are your your twins, so to speak out there, you can only be in front of so many audiences, but they they know the intricacies of the organization. They do. And when we talk truly about connecting those dots, you know, it is often about getting that board buy in and making sure that the board is committed, they're engaged, they're they're all in one of the one of the quotes I've heard, which I just love and continue to repeat is people support that in which they help create, right? And so receiving the buy in from the board, I'm going to say it's critical to the success of the organization. How do you create this buy in, though, Sal? Well, again, I think you're going to say, oh gosh, he just oversimplifies everything. I think it all starts with that survey. I think once, yeah, once they've spoken it out, it's not like Jared, when if I came to you and I say, Jared, I need help with, you know, you're a board member and you're you're the Mac Daddy board member, you're going to do what you can probably eat out. But but but that didn't come from you. That didn't that that didn't initiate with you. It might not it you may not be even a passionate about that it might not even be in your skill set. That'd be like me telling you to go speak in front of 300 people. And you know, you're you're you don't like to do that. You never graduated from postmaster. I mean, that's not that's not comfortable for everybody. That's a misalignment. So I think Jared, to answer your question, it all comes back to working through that process once a year and then taking those the feedback you've received, they've given you their thoughts. They know why they're part of the board because they love the mission and they should want to be an advocate LA. But how do you convert that into the engagement? And that's hearing from them. Now, you set the stage, right? You set the stage you you you've kind of wrote the script, like this is what I need. And then you're asking them to say, oh, well, that's a menu. It's like going to a restaurant. Well, you know, you might not like six things on it, but you find the one thing you really like or the two things you really like. So you get that appetizer, you get that entree and then oh, you love the dessert. That's all we're asking for. We're asking for you to let let them pick it, let them pick it. And then you put it into a process that's consistent. And we don't have time. That's one of the big reasons we built that was it's all about the relationship process. Now, we focus primarily on major donors and board member engagement. But for instance, our product is a CRM it's a standard CRM with what I consider these these, I think, very unique value props that really allow people to focus because at the end of the day, the majority of funding comes from major donors that sustains an organization and from board member, if you want to have a health organization from board member engagement. So let's not let's not overcomplicate this thing. There's there's great products that do a lot of other things we don't do. And I say more power to you. That's our niche. That's those are the things we we focus on. And we've we've seen the impact over, well, even from the product line over two years, but but we've seen the behaviors produce impact for a very long time. So I want to ask about that elephant in the room. So we have the the annual meeting, we do the survey or we do the survey, and then we have the meeting. The board member says, I'm all in. This is my buy in. This is what I want to help and support with. And then they go in my a right, then they just, there's crickets, life happens, right, whatever it is. How do you talk about like a reengagement with a board member that might have all the best intentions out and then all of a sudden you don't you don't get a reply back from them. Yeah, okay, so that's going to be a hard one for me to answer. I'm just it's going to be hard for me to be that objective, because I'm kind of a I could be a bit of a bull in a China shop in this regard, meaning if a board member has a really legitimate reason he or she that they disengage for I have no problem. Season of life. Listen, let's just be transparent. I've had board members who you know a child has went off the deep end. You know they didn't expect that wonderful people all of a sudden their life's in turmoil. A major career change. I had a board member he was he was amazing. He got a huge promotion travel had to travel all over the world. He was going to be out of pocket. You know, you have to have those conversations though. You can't just say, oh, I hear crickets. Why, why is it and then you start to get frustrated with the board member. It's better to confront and say, is this board member in a season that's difficult. It what's what's happening here. Once you establish that, then you're good. You put that aside. You allow for the grace. You allow for the inactivity. That's fine. I'm not talking about that. If you're hearing crickets after you've put them through this process, then chances are they're they're probably their season is setting. The sun is setting on them because again, go back to LA love and advocacy. I love that. I mean, it's such a short acronym, but love and advocacy and I'm going to agree with you. I know that life happens and as we started the episode, so much has happened over the last 18 months. And so, you know, if a board member or anyone really does go MIA on you and you hear crickets, right, I always proceed with, are you okay? You know, is there something that you'd like to share or that I may be able to help you with? I always come from a place of, you know, to be of service. And I think that is a great way because clearly they've bought into it, but we're, you know, we're all experiencing this thing called life. And I think that's important to keep in mind. Sal, you had shared with us that we could talk for hours and I have no doubt about that. And I would love to continue to just have you talk more and more and more about this board engagement. Unfortunately, we're not able to dive too much, you know, further beyond, beyond what our 30 minute broadcast provides. But Sal is amazing. Drives is amazing. The organization that you serve on and really helped to bring all this to fruition is a phenomenal mission, doing so much great work across the world. So thank you for all that you do. And if any of you are interested in connecting with Sal, I will witness to you. He's very active on LinkedIn. So you can send him a connection on LinkedIn. And then, of course, please do check out Dot Drives. Both you and Josh have been phenomenal guests on the episode. And we're so grateful to have you. Thank you so much. I just had one last thing to say. I almost forgot. We as a gift, we have a very generous corporate supporter of our Dot Drives initiative, and they will underwrite one application for a year for one of your listeners. So if you have a listener, I'll leave it in your court. And if nobody, that's okay. But that's phenomenal. So if you have a listener that's either a startup or small nonprofit needs a process, needs a system, we will go ahead and get them on the system, get them trained. And I think you'll have a future guest on your hands. Well, thank you. I think that's phenomenal. It's very generous of you and your supporters. So we're so thankful. If any of you are interested in that, please do reach out to either Julia or I. We would be more than happy to connect you with Sal and see if this makes sense for you and your organization. It's always a pleasure to be here and talk to so many amazing leaders across the nation. Again, we extend our deepest gratitude to each and every one of our sponsors. We are so grateful to have your continued investment and support in these conversations, not just the nonprofit show, but all conversations that are happening right now around the globe. We're just so thankful to our presenting sponsors. So thanks for allowing us to have these great conversations and to connect with so many thought leaders just like Sal for Least Today with Dot Drives. Sal, thank you. Again, I'm so appreciative. I have a feeling that we'll have you back on. And I hope that you enjoy your week. I think you've got some downtime, which is which is good. I know we all need that. So for all of you that are watching, thanks so much for joining us. I hope that you will join us again tomorrow. This week is action packed. Julia's away, but I'm here and I look forward to seeing all of you tomorrow. We end every episode by by saying please stay well so you can do well. Thanks so much, Sal, and to all of you watching, we'll see you tomorrow.