 I'm going to introduce our facilitator today, someone I've known for many years through her work at Tano and I'll let Mary Beth talk about her background, but she is someone who the council has been working with for just about three or four years now and will be conducting the advocacy workshop for you today. And again, I appreciate you being here and I'd like to introduce Mary Beth Harrington. Thank you. Thank you so much. In case you had missed it, we have some television cameras in the back. NowcastSA is going to be taping this segment, so you'll be able to see it again later on if you just can't get enough of it the first time. And if you ask any questions during the presentation, what I will do is I'll repeat your question so that those who are watching can see it. Can we have the light stem so you can see the presentation? Thanks. So today we're doing something that I call the six degrees of advocacy, lessons in lobbying without legislatures. And already you're sitting here, getting concerned because you see the word lobbying. We'll talk about that. Just a couple of housekeeping. There is a sign-in sheet that is going around. If you have the sign-in sheet, please hold it up. Okay, he's filling it out right now. Please fill that out. The reason why you want to fill that out is because I will send you this presentation. And PowerPoint. And you can use it as you will. In fact, I really encourage you and hope that you will show it to your board members. And you don't have to use my name. You can come up with some of the stories and things yourselves, but feel free to use it as much as you want. That's not a problem. I don't copyright things. I want it to be free for you guys to use as much as you want. So you'll get that as well as if there's additional resources or things that we discuss that are not included, I will include that. And I'll probably get that to you tomorrow or the next day, just so you know. Please feel free to tell me any ideas or things that have happened to you. But of course, we want to keep it to one person at a time. And your questions are welcome. Now, I'm not the type of presenter that will sit there and say, does anybody have any questions? And then wait till I hear crickets. So as my husband says, we've been married 30 years, he says, wind me up and I just start talking. And I don't stop. So if you have a question, raise your hand or just shout it out or jump up and down or however you want to get my attention, that's fine. I also appreciate questions because I have a glass of water back here. And if I don't get a break, I don't drink the water. And then I lose my voice. And that would be bad. So please feel free to stop me if you have any questions. I do move very, very quickly. I just don't want you to get too bored. So feel free to stop me at any time. Please mute your electronics. You can type, you can text, you can tweet. I feel free to because I figure if you're tweeting, you're tweeting about how wonderful this presentation is and how everybody should be here. So feel free to do that. Just make sure they're muted so they don't interrupt anybody else. And there's some business cards on the table. I am a nonprofit consultant. I'm not your typical nonprofit consultant, and you will hear more about that later. But there's my business cards if you're interested. As Scott said, there's a little bit of my biography. I don't say go into this very much. But just enough to let you kind of see that. The thing that makes me a little bit different from most nonprofit consultants is that I've worked with a diverse group of nonprofits. And when I was with TANO, for instance, that's Texas Association Nonprofit Organizations, TANO supports all the nonprofits in the state, all of them. We may not have contact with all of them, but we supported all of them. So you can see with the volunteer center, I supported all the nonprofits in North Texas with the San Antonio Area Foundation. I obviously support the nonprofits here in San Antonio. So you can see that I didn't have a single sector influence like animals or children or healthcare or arts and culture. I just worked with everybody. So that means my examples come from a variety of different nonprofits. And of course, at the bottom is the name of my company, which is kind of odd I know. It's 501C cubed, not three, 501C cubed taking nonprofits to the third power. And this is just a list of some of my clients. You can see there's a couple in San Antonio, different clients that I work with. Again, a very diverse group of nonprofits. So if you're interested, here's my Twitter handle and my LinkedIn. On the sign-up sheets, there's a question about LinkedIn. Go ahead and check it off if you have a profile on LinkedIn. I really encourage you to do that if you don't. And then what I'll do is I'll try to connect with you, if you so wish. Our agenda today, it's pretty brief it looks like, but we have a lot of information to cover. We're gonna be talking about a paper at first that was called Beyond the Cause, which the link is available at the end of the presentation. So you can go to it to look for more information. We're gonna talk about understanding the nonprofit sector. I have been working in nonprofits for over 20 years. And what I find is that most of us did not go and get our certification or our degree in nonprofit management. We got to this in a variety of different ways. And what happens is we don't know the whole story. We don't really know a lot about why a nonprofit is a nonprofit. Now some of you may know this and that's great. Just pat yourself on the back and feel really good and arrogant that you know all this. But what I find is that most people don't. Most people don't know a lot about really what makes a nonprofit a nonprofit. And it's very important for you to know that so that you can make sure that your board members and your stakeholders and your donors so that you can educate them. So they better understand and we'll be talking about that a lot. We're gonna be talking about spreading the word, or like I said, spreading the good news of the nonprofit sector. And about plenty of pie to go around. And at the