 Speaking of impressive, today's episode is very impressive and I'm excited to share with you that if you've been listening to our chitty chat chat, I'm sure you can already tell that Brian Greenwald, VP of Business Development at Generate Impact is going to be a phenomenal guest for us today as he talks to us about text technology in our sector. So that's going to be a really good conversation and thank you to our presenting sponsors. You see their logos in front of you, these companies exist for you, your mission, your goals and everything that you are doing good in your community. So please do check them out and give them a like, some love and some follow. So thank you to our sponsors. Thank you also. Yeah, I was just thinking, you know, look at our sponsors, look at how many of them are tech oriented. They may not have started out that way, but it's true. You know, look at how this has morphed and how they've come to meet the challenges of our sector and I'm sorry to interrupt. Yeah, well I thank you also to Julia Patrick for coming up with this amazing show 18 months ago and allowing me to play alongside you. It's a lot of fun. So we are co-hosting today. It's back. It's great to be back in the seat with you and again back to today's guest. We have Brian Greenwald with us today with Generate Impact. So welcome Brian. Thanks for joining us. It's great to be here again so soon. I was here, I was on vacation and I was a little bit of a deer in the headlights because of the context switching but I am working today so I feel a little bit more in my element. Perfect. Well we had you on and I have to witness to you Brian. It was wackadoo because if I'm not mistaken, I was broadcasting from Mexico. I think that's right. And it was the first day of a week of broadcasting so we weren't quite sure how it was going to go and then we had you and you were in Florida? Yeah, Florida. Yeah. I mean it was really interesting but what was so cool is that the technology really did allow us to have this international conversation and so we loved what you had to say. Wanted to bring you back. Before we get into our whole thing, talk to us about Generate Impact and what it is that you do. Yeah. So Generate Impact is a technology services company but what's more important about us is that we consider ourselves a benevolent business. That means that we focus on being profit enabled and not profit driven and we are inspired by benevolence creation in the world. We think that the people who have chosen a career in service of improving the lives of others are the real heroes of this world as opposed to movie stars and sports stars who are great but that's all different. So we're solely focused on celebrating and serving humanitarian, social impact, sustainability, organizations and causes and I'll have to say it's been the most fulfilling experience of my career because of that. Are you a B Corp? We are not. It's something that we are looking into but it's a long process and we're right now just busy, taking care of business as usual. I think I've asked you that before but I couldn't remember the answer but it's such an interesting topic for another day because it's a huge topic. Okay, we were teasing you in the 2D Chat Chat but today we're going to talk about tech team augmentation and I will witness to you when you say augmentation in front of a woman, especially a woman of my advanced years, all sorts of bells come off and go off and I'm thinking yeah it's about time maybe for a little work here but unfortunately I don't think we're talking about that are we? Yeah, I'm going to avoid that one like the players right now for sure. Me too. I'm going to leave it at that. I'm not quite sure what we're talking about but well you know so you know the the other term that people use for this is staff augmentation but we don't use that term because staff augmentation might give the impression that it's sort of hiring agency or something like that. But tech team augmentation is different so when you think about working with your vendor as opposed to having your vendor work for you that's where tech team augmentation comes into play. So the reality is and you know I had this conversation with a with a very high-level technology person at a global nonprofit they said no matter how big your nonprofit is you're technology rich and resource poor and what they meant by that was that the technology is really easy to get especially for nonprofits like you can get the Salesforce nonprofit cloud for free but the reality is that it's never for free because the amount of knowledge that you need to have the amount of effort it it takes to configure to maintain to make the business processes around it and to provide the support to staff for adoption and life cycle management is prohibited. So that's why there's a whole cottage industry of organizations that just exist to show you how to use Salesforce. For example and so it's really important that you have that partner that is technology agnostic meaning that they don't have skin in the game for selling licenses or pushing a particular product or technology that they're there actually to be the client side advocate when it comes to technology to fill the gaps to provide expertise that is very difficult to have in the house and to actually be a voice within the organization that doesn't have a sort of skin in the game and one particular outcome and can really advocate and focus on success of the organization through technology because the reality is you're not going to separate those considerations anymore you're going to have to be thinking about technology as you're thinking of everything else and even more so now in the world of COVID and post COVID we're not going back to the old way and so being able to navigate technology is absolutely essential and it's very