 Good afternoon, good evening, depending on when you're joining us, you have ventured into or ventured upon another episode of the non-profit show. We're thrilled you're here joining us and we are so excited because one of my favorite co-hosts is here, Jack Alotto, and he is one of the masterminds of National University's Fundraising Academy. So Jack, thank you so much for being with us. Another Friday, just to catch you up to speed in case you don't know, people all over the world send us emails, they tweet us, they connect with us on LinkedIn. When I'm out in public, they'll ask questions and say, will you, you know, address this? And so this is a really cool thing for us. We don't rehearse this. We don't have like a standard thread. It's like what our answers are very organic and unique and we don't always agree and that's fun too. And so this is what Ask an Answer is all about. We're really, really fortunate to have our presenting sponsors and it's super important to realize that Fundraising Academy at National University is our presenting sponsor of this specific day. They believe so much in this concept that they provide us with different experts every single Friday and then we get to have these great dialogues. And so we want to make sure that we thank Bloomarang, American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, Bee Generous, again Fundraising Academy at National University, Staffing Boutique, Nonprofit Thought Leader, and Nonprofit Nerd. These are the folks that are in partnership with us and if you've missed any of our episodes and you want to get to us, Jack, on Monday we hit our 700th episode. When I hear that number, I think that's why I feel like I'm 700 years old. It's like, holy moly, that's a lot. But anyway, find us. You can reach our archives through Roku, YouTube, Amazon Fire TV, and of course Vimeo. And then if you really are one of those people that likes to consume content through podcast format, which is fabulous, we've taken all of our episodes for this last year and our executive producer Kevin Pace has put them into podcast format. So it's super cool. You can consume us wherever you like to queue up your podcasts and take us with you. OK, Mr. Jack, you ready? Yes, let's get to it. All right. This is a curveball. This comes from Jarrett, the non-profit nerd in Phoenix, Arizona. What do you think should be the main concern for nonprofits in 2023? Big question, hello. Great question. The main concern, I think if we look at what the GivingUSA report has shown, like that there is some steady giving, that it's not growing as it used to grow in giving across the country. And in Canada as well, for those who are visiting us from Canada, our main concern should be how do we retain our donors and how do we grow their giving so that they're giving larger gifts. And my solution for that, as it always is, is to build relationships with your donors. So the concern is to keep our donors, let's retain them, let them make them give year after year after year, and let's grow their giving. And we do that by building a strong relationship with them. Yeah, you know, that's not my answer. But now I'm thinking, let's hear your answer, Julie. You know, okay, that's not my answer. But now I'm thinking maybe it should be. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna, you know, kind of head to my bet. I gotta say, and I know that the world that I live in is different than yours, because I have a lot of different voices coming at me. And I don't just listen to, you know, on the fundraising side. I mean, everything really does boil down to fundraising in the nonprofit sector, because it's basically sales. I mean, we talk about this cause selling. But I gotta tell you, Jack, you know, what what really freaks me out and gives me pause is the the condition of labor. Yeah. And I am really concerned about a couple things. The number of people leaving our sector. Yeah. And it's not because they're unhappy, two things, they're aging out and they're burning out. Right. So that's a big thing. And that's a demographic issue, right? Yeah, that's something that's just the demographic of American society and the age. And then the other thing, Jack, I'm concerned about and it kind of filters in going the other direction is the number of people coming into our sector without proper education. There's only about five university major universities in our nation. Yeah. Educating about nonprofit management. Yeah. And I don't disagree with that. I really don't. Yeah. We need more. I mean, you know, now we have Fundraising Academy and we have the American nonprofit Academy and we have things like that in this engine. But we need to be bringing more people in, not just from a point of ethos, but from education. Yeah, you know, I think, I think employee retention is so important. You know, and we've talked about this in the past, you know, giving your employees the option to go and train it like the Fundraising Academy or CFRE or take the time on a Friday or Monday through Friday to come to the nonprofit show to increase their skill set. All of those things are important. And if we want to keep employees, which is a concern of yours and mine as well, then we have to give them opportunities to develop professional. The second thing around people entering the profession who may not have the training or the ambition to go to like the Fundraising Academy or to seek a CFRE. Here's one of the problems that I see that has happened. You know, peer to peer fundraising, crowdfunding has grown exponentially. Okay. Giving Tuesday, peer to peer fundraising. One of the things that I heard in a webinar that I attended just the other day is that the increase in crowdfunding is telling people that anyone can be a fundraiser. And peer to peer. That's like a hair on fire moment because you know what? Yes. I never, sorry, I shouldn't say hair on fire moment. My dear friend, only I can joke with you about that. Now people are turning off because they're like, she's a wedge. I never ever, I never put two and two together. Yeah, it's not my it's not mine. I have to give credit to that webinar I was listening to and I had a hair on fire moment. It wasn't