end of the presentation, there are some resources, okay? So that's kind of what we got set for today. So the first thing we're gonna talk about is defining advocacy. And I think one of the simplest presentation techniques is to give you a definition. And so I've done that here. I've gotten the advocacy and the advocate definition up here. And as it says, you can see it's one that defends or maintains a cause or proposal, okay? It says nothing about legislation. It says nothing about politics. Neither of these say anything about politics. Versus the next one, which is lobbying, or to lobby, which says influence legislatures or other public officials in favor of a specific cause. So I happened to be at a presentation yesterday and we were talking about advocacy. And a lot of people when they were talking about advocacy, they kept talking about legislative and talking to legislatures. Well, advocacy is a lot more than that. I think of, and isn't the definition here, but I think of advocacy as education. We need to educate the people in San Antonio about your individual nonprofit or whoever you're working with. That's really what you have to do. And that's not lobbying because you're not, okay, are you influencing? Yes. Are you potentially influencing legislatures? Yes, that's gonna be kind of what we're hoping the end result is. But unless you're specifically talking to a congressman or a senator or a city council person and saying, I want you to vote for this, because of this is this. Then you are not lobbying, you are educating. And that's what I want you to think about it as. And for advocacy, therefore, is we need to advocate our mission of our nonprofit and really the nonprofit sector to everybody in San Antonio. In fact, when I talk to board members and when I talk to staff at a nonprofit, what I tell them is, I think your goal, you're gonna think I'm ridiculous. I think your goal should be to ensure that every single person in the San Antonio area or areas that you serve knows about your organization. Now, that may be a lofty goal. That may not be something that you think that you can accomplish. But if you have that as a goal, aren't you gonna get closer to reaching that goal? You're gonna get closer to doing that. And so that's what I want you to do. That's what I want you to do. That's what I want your board to do. That's what I want your donors to do. That's what I want your staff to do. That's what I want everybody who's associated with your organization to do. I want them out there at least once a week talking about your organization, advocating for your organization. And another way I talk about it is you need to be able to articulate in a compelling way why this community would be devastated if your organization did not exist. And I'll repeat that because that's really important. You need to be able to articulate in a compelling way why this community would be devastated if your organization did not exist. Now, that's not something you're gonna be able to come up with in five minutes. I know that. But if you take some time, work with your marketing group, working with your board to be able to craft that, and then you make sure again, your board, your donors, your clients, your staff, whoever's associated with your organization can say that. You will get money. You will get influence. You will get clients. You will get whatever it is that you want because you've explained to people in a compelling way why you need to be around. So that's kind of what we're talking about when talking about advocacy. We're talking about talking about your nonprofit. Now, I go a step further with this. It's that I want you to be talking about all nonprofits, not just yours. And I understand that that's kind of a challenge because, you know, you got to talk about your stuff and then now I'm asking you to talk about nonprofits. But you'll see how you can weave that in. But that's very, very important. And again, we'll be talking about that. So those are the definitions. So beyond the cause, the art and science of advocacy, which again, like I said, there's a link to this. This was something that was put together by the independent sector. If you don't know about them, you need to know about them. And I just kind of took a few nuggets out of the paper just to kind of give you some idea. So one of the things it did was it identified some of the strengths of our community or of organizations or nonprofits. And it talks about favorable public opinion. That's kind of waned a little bit in recent years, but most people still have sort of a positive idea of nonprofits. It talks about a network of hundreds of organizations already engaged in work, many of whom do know and communicate with each other. I saw some of you come in and visit and talk to each other. So you know some of you know each other. Some of you may even work together and collaborate. You have some key relationships with key officials. So some nonprofits have stronger relations than others, but some do. And it's a growing field of credible research directly rated to key policies. That's one place where nonprofits have not done such a great job, but organizations like the Center for Public Policy and Independent Sector, GuideStar, et cetera are starting to do a better job. We're starting to get some research. And that's kind of, again, we're slow to it, but we're starting to get some research. So public policy successes that we have had, and we have had had some public policy successes which I'll talk about, it's possible for a network of pooled assets that is the nonprofits to achieve important outcomes. So what we have proven is that when we work together, we can get things done. And that doesn't mean just working in our silos, like all of the United Way is working together or all the animal-serving agencies working together. But when we all work together, everybody, everybody, all the 501, and I'll just say 501c3 specifically, and we all work together on a certain issue. So if, for instance, the city council here in San Antonio decided to do something that we did not think was in our best interests, if we pull together and we use our donors