very difficult to hire for every need internally and that doesn't matter whether you have a large organization or a small organization you're going to need technology support and we believe the best way to do that is with a partner. So let me ask you this I mean I get what you're saying and I totally agree with it but my next level question is do you need to have somebody that understands the non-profit sector to do this and to do this well? Absolutely. That's absolutely correct and that's that's one of the reasons that you know we exclusively focused on this industry because what we found and this is what some of our most Keystone clients had told us is that they can get these services from commodity organizations that work in the for-profit world but they don't get them you know the culture is different, the priorities are different, the understanding of the why is different and it's really hard to be an organization that works for the potato chip factory and works for the mission-driven non-profit and so having that sensibility and actually going in caring more about the mission than the invoice is really critical and you know some of our biggest wins over the last few years have been organizations that said yeah we know that there's bigger more established options out there but we choose you because you seem to care more and that's really important because the people who work in non-profits are there because of their heart-centered nature right they can make more money elsewhere but they chose to work in that arena because they care about others and so having vendors and partners who who share that sentiment is really critical so that you can get the best service and you can have a partner that's working with you as I said before. Well hopefully we're changing the competitive salary because I'm a huge proponent for that as well as we really need to pay our high caliber talent but one of the questions I wanted to ask in particular here is you know how often would you recommend kind of doing a tech assessment especially as technology advancements are continuing every single millisecond so how often would you recommend that we as an organization really you know assess our technology where we are and then where we need to go? That's where having I think a technology partner is actually the most valuable because that organization that you're working with they're out there working with other organizations and they're dealing with a much broader landscape of products that you when you're just trying to focus on your mission can get exposure to acknowledge around and so doing those assessments what we like to call discoveries or assessments is of critical importance and then having that organization that with you all the time that understands how you got to that point who understands your your business culture who understands the challenges that you're facing can be a real asset in navigating that and creating a roadmap one of the things that we find a lot of organizations really actually are not working in their best interests is in the way they're writing RFPs so they'll they'll ask for an RFP where they're saying predict the future and tell me how much it will cost in a fixed without sort of splitting out that assessment from the build phase and so what happens is that these organizations that are bidding on these projects they have to bid for risk they have to assume the worst case scenario and price for risk but if you kind of separate that assessment and do that an ongoing way but do it with a partner that you can speak shorthand with and just have that roadmap okay it's not just about solving today's problem it's about where do we want to be in three years where do we want to be in five years what's on the horizon in our in our particular sector that we're focused on that we need to be prepared for and having a partner that's there with you every step of the way it's of critical importance and we think it's actually one of the I basically spend all my time trying to convince organizations no don't do the whole thing let's do an assessment first to make sure that we're solving the right problem to make sure that we're aligning the spend with the actual outcome and what we actually find is that when you split that assessment and discovery from the build phase it actually ends up being a smaller investment over time because there's less ambiguity you're making less guesses there's less rework and actually it's a really important risk mitigation exercise I love that I think that is so important and I can imagine that's not always the easiest to sell or to really like deliver the value around why it's important to start that way but I really appreciate that point of view you know it's it's interesting because a lot of what you're saying is in the past we would have had somebody on site on our team I mean I think of the old Saturday Night Live you know skits where they had the tech team and their first thing would always be like you know get out of your chair get out of your you know office let me take over and fix things yeah but we have moved beyond that for many reasons so talk to us about that are we giving something up when we don't have that onsite talent I mean can we do this remotely well surprisingly what I'm going to advocate is a hybrid solution okay so obviously there's some structural changes that have resulted in onsite it being less important so for example we don't have on-premise servers as much we don't have as on-premise software as much things are moving into the cloud we have software as a service most of the products that nonprofits are dealing with our our our software as a service and so those constraints are definitely gone but as we'll you know talk about in the work from home scenario there's issues you know working with hardware gets more complex