the hair on my head fire. It was the hair on my chin fire boom because it's true. When people are out there when we're training our board, don't go ask your friends or telling them that it's this is easy. Anyone can do it. And guess what? It's not. And it's a profession. It is a profession. It's a profession. Wow. Okay, now I really you've really given me a lot to think about. Well, you brought it up and I just added to it. So two minds are thinking in a similar vein, which is really great. Yours and Kevin's are the great minds, not mine. Oh my god, this is hilarious. Okay. Well, now we have we had a question from Jarrett, the nonprofit nerd. Now we have a question from Julia, just the plain, plain gal in Phoenix, Arizona. What do you think made nonprofits stronger or pushed them in a new way during 2022? It has to be the pandemic. The continued pandemic, which I think we're at the end of now. And I think the end actually started during this past year. We learned some really important things during the height of the pandemic. We learned about how we the workspace, you know, flexible work environments, being able to work from home, look at me sitting in my garage in Southern California right now. So all of those that flexible workspace, you know, the use of zoom and Cisco and other ways to communicate, they're not going to go away in the end 2023. We learned some ways to build relationships in a hybrid world. And I think those things are going to stay with us as we go forward. We see, you know, especially among millennials, they don't want to go back to the works to working nine to five. They want more around family and friends and social networks and being able to walk their dog at 10 am or take their child to kindergarten or whatever it is. So those things are things that we learn and they're going to stay with us in the future. And you know what? I think it's good. I really do think it's positive. No, I do too. I think it's good. I think to your point, it's just like learning a new system and and I want to say it's almost like learning a new value system, but it's not. It's not a new value system. It's just managing, you know, how we can how we can be working. You know, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think for me, it is embracing digital technology, which for some weird reason, the nonprofit sector is so far behind, you know, but I really feel like it is, you know, digital fundraising, digital communications with our donors reaching out, you know, just think about all the opportunities that we have never had to share a video or audio or show the movement of something within programming. Yeah. How about self care? I always like your end of the show theme, stay well so that you could do well. That's about self care. That's something that I want to practice more of. And my friends and family, those people who take classes are self care first. Yeah. Yeah. And we've you know, I think it's part of our American culture too. We've never wanted to talk about that. It's always appeared to be weak and you know, buck up, you know, go forward, don't be you know, don't be a wimp. And so I agree with you. I think those are pretty cool things. I gotta say, Jack, and before I move on to our next question, I feel pretty optimistic. Me too. We have a lot of problems and we have a lot of issues, but I feel like we're as a sector, now I'm speaking as a sector, I feel like maybe we're better prepared to march forward and finding solutions. What do you think? Oh, definitely. You know, I think 2022 was a great year for me. I look back on what we've accomplished in my professional life, as well as in my personal life. And, and you know, just the people I've met, all of those things, the people I've interacted with, all of it's it was a good year in so many ways. And I'm looking forward to the next year and to expand on some of those relationships I've built. It's just really a beautiful, I'm optimistic about the future. Yeah, me too. Good. I'm glad to hear that because sometimes, you know, when you're coming through a slog, no matter what that slog is, and but I would say now we've had a social slog. It's been really hard. And even across this nation of ours, this very week, I mean, I think we're marching towards a hundred Americans that have lost their lives in this storm, this great storm. I know. I mean, so, you know, this is, things are tough. And, but yeah, I do feel optimistic. So that's a, I think that's a good way to end the year, for sure. Definitely. Okay, let's go on to our next question, who's not Julia or Jared? Wow, surprise. This comes to us from Jamal from Chicago, Illinois, thinking about cold. Jamal has is unfrozen himself and he is asking the question. We are concerned that our board needs younger talent. Do you have any ideas on what a minimum age requirement should be in order to serve on a board? We've had this question before in couched in a little different way, but the age, I would say Jack, on the beginning and the ending, like how to, what's too young and what's too old? You know, I don't have a really great answer to that. Let's look at it this way. If you are an organization that's working with youth, say around sports, then I think you need some youth on your board. You know, I people say that the people who are the beneficiaries or the clients of your organization have to be close to power, and that means putting them on the board. If it's a youth program or if it's a senior citizen program, like a senior citizen center or something like that, you have to have senior citizens on the board because they are closest to the client base that you're trying to serve and they can inform us about how to do this work. So I don't really have a minimum age or a maximum age, but what I will say about board recruitment, you have to look at other characteristics. Integrity, you know, attention to mission, ethics have shared values with your organization. These are way more important characteristics to me than the age or the gender of person. It's really important that they understand how they can work in your organization to advance your mission. Those things are way more, those characteristics are way more important