and everybody, then we can be more effective. A good example of that is when I was with the Volunteer Center of North Texas, what we did is every single Monday, I think it was, we had an advertisement or a column that talked about the volunteer opportunities that are available in the area. So nonprofits would give us those volunteer opportunities and we'd post them in the paper. Well, as you can imagine, Dow's morning news, that was really some expensive ad spacing that they were giving us and they wanted to pull it and they'd let us know that they were going to pull it. This was many years ago, by the way. And so what we did is we started letting all of our nonprofits know, this free resource was going away. You weren't gonna be able to get your posting in the Dow's morning news anymore. So we let them know and we told them they need to let their donors know. They need to let their volunteers know. Well, so I think that we got the news about the Dow's morning news, like a Monday at like say five o'clock or something. 8 a.m. the next day, the Dow's morning news was frantically calling us, telling us, stop, stop, stop, we're not gonna do anything with it. It's gonna stay because we broke their fax machine and we broke their answering machine service. I told you it was an old long time ago, so faxes were still being used. We actually broke it because they received so many calls. They said that the phone never stopped. Even in the middle of the night, people were calling to tell them how terrible that is. That was that they were going to do it. So that's how nonprofits working together can make something happen. And that's not a political situation, but it's certainly something that impacted nonprofits. But a collaborative model like that is not common practice. One of the things that I do when I go around the state talking to nonprofits is I talk about working together and partnering together. And I don't mean that organizations where it's obvious to work together like a library and a school. That's an obvious thing. But a library and an animal shelter working together is not an obvious thing. And what I encourage is nonprofits to partner with not the obvious organization because foundations love that. Funders love that. And funders are, there are so many nonprofits out there so many nonprofits asking for money that they're finding it difficult to fund because they have to choose. And they so much like it better when they can choose a partnership between a couple of nonprofits and supporting two nonprofits. So if you collaborate, there's a greater chance that you're going to get more funding. And also obviously you have access to new volunteers, you have access to new donors, you have access potentially to new clients, new resources, it's just a win-win. But yet nonprofits, we don't like to partner. We don't like to play, we don't play nicely together sometimes. And that's actually one of the things I talk about later. We all want to hold on to our piece of the pie. So collaborative model means, just so you know, is developing a shared long-term goals, partnering with an organization and having a long-term goal of making something happen. Obviously, like I said, it increases the number and the depth of the relationships. Maybe the organization that you're partnering with has some relationships with some political officials that you don't have and you can therefore get that relationship going that way. It obviously improves some coordination, you learn new things, how to work better together and increases the visibility and cloud of the entire sector. So it's a good thing, it's a win-win. And advocates call for strong leadership to organize the sector. And that's one of our challenges. In small businesses, for instance, have the small business administration, right? And that is an organization that works together for the small business community. Chambers, for instance, work for businesses and non-profits sometimes, it depends on the chamber. But the challenge for us is that we have Scott and Scott's fantastic, but we don't have a sector-wide place where we can go to have some leadership to tell us how to do this, to move us forward. We'll get emails from maybe points of light or we'll get an email from Scott or we'll get different emails, but there's no one common place where we can all go for information. And so therefore, we're not strategic as a non-profit sector going after policies or procedures or things like that. So as it says, we're stronger when we advocate as a non-profit sector rather than individual because you're stronger as a group. Our challenges, of course, are limited resources. Time and money, primarily, right? If I were to come to you and say, hey, I want you to go to Austin to work with me on this, well, you may be busy, right? Or you may not have the funding to do that. And so that's a huge challenge. And what would be great is if we could all put a pool of money into an advocacy group that would do that for us, but most of us are not gonna do that because we have limited resources. And all this requires a shift in the status quo. We have to change the way we think. Right now, when we go out and we're talking to a public official, we're talking about our non-profit. And we have to change that. We have to start talking about all non-profits and we need to start educating them on the non-profit sector. We need to start advocating for the sector as a whole. So we have to change that. And one of the things that it says is Congress is poised to take a closer look at charitable sector. We have a target on our backs. There are congressmen and there are senators who want to change the way we do business. There's a senator who wants to abolish all tax abatements for non-profits. That's already happened or tried to happen in two states. Now I think something like that might actually get us moving and get us working together, but the problem is it may be too little, too late. But there's lots of things that are going on at the local level, as well as the state level, as well as at the national level that will impact you. Do you have a document destruction policy? Do you have a