what we really advocate and this is a really important value for those non-profit focused technology vendors is that you have to focus on creating self-sufficiency right so you know because of the nature because of that donor dollar being so sacred you don't want a vendor that's going to come in and just camp out be the keeper of all the knowledge where you're so dependent on them that if they went away one day or if there was some sort of issue you're stuck you want to have a mix of resources people who understand the decisions that were made understand how the software has been configured understand and work alongside your partner to drive self-sufficiently appropriate self-sufficiency right because nobody chose to work at a non-profit because they said well I feel like wrestling with technology all day so the things that are keeping you from actually focusing on outcomes and focusing on mission let's somebody else deal with that the legacy system that's a total pain let's somebody else deal with that so you can focus on what's next you can focus on making an impact but have just enough expertise in how so that you feel empowered and so that you can be self-sufficient where it makes sense to do so so my suggestion is hybrid and you know a good tech team partner that actually cares about your mission is actually going to help you do that and as a matter of fact some of the assessments that we do is evaluating staff and making recommendations of who they should be hiring yes how can we train them and how can we focus on life cycle management and adoption support so it's again it's about working with you not working for you and I think that's the right mix so that was going to be my question because I have coached and worked with a lot of organizations that you know I've said and I'm not a tech person you know but I'll say you don't have the right systems you don't have the right systems to build efficiency and you know all of these other ways that I think you you could really be more successful and the pushback from we don't have our volunteers are really uncomfortable with technology and I'm saying well then you may not have the right volunteers in the right place so tell me if you would Brian how you really go into assessing the technology needs as they relate of course to that that marriage I'm going to say with the team oh I am so glad that you asked that because what we find often is that organizations and this is not you know relegated to the nonprofit world are looking at the problem from the wrong end of the telescope I had a call with someone in New Zealand just the other day who said well we picked a system we configured it and we gave it to our people and now they're not using it right they're not using it well because you actually start with looking at people and processes you start with thinking about adoption and life cycle management and then you figure out what technology is going to be that accelerator because at the end of the day actually technology is not the solution any problem technology is an accelerator of solutions but human beings are always the solution and so you have to think about it in terms of what will it take for people to be the best version of themselves in pursuing the mission a as individuals be what will allow them to do that together that's process and team building and then see and only see how can technology be a participating factor but when you start with we need this tool and then we'll figure out how to make it work for our organization you're actually setting yourself up for a problem and going back to your your initial point about volunteers who are sort of technology shy that's exactly why you start with adoption and we can talk about human-centered design processes some other day but talking to your people allowing them to participate understanding what the real pain points and friction points are and then building towards technology from there is actually the way to bridge that gap people forget that technology is actually there to support the people who are using it not the other way around the people are not there for the technology and so if you start with that approach you're actually setting yourself up for a lot of resistance and confusion and lack of adoption I love the accelerator you said it's there to accelerate and then you said something else about we could talk about this in another time so I want to make sure it's the human-centered human-centered design design yes please we need more tech talk okay so we don't have much time left I mean it's just flown by it but I did want to have you address the work from home input I'm going to use the word input because it's evident that we have a workforce that that for the most part really likes this the efficiencies have changed in many ways gotten better but it seems to me that if we're going to do this and embrace this we need to really make sure that our tech is even working better than ever before and so I'd love to talk to you about that yeah yeah it becomes absolutely mission critical so I did consult with our director of platform technology John Bain who has about 20 years of experience working in internal IT and he gave me four points to share okay because I'm not an expert in this obviously but but he is and the first thing he raised and he said above all other considerations is security that is a huge consideration because we're working from home coffee shops you know basically uh co-working spaces people let their guard down um and things like multi multi-factor authentication and and just being really aware of your environment and the networks that you're on and the decisions you make when you walk away from your computer and even at home you should put it to sleep or you know log out um those things are easy to forget and to you know have challenges with