to me than age. Yeah, well my first thought is my first thought is of legal age. So I would not do, I mean, I'm all over the concept of having young professional boards, youth boards, you know, subset boards that are non-fiduciary that are, you know, we use the word support boards and they can be, you know, Hispanic groups, young Hispanic leaders, young rabbinical students, I mean, whatever it is, right, that dovetails to your mission. But technically I would be concerned about the fiduciary issue of, you know, governance of somebody that's not of the age of 21. Yeah. Because I know, and you know this with the board service, you know, you are endorsing contracts, you know, there's governance issues, so there's a legal precedent, I don't think. I would also imagine that it might be hard to get D&O insurance for somebody that's not 21. I don't know that. I don't know either. I think Julia, one of the problems that I've seen with boards, and this is not my concept again and I can't remember where I got this, but typically boards have been made up of people who don't need the services of the organization, never enter the community of where the clients are, have no idea about the culture or the values of that community. I worked for an organization many years ago, whose primary board were, you know, white people, and the clients of the organization, 80 to 90 percent of the clients were Latinx people. Yeah. We've got to stop that, you know, and more people who are the clients or the beneficiaries of service have to be close to the decision makers and make those decisions. We have to have their voices on our board and we have to listen to those voices. Yeah, absolutely. We have created an amazing tool on the American Nonprofit Academy and it evolves every year and it's two-part. It's kind of like a survey to determine who and what you have on the board and to look at the talent and then there's a second part that allows you to to determine what you need on the board and it's not ethnicity and gender. It's things like language. It's geography. It is understanding technology, marketing, HR, you know, legal components, all these things and if you want access to that just email me. I'll give you up, give out my personal email. And I would say this, Julia, anyone who is looking to add board members should go through that assessment process. Yeah, yeah, you have to. It's a great tool. Before you add anybody, anyone else. Yeah, it's a great tool. JCP at American Nonprofit Academy.com. Email me and I'll go ahead and send it to you. It's two different assessments. It's a really good thing but you know, Jamal, I agree exactly with what Jack is saying. You've got to get people around the table who look like the people that are involved in the Mission Vision and Values. That's right. It's the right thing to do. It's the most effective thing to do but it's hard to get there, right? Yeah. It's going to take time. It's easier to get, you know, the people that look like you, your friends on the board, than it is to get people that don't look like you. So you have to work it and yeah, good luck Jamal. I appreciate you even asking that question or even I should say ask me about thinking about it. Let's go to the Fund Development Committee in New Orleans, Louisiana. A Fund Development Committee. I love it when a group asks a question. I think that's fascinating. How soon, post Christmas holiday season, can we ask donors again? We are having an internal discussion. Okay, disagreement about this. I love it. Another really tough question that there's not like one answer fits all. It really depends on the relationship you have with the donor. You know, if you have a relationship where 30 days after you received a gift for this program and you have another program that you may want to ask for, if you have that relationship where you can do that, fine. Now for me, I don't like to be asked more than once a year. I think it's a waste for them to keep sending letters and emails saying hey, support us again because and I think this year I'm going to put a little note in all of the gifts that I make. Only connect, contact me once a year. But there are other donors who want to be asked more than once. So it's really depends on who that donor is and what they want. I will tell you this. One of the prime ways that we can determine about monthly giving, the best candidates to make a monthly gift are those who make more than one gift a year to your organization. They already know how to make multiple gifts. So maybe the way, rather than I know this is a roundabout way of answering this question, maybe what you should look at is how do you start a monthly giving program and give it some strength and vigor. How do you invigorate that? Yeah, how do you like convert those folks to a monthly giving environment? Yeah, I think if someone is, if someone gives you more than one gift a year, they're a prime candidate for a monthly gift. Yeah. So you know what I, when I see this question, I think this is like a marketing question. Like I think that you know it's easy to confuse and ask and in working with donors with communication. And I think, so I got to ask you this, Jack, when you say you want to be asked once a year. Yeah. Okay, get it. But don't you want to be hearing about what's going on? Oh yeah. Yes, I do. And that's a principle of stewardship. I want to get reports on the impact of my gift. I want to be thanked and I want to be recognized in the way that I tell you I want to be recognized. Not the way you think I should be recognized, but in the way I let you know. And how do you find out those things? Ask me. Ask your donors. Would you like to receive more than one gift request a year? And if they say only one a year, follow it. If they say sure. Yeah, you know, let me know what your needs are throughout the year. Then definitely ask. It's just such a simple thing to do. Ask them. They'll tell you. They're waiting for you to ask some of these questions. Yeah. Yeah, I would say don't confuse the ask with engagement. And I love what you just said is that demonstration that is powerful of impact. You know, thank you, Jack, a lot of for this gift. We just got to do this because you joined with all of our other donors at this level. We were able to achieve that or accomplish this. I mean, to me, Jack, that seems like that's a better thing. When I see lots of people, your gift has made a difference. Tell me what the difference was. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. What difference did my gift make? Don't, you know, this language, your gift makes a difference. It doesn't mean nothing to me. Tell me specifically what the difference was. So let me ask you a follow up question to that. Then how do you feel about like monthly newsletters or communications or digital? Like what is your sense of that? How does that look to you as a donor and then somebody that's an expert in cause selling space? What's your sense of connectivity? You know, so I do want to hear about impact based on that question you asked me before. Do I need a monthly newsletter? Probably not. Okay. Some people do need a monthly newsletter. They want to know. Here's the problem with most of the newsletters I get. It's about the organization. It's so organization centric. It's not about impact some of these things. It's not about how I made a difference with my gift. It's not about recognizing donors. It's all about them and it seems to me that some newsletters are really insiders. It's for the insiders. It's for the board. It's for the staff. It's not necessarily for the you know the stakeholders outside of the section. Okay. So when I hear you say that, I think like moving more towards education and understanding like the sector as a whole. So let's say you're donating to a food bank. Yeah. Or information about the ecosystem of the sector. I mean would that be of interest to you as a donor? Yeah. I'd like to know what's going on. You know is the population of those needing food rising? Is it staying the same? Is it going down? What problems are we seeing that are causing more people to come to food bank? Is it greater unemployment? Is it inflation that we're talking about so much right now? What are the problems? Tell me about the problems that bring about the need for feeding programs. Right. Wow. Let's get to the bottom of these causes. Right. Is it social injustice that promotes poverty? I think so. You know is it racism? Is it sexism? What are the root causes of the problems that all of these organizations who come to this show today are trying to solve? Tell me about that. So a viewer has written in and makes the comment this only works if you can get donors to respond and you have to be able to track their individual preferences and segment them. This is a big discussion and that's a heavy lift for a lot of groups. How do you respond to that? So yes, whoever wrote that is absolutely correct. You know we segment our donors and we target our communications based on those segments. You know we talk about millennials all the time. Millennials are now the largest part of our population, donor population. How do they want to be communicated with? Do they want snail mail? I don't think so. Do they want email? Probably. How do they want to be involved with our organization? They don't want to just write checks. Maybe they want to come and do some volunteer work. This is another big thing about millennials. Do you know what I just read a statistic? Do you know who how millennials like to give? Through the workplace. Oh yeah. They like to give through the workplace. Baby boomers like me, we like to write a check. By the way, don't just send me a request right away now that I said that. You know what I'm saying? We're check writers. Maybe we don't volunteer as much. Maybe in retirement we volunteer more. So yes, segmenting and understanding that segment. It's like this. When I worked in healthcare, if you called me up and said, Jack, I'm interested in women's health at your hospital, am I going to send you information about the emergency room? Of course not. I'm going to segment you into a group of people who are interested in women's health and then I'm going to target my communications based on your preferences. That and how do we know that? We know that by talking to them. Back to the question about should I ask for another gift? Ask them. Right, right. You know, Jack, as we wind up another amazing time with you, it just, it's so simple, but it's so hard. It seems like this just keeps coming back to communication. Yeah, it does. I mean communication, communication, communication. Yep. And every single generation of which there are like five right now from the greatest generation still around to Gen Z, Y, or whatever it is, they desire different ways to communicate with them and different messaging. We really have to be cognizant of what messages they want. Absolutely. Well, Jack Elotto, you are an amazing talent. I always am super excited to get into the studio with you. Happy new year. Happy new year. I just love your energy and I love your knowledge and the things that you say. It's super cool, super cool to have you on my friend. What a great year it's been. It's going to be even a better year. We're very excited about this with the non-profit show and it's been a great thing for us to end on such a high note. So thank you, Jack Elotto. Thank you. One of our stellar trainers with Fundraising Academy. Check them out at fundraising-academy.org or my learning portal. Really interesting, interesting opportunities to learn more about some of the things that we've been talking about for free. So you just got to check them out. They do such an amazing thing. Again, we want to thank all of our presenting sponsors from Blumerang to American Non-profit Academy, Your Part-Time Controller, Be Generous, Fundraising Academy at National University, Staffing Boutique, Non-profit Thought Leader, and the Non-profit Nerd. These are the folks that have been with us day in and day out and they're going to be with us as we launch the new year, which is going to be very, very exciting. Jack, have a wonderful holiday. And you as well. Happy New Year to everyone. Absolutely. As we end every episode, we want to remind everyone, ourselves, and even 2023 in the whole environment, to stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here on