whistleblower policy? Do you have a conflict of interest policy? Those things eventually are going to be required. Now it's not that big a deal to have those things, but those are some of the requirements that Congress is looking at mandating. There's a senator also who wants to mandate that every non-profit have a yearly audit every year. Now if you know that an audit costs between eight and $10,000, normally, and if you were to know that 75%, 75% of the non-profits in the state of Texas, and actually as the United States of the whole, 75% of the non-profits have revenues under $25,000. Now you may be an organization that has a $100,000 budget, and you think you're small potatoes, you're not. 75% of the non-profits have revenues under $25,000. So how do you think that's going to impact that non-profit to have to have an annual audit that costs between eight and $10,000? Well right now you're saying okay, they need to do something different, right, but they don't know that. They don't understand that. And if we don't tell them that, it's not gonna happen. See I managed to have a drink without anybody asking questions. So that's kind of what we're talking about here. So in order for this to happen, we need to understand the non-profit sector. And again, I know some of you will know this and that's great, but what I'm telling you is that the questions and the things that I'm talking about here are not that something that I decide, well this is just a great information. I'm telling you this because somebody who is a non-profit staff person or an executive director or a board member said this to me. And not just once but several times. So if you look at some of these comments and you think everybody knows that, no. I'm here to tell you that not everybody knows that and I can almost guarantee you that somebody in this room doesn't know that. So let's talk about understanding the sector. So let's talk about how the non-profit sector actually became into being. It really started with the pilgrims. Philanthropy started with the pilgrims and I'm not talking about when they first crossed over but after they had been here for a little bit of time some of them were more successful than others and what they realized is that they had to help each other in order to survive. And so those who had more corn or more meat or more blankets or heat or whatever shared it with others. And that's really, I mean I'm sure that if you go down to the Greeks and others there may be other sources of our stories of philanthropy starting but that's the one we got right now. Let's start with the pilgrims. So we're just gonna hop through a few centuries into the war years. World War I and World War II. Now I'm really excited that we have a diverse audience here. We have some men and some women here so and I'm not here to be stereotypes or anything. I'm just telling you the way it is, okay? So the war years. Men, you went off to war. Thank you very much. You fought for your country, you were off to war. Women, what were we doing? This is the interactive part of the session. Just so you know. Loaning the bullets. We were, thank you, we were Rosie the Riveter, right? That's what the women were doing. So the men went off to war and the women went into the warehouses and the manufacturing and made bullets and made guns and made, just did stuff, right? That's the first time that women were really outside the house. We were working outside the house and you know what? We found out we liked it. That was neat, that was fun. We were, we felt like we were accomplishing something. We were making a difference. That was neat. But then, thankfully the war ended and the guys came home and what happened to the women? What did we do? We went back in the kitchen, right? We went back in the kitchen, we went back home, we went back to our traditional place at that time and we were not happy. Some of us were not happy. Some of us were not feeling fulfilled. Some of us felt like we wanted to make a bigger difference. We wanted to do more than just take care of our home and our family. So then we had the 1950s start coming and between the 50s and the 80s, non-profits benefited from U.S. success. The United States was blowing and going. We had lots of money, we had lots of things, lots of things happening, lots of wonderful things happening and non-profits benefited. And that's when several non-profits came into being because we had women primarily, and I'm not saying that men were not involved, but we primarily had women who were looking for a way to make a difference in the community. And so we started volunteering and we started doing different things, working in hospitals and different, and that's where volunteerism really started to pick up. We started organizations like the Junior League and the League of Women Voters. So those organizations started out at that time as a result of women looking for ways to make a difference in the community. And because our men, our husbands were corporate people, we would go to them and say, would you give us money? You need to give us money. Your company needs to give us money to do these wonderful things because we're making a difference. And because we had a little excess companies were doing so well, they did. And that worked out really well until the 1980s when there was a downturn in the economy. And there was a shift in donations. Corporations started saying, wait, wait, wait, wait, we don't have that much money to give. We need to be more strategic in who we are giving to. And so therefore we're only going to give to organizations that do this or this or this. And a lot of times those were organizations that somehow met their mission of their organization too. Also what happened is the government started saying, well, we'll let the nonprofits do that. So homeless shelters and workforce and different things that used to be under the government programs started being shifting to nonprofits. Well, we'll let the nonprofits do that. In fact, many states and many governments were paying nonprofits to do things that they used to do and services that they used to provide. And so what happened is communities started