and so there's policies that you couldn't put in place where things time out and you have to re-log in etc to protect yourself and most organizations might have a hard time putting together say VPN regime for example um and that's where a tech team partner could be really helpful the next is just the sort of human challenge of communicating is one thing connection is another thing and so when you're working remotely and you know there's I'm not going to quote all the different scientific studies around you know the way that you know it's actually creates a lot of stress when your whole experience with people is is in this little box um it it becomes hard especially for new employees that have been hired since the pandemic of creating those work connections and it has a lot to do with job satisfaction retention and also effectiveness of teams and so figuring out strategies and you know we've been trying all sorts of different things because we are quite spread out it's really important to think about that um then finally two more things the other is like you know when you have employees that have disabilities who have very special needs um you know there's a lot of effort that needs to go into accommodating them to make sure that they have the equipment and the environment that they need to be as effective at work and that those sort of artificial barriers are not in the way and then finally hardware that really is the biggest challenge so debugging hardware from the distance um there are definitely programs that can help you do that but that is a skill in itself um and and then in terms of getting an employee that new laptop that's properly configured that's not going to have any issues it requires a lot of thinking and it's a challenge that organizations are going to have to you know address head-on so there's just four of those things if john was here you know he's like I said he's an expert you could talk about it for an hour maybe you should have him as a guest one day just talk about that I think yeah I think we should one of the questions we get often in our ask and answer is you know the team wants to work from home or work remotely really is it okay to use their own personal laptop or their own personal hardware or should it be an organizational issued hardware or system and then that brings in another level right of well two things one we actually had someone say you know I would like to purchase my own but my partner in life does not want me to spend that money and then we also have the organization saying we don't have this in our budget so yeah it's a tough challenge and I know john's going to say hey absolutely it needs to be a company issued uh piece of hardware that has i get that company policies that can be wiped remotely that can that can be supported remotely but yeah it's a challenge and I you know I do think that there are organizations out there that provide grants and provide funding for those type of things but I think that it is definitely you know when for all of the other reasons that I described around security and around support it is preferable and you know when you go to work someplace you don't expect to have to supply your equipment and so you know while you might not have the budget you have to think about would if it was any other organization what would the basic expectation that your employer is going to provide you the materials and the equipment that you need to do your job seems pretty straightforward I you know obviously every situation is a challenge but you know with all of the things that I described whether you're a small nonprofit or whether you're a huge multinational nonprofit how can you afford not to do these things correctly because the risk is immense uh when you think about the potential for uh data breaches when you think about the potential for ransomware when you think about the potential of lost productivity and opportunity cost right you really need to think long and hard about well if we don't do this are we going to be successful and so you have to kind of look at the cost little differently than the cost of risk thinking of these things as an investment and not a cost actually very important wow I think we do need John on as well oh yeah John would be great well you know it's interesting because I think one of the things that Jared has really eliminated for so many of our viewers I know for me from the beginning that if you see a component of structural vulnerability within your organization you need to move that forward and actively search for funding for grants for um you know low cost loans whatever it might be so that you can fulfill that investment and you know it's like presence you know front of mind top of presence allows you to navigate some of these things and I can't think of many times when I sat in on a meeting with a nonprofit and they've had an active roadmap for pursuing technology advances they'll complain about it and they'll talk about how it's really creating problems but stepping back and saying okay this is what we're going to work on it doesn't always seem like there's that's that's being tackled I don't know Jared do you do you see that no I think that's I would agree I see that often especially with small nonprofits and we are very much a small nonprofit centric you know sector there's a lot of organizations that are really scrappy and doing so much with very little and when I come in and do an interim um succession plan with an organization Brian one time I I you know this organization they're a C3 they were operating off of an association database and I'm like you don't have members I don't understand so we could not pool donor centric data because they simply didn't have the right system oh I'm so glad that you said that so we have a really wonderful power partner that I'd love to