to become more dependent on nonprofits. Nonprofits to do things. But then in the 80s we also had nonprofit sustainability started to be something we started talking about because nonprofits were having a harder time getting funding, getting money. We had, and we were doing so many different programs and we were helping so many people and we were having to find new ways to get funding. In the 2000s, while the need of nonprofits increased, the value of nonprofits started to decrease. People started to question nonprofits because there started to be stories about nonprofits on the paper, about fraud and corruption and just poor management and different stories. So people started to not look at nonprofits necessarily as the greatest thing in the world. Now I'm not saying they do not think of us as great but there's some more skeptics out there. And nonprofits continually were asked to do more with less. With less, less, less. And we came into the, now we have like Kickstarter and we have CauseVox and we have different ways of funding. So that's kind of the brief history of nonprofits so you kind of understand how nonprofits came to be. And this is a picture of a castle in Germany. No, Schwanstein, if I messed up that, I'm sorry, I don't speak German. And I use this picture and I know it's kind of blurry and I apologize, but I use this picture specifically because a lot of nonprofits that I find think of themselves as this. They look at them like this. And there's two ways you can look at this kind of depends if you're a positive or negative type person. You can look at this and say, look at my nonprofit. We're magnificent, we're huge, we're incredible. And then others of us look at this and say, that's our nonprofit, we're all alone. We're isolated, nobody is around us. And it's just sort of a positive negative way but that's a lot of times how people look at nonprofits. So what I wanna do is give you a little bit of a reality check about how nonprofits are in Texas. This is a breakdown of the Texas by County. It says 2007 and I apologize for that. The numbers, it doesn't really change the demographics but nobody else has done a really good statewide map like this since then. If you have some extra funding lying around, let me know. So the thing is, and I know you can't read all of it and that's okay because you don't need to do that but basically if I were to tell you or say, can you point out Amarillo or Lubbock or El Paso or San Antonio or Corpus Christi or any of those on the map, I bet you can do that because basically the areas that have the most nonprofits are in blue and they are major metropolitan areas. So like I said, pointing out Dallas is pretty easy because it's this huge bit at the top where there's a whole bunch of nonprofits. So what this tells us is that most nonprofits are in large metropolitan areas. That should come as no surprise. More people are there, more funding, more need is in those areas. So and as you can tell, a lot of different areas are in yellow, especially in the West and the Panhandle and those are areas where you do not have a large density of nonprofits. So it doesn't mean you don't have any but you don't have a large density of nonprofits there. One other thing I want to tell you about the fact that it says 2007 is that one of the challenges nonprofits have is that a lot of our information that we have to talk about the nonprofit sector is dated. You know, I bet I don't know how often it comes out but about every quarter or something you'll hear a report that talks about small businesses or how the economic economy is doing for for profits, right? That comes out every quarter. Chamber of Commerce has monthly statistics. The for profit sector puts money into their research and their data management and getting data so that they can report on how their organizations, the oil and gas industry does this, how they're doing kind of thing. We don't do that. We don't pull our money together. And so therefore the people who are out there that are looking at the nonprofit sector and trying to get information about the sector so that we can tell people about the nonprofit sector are having a hard time getting funding. So a lot of times the information that we provide you is two or three years old because we're getting it from your 990s. That's part of the reason that the IRS has now decided that every single nonprofit has to fill out at least a 990 because they're trying to get more information. They are not trying to figure out a way to start making you file taxes. It's think of it as a census. It's a way of getting information so that we understand how many nonprofits are out there and what are they doing and some basic information because otherwise what we're doing is we're pulling it from your 990s and that information therefore is two or three years old when our counterparts on the for-profit are getting their information quarterly. So you think you're so smart, right? So let's start this. We're gonna talk about what is a nonprofit. This is true or false and I really want you to call out true or false and I'm not gonna pick on you if you say the incorrect answer. Do not worry about that. But I need you to yell it out because the folks that are watching on Nowcast will need to hear you, okay? So this is your first question. A nonprofit is a corporation. True or false? Loud? False? Okay, well I heard some false, I heard some truths. The answer is true. That's why you are incorporated. You are a corporation. You are not a for-profit. You are a corporation if you are a nonprofit, you are a corporation. Which means that if Congress, and I'm picking on Congress and please understand, I am not meaning to be negative government, I'm just trying to tell you the way it is. So if Congress were to decide that they were going to make a law that said that everybody who works in a corporation is going to wear pink on Fridays, what color blouse or shirt are you wearing on Friday? Pink because you are a corporation. There is nothing that says, there's no law that says nonprofits will never pay taxes. What there is is there is an exemption. Corporations pay taxes except