give a shout out to who also should be a great guess a knowledge advisory group and they focus on program evaluation and impact evaluation and they do a great job of humanizing data and when I sit down and talk with them we end up spending the whole hour talking about how the the CRM or the technology product that they have you know used beyond its design intent is preventing the you know knowledge advisory group from accomplishing their goals with the client because they can't pull the data they can't cross reference the data because there hasn't been that thought so the reality is is that you cannot escape it anymore you have to address technology first if you're going to be effective in your mission like the genie's out of the bottle it's not going back in you know like I said that same call with New Zealand is that one of the largest nonprofits in the world and they said like look direct fundraising we understand there's a there's an expiration date on it right and we need to adapt and bringing everyone along is is critical so whether you're a very small local nonprofit or whether you're a huge multinational nonprofit the challenges are the same that the manifestation of them are different because you're going to be different and that's where you know having a partner that can help you navigate that is important but the pattern of issues is pretty similar across the entire industry you know and I'm imagining too as we continue to grow in this life cycle the tech assessment continues to change right is that accurate yeah that's that's that's correct and that's you know where I talk about like don't just solve today's problem but think about like so if you just you know make an investment that solves today's problem you're going to be doing it again in a year right you want to be able to grow with that system yeah so like so many things maybe I should clarify that term one is it's who's going to maintain this and keep it humming how are we going to get the most out of this investment make sure we're providing the right support but then how's it going to grow with us what does it need to be a year from now or three years from now or five years from now you again you need to think about that at the same time that you're thinking about people in process and making sure that you have a plan for that so it's about having a long-term roadmap while you're making incremental steps to address today's issues well um Sasha Lewis from moves management and she talks often about how typically organizations have a donor centered you know database and they will say oh this isn't working for me we want we need and want a new one but she helps them realize there's so many bells and whistles that you're actually not utilizing so before we invest in a whole new system perhaps we assess the system that you do have and are you using it thoroughly right for what your intention and expectations are so so much synergy you know there and as we started the show Julia a lot of our sponsors are very tech centered or tech based and I think all of us organically and by default now very much have a tech piece of our everyday life and responsibility you know even me the non-profit nerd oh my gosh I have I have you know invested in my own tech systems to help my life to be a little bit smoother to accelerate right well you know this has been great we could talk to you so for so long and I suspect that we will be um Brian Brian Greenwald I was was thinking I should call you Brian the brain because it's like no it's great it's really really cool check out generate impact they have some amazing um blog articles on there they talk about um case studies with the different folks that they work with around the world so it's really a fascinating lens into how and why you should be looking at um partners in your technology it's it's not the normal thing that you would think of and I think it's been really fun to meet you Brian and to see all the different things that generate impact is doing again I'm Julia Patrick CEO of the American non-profit academy been joined today by the non-profit nerd herself Jarrett Ransom CEO of the Raven group hey we want to make sure that we thank all of our presenting sponsors who've been with us um who themselves have been on a journey of tech through since we first started I see this all the time with our sponsors how they're really moving through um you know this this new ecosystem which is actually going to end up being far superior for all of us I think and so we want to say absolutely yeah it's it's a cool it's a cool thing to be um where we sit where Jarrett and I sit and we get to see the acceleration of these organizations and how they're adopting to be even better servants um in our evolution yeah it's really fascinating it's it is it's really a cool thing hey another great Monday a great start to the week don't you think Jarrett amazing I it's like okay I want to have you back on for so many of these conversations we really need to get John back on as well and what a great way to accelerate and be the catalyst for our week so thank you for joining us today it's been wonderful it's been a great pleasure I'd love to come back soon well you know I'm just as a quick and I know we gotta wrap up but Brian's going to be visiting the AFP chapter and Phoenix Arizona soon we had on that president Tina Lopez talking about how you and why you should be engaging in you know a professional organization and so it's really cool to see that that we were able to make some introductions and you'll be coming out so I'm really excited about it in spite of the heat yes well it's not bad now so nothing to worry about at this time I don't know we'll see but hey as we like to end every show we certainly want to remind all of you to stay well so you can do well see you back here tomorrow everybody