nonprofits. That's an exemption. So that can always go away. So you're a corporation. And we saw this happen with the Sarbanes-Oxley bill. Sarbanes-Oxley said, and I'm not gonna go into it, but it said that corporations shall do this, this, this, whistleblower document, corporations will have a whistleblower act, we'll have a document destruction policy, we'll have a conflict of interest policy. And that's why I'm saying that eventually you're, there's an exemption for nonprofits right now, but eventually you're probably gonna have to have those because all corporations have to have those. And that's one of those ways in which things that were done for the for-profit sector is trickling down to impact the nonprofit sector. Which again, those things are not that big a deal, but bigger deals are coming. So a nonprofit makes money, true or false? I hear false, I hear true. Well, the answer is true. You better make money. If you don't make money, you may not have your doors open, at least for very long. Now you may have an endowment, I know there's some special circumstances, but pretty much nonprofits need to make money. You do not need to make a profit, or any profit that you make will go back into your programs. And if I really wanna blow your mind, I'll tell you that there are nonprofits out there that have a board and the board gets the profit, some of the profits from what they do, they're not fairly successful. And they certainly can't get a lot of donors, but it's possible. But a nonprofit does make money. And we need to make sure, if you've been listening, coming to the issues in profile and listening to Dan Pilata, he talks about overhead, and he talks about making money, it's not wrong to make money. Because the more money you make, the more people you can help. Non-profit has employees, true or false? Okay, you're thinking this is a really silly question, right? You're feeling really smug about this, right? I can't tell you how many board members I have had call me and say, hi, we have this nonprofit and we're doing some great work in this and this, and it's just us, the board, and some volunteers, and can we hire somebody like an executive director to run this for us? Because it's really getting to be a lot of work. I cannot tell you how many times I have had that conversation with nonprofit board members. So, it's true. There are just a few nonprofits in Texas. False. Last count, there were 71,000, and that's an old number. So, the purpose of a nonprofit is, quote, to do good, true or false? This one scares you, I can tell. True or false, loud? All nonprofits? The Ku Klux Klan is a nonprofit. Not to scare you or anything, but yeah, yeah, absolutely. And the only, thank you for saying that. He said, in their eyes, they're doing good, and that's, yeah, that's fine. But this whole thing is do good, we're do gooders. It's really, it incorrectly depicts us. We're not here just to do good, we're here to do more things than that. And so that's why a lot of nonprofit people are trying to get away from that do gooder attitude, do gooder stuff. And also knowing that all nonprofits, technically, are not in the business to do good. A stakeholder is another term for a vampire slayer. Just seeing if you're awake, yes, false. Stakeholders are anybody who has any kind of affinity with your organization. So it can be your clients, it could be your staff, it could be your volunteers, it could be your donors, it could be your board members, it could be the person down the street who's your neighbor who hears you talk about your nonprofit on a regular basis. So it's anybody who has any kind of affinity. So when I started talking about stakeholders, I'm talking about the entire community, hopefully. Okay? And nonprofits do not impact the economy. False, yeah, false. And we'll certainly be talking a lot about that. So talking about what is a nonprofit. Well, the IRS is basically nonprofit is an IRS designation. And if you really wanna understand the rules for running a nonprofit as a business in Texas, you could read chapter 22 of the Texas Business Organization Code. I also suggest that it's a great cure for insomnia. So that's basically the rules of running your business in Texas. Okay? The Internal Revenue Service has a code called 501C. Now you notice I didn't say the three, 501C. And there's actually 28 different types of nonprofit organizations according to the IRS. Some of which we've started to hear a little bit more about. So there are 501C threes, which I'm sure that many of you are. And that's religious educational charitable. That's, it's often called the charitable. That's where charity, you know, the charitable comes into play. So that's the charitable. And basically all of these have different tax rules. So when you're starting your 501C, you decide what you want to be based on the taxes and the requirements and different things like that. So 501C fours, which you've heard a lot about recently are Civic League social welfare organizations. Scott and the San Antonio nonprofit council because they're a membership organization could choose to be a 501C four. And I know many organizations that do. So that tends to be associations, chambers a lot of times, chambers of commerce, which are nonprofits choose to be that different things. You have 501C 11, which are teachers retirement fund associations. And my favorite, the 501C thirteens, cemeteries. They don't make a huge profit, yeah cemeteries. So cemeteries, state, those are mostly state cemeteries. They're not your big behemoth for profit cemeteries, but your state cemeteries or your small family cemeteries. So there's actually 28 designations, which is why it's so important to say that you're a 501C three, if that's what you are, et cetera. And helping the rest of the public, them as I like to refer them, them out there, helping them to understand what a nonprofit is. I got into a huge argument with a nonprofit executive director with one of the largest nonprofits here. And he was an attorney. And he and I got into this argument because he kept telling me the Green Bay Packers were not a nonprofit. And I'm like, yeah they are. Because they are actually owned, well okay, I'm one of the owners, I admit it. But actually they're owned by the city. The NFL, as you've heard recently, is a nonprofit. It's probably a 501C four, I'm pretty sure that's what it is. But the NFL is a nonprofit. So there's a lot of nonprofits out there that don't look like nonprofits. And if you are confused, what do you think the rest of the world is? The rest of the world who's hearing this, and hearing, oh wait, wait, the NFL's a nonprofit, so the NFL is just like the Salvation Army, wait. So is it a nonprofit or not? I have a new true or false, another true or false question for you. Okay, you're already, I can see in your eyes that you're terrified by this. But remember, the folks on TV can't see, they're only seeing the back of your heads. So true or false, is it a nonprofit? A university. I hear true, do I hear false? The answer? Both. I know, true question. Universities, it used to be that, we heard Saint blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We figured it was a nonprofit, right? Well, there's a university that's becoming very popular. It's named after a major city in Arizona. And it's interesting, they are not a nonprofit, they are a for-profit. My son wants to play football for them, and I had to try to explain to them that they are an online university. Can't really play football for them. Of course he had to explain to me, well they have a stadium, only the football people are really getting those jokes. So it's University of Phoenix, they have a stadium, yes. So now, the folks out there who used to think that they heard Immaculate Conception University or whatever, used to say, well that's a nonprofit. Now they're confused because all of a sudden they're hearing about these for-profit universities. Hospitals, true or false? You're getting smarter, both, yeah, both. Again, it used to be that you could say Saint something and you would assume that it was a nonprofit, or you assumed it was a hospital, it was a nonprofit. I believe, and do not quote me on this because I may be incorrect. It's happened a couple of times. I believe Saint David's hospital in Austin is a for-profit. I may be wrong about that, but I think it may be a for-profit. So now, you don't know. We don't know, they don't know. United Way, true or false? Is it a nonprofit? You're saying true, but I hear your hesitant in your voice. You're starting to wonder, okay, yeah, that's right. I have yet to find a United Way that is a for-profit. Workforce agencies, true or false? Non-profit. I hear some truths, come on guys. I know it's really true. It's both. It used to be that workforce agencies tended to be only nonprofits, but now the for-profits are getting into that business because there's a lot of people that are needing work and they're starting to realize that there's some money to be had there. We'll talk about those in a little bit later. Hospices, true or false? Are they our nonprofit? True and I hear both. Hospices are really interesting. The reason I say this is because hospices are one of the few for- No, there's nonprofits and there's for-profit. Hospices are one of the few for-profit organizations that have to use or should use volunteers. Because hospices started, and this is what they've told me, because hospices started out utilizing volunteers, hospices or profit hospices are required to have a certain percentage of volunteers. So if you are at a volunteer fair and you're trying to get people to volunteer and all of a sudden you see that this hospice is next to you that is a for-profit, you're going, what's the deal? Well, that's the deal. They are required, a for-profit hospice is required to have a certain percentage of volunteers. Yes, we have a question. Right, so his question was an organization that's just starting out, if they're trying to decide to be a for-profit or a nonprofit, what is their compelling decision? And I would say that usually it's mission. It's what they want to do, who they want to serve. Now I do know that some people start out as nonprofits because they think it's going to be an easier go. They think it's going to be easier than being a for-profit. They won't have to do so much paperwork and you guys find that to be true, right? So that's a lot of times why some people start. But we're getting these hybrids coming in. I don't have a lot of information. I'm not talking about that specifically today but we're getting hybrids of for-profit and nonprofit, a nonprofit that has a for-profit business aside. And so again, nothing is clear the world is getting muddier. And again, if you are confused, if some of these answers you didn't know, again, I implore you, what do you think your neighbors and other people out there who don't know really anything about nonprofits are thinking? They're getting even more confused, which is negative kind of, can be negative to you because now they don't know who you are and they think, oh, well, maybe you're just like everybody else and they don't know. Thank you for your question. And I hope I answered it. Homeless shelters, true or false? Are they a for-profit? I mean, excuse me, are they a nonprofit? True or false? Here are a couple false, I hear a couple true. Both. The answer, yeah, you got it, both. And the funny thing is, is I used to say true, they are a nonprofit because why would a homeless shelter make a profit? And somebody in a class, this is why I wanna hear from you, somebody in class said, excuse me, I need to correct you. There are actually at least three homeless shelters in the United States that are for-profits. They started out, as I understand it, and I don't not know the whole story, started out as nonprofits really didn't do well and became for-profits. They're in St. Louis to come to Washington and some other place. So there are some homeless shelters. Animal shelters? Both. Both. And that's because PetSmart and Petco and different things are starting to get into the shelter business too, and there's a little bit. And schools, finally, true or false? They're both. Yeah, because your charter schools, a lot of your charter schools are for-profit. So again, the whole reason I do that, it takes a lot of time, but the whole purpose of this is to help you to understand how confusing it is. And if it's confusing for you, it's confusing for the people that you're trying to talk to about your nonprofit, because you don't know how much influence they've had from these other organizations. So a little bit about Texas nonprofits. Texas has the third largest number of reporting charitable nonprofits, woo-hoo, or right behind New York and California. Okay, so Texas. All nonprofit organizations, the reason why I give you these statistics and they're not the most up to date is mainly to see the difference that all nonprofits, in a matter of 10 years, the number of nonprofits changed by 43%. If you think everybody and their mother is starting a nonprofit, you'd be right, because a lot of people are starting nonprofits. There's the 75% change in 501c3 nonprofits, and private foundations have had a 77% increase. That's because it used to be that basically you had a community foundation or one single foundation in a community. And then now all of a sudden, Michael J. Fox wants to have a foundation, and Bon Jovi wants to have a foundation, and Bonna wants to have a foundation, and there's a lot of different foundations. And of course foundations are a whole different thing because they don't, they may be a 501c3, but they operate very differently. And there are foundations out there, I know because I was executive director of the Austin Public Library Foundation, that don't have money, that have to go out and are working and competing with you, if you're not a foundation, for money. So you have foundations competing for money, you have 501c, other 501c3s competing for money, you have other people competing for money. And of course, as I said, the IRS, one of the things that they do with the 990 is the 990 is becoming, for lack of a better term, a census report, so that we will be able to get some more information from nonprofits so that we will be able to report better on nonprofits. And so do not be surprised if a couple of new questions start showing up on the 990 about your nonprofit. So one more nonprofit quiz. Truera Falls, nonprofits employ people, but they really do not make much money and they really, they don't receive benefits and they usually just work part-time. But I love it, both. Somebody said both, Falls, yes, yes, yes, we know this. And I usually save this comment till later, but I can't stand it because it's just too perfect. So when the, the healthcare act, and this is not a political statement about the healthcare act, when the healthcare act was being discussed in Congress and they were going around talking about the different provisions and different things about it, okay? They were talking about for-profit, then they talked about small businesses, how this would impact small businesses, and somebody said yes, but what about nonprofits? How will this impact nonprofits? And one of the leading senators, his aide, the aides are the ones who do all of this, guys, you know that, right? One of the aides said in a very authoritative voice, and I have friends who were there, so I know this for a fact, said in a very authoritative voice, we don't need to worry about nonprofits. They're all volunteers, they don't need healthcare. When I say what them thinks about you, what they think about you, that's who I'm talking about. And maybe you're not talking to that aid directly, but I'm gonna show you that eventually you could be in a non-direct way. And so one of the challenges you need to do, one of the reasons I'm here, one of the things I'm pitching is talking about the nonprofit sector as a whole, going out and saying some of this and helping people to understand, because we need to make sure that that aid, and our congressmen, and our senators, and our city council people, and everybody in the country understands what a nonprofit is so that they can better help us and better support us. So you don't think nonprofits are impacting the economy? Well, U.S. in 2004, and again, I apologize my statistics are old, but that's what we're talking about. U.S. charities employed over 9.4 million paid employees, or 7.2% of the American workforce, which brought in wages of 321 billion B. Now, 321 billion dollars of wages walked away, I think that people would notice. Now, if you add to that the $4.7 million of the full-time equivalent volunteers, you get 14.1 million percent of the workforce, or 10% of the total workforce. And if you don't think 10% is that big a deal, let me tell you that that is the entire workforce of the automobile industry before the downsizing from production to sale. How many car dealerships did you drive by in your way here? Okay, so it's a huge. Still don't think it's a big deal? Well, in Texas, the nonprofit sector employs six times more people than oil and gas. Think oil and gas is a big deal in Texas? The nonprofit sector employs six times more people than the oil and gas industry, and twice as many as the real estate industry. How many realtors do you know? And again, over 300,000 people are employed by the nonprofit sector in Texas, bringing in $12 billion in wages. So again, if we were able to get everybody in the nonprofit sector to march on Austin because of something they were going to do there, do you think we'd start to get attention? I think so. Will we know? But we would. And overall weekly wages for nonprofit employees are lower than for-profit. What a big shock, right? But the thing is, is that there are a few cases where for-profits pay less than nonprofits. That nonprofits, there's two that I know about. Banks versus credit unions, credit unions on nonprofits. And I have been told by friends who work at these that in a bank, a bank teller may get $16 an hour, and at a credit union, a teller may get $18 an hour. I'm also told that at those workforce agencies that the nonprofits tend to pay more than the for-profits. Now, of course, that's not the same across the board, but I'm just trying to give you a couple of places where, yeah, nonprofits do pay more. Another quiz, nonprofits do not make money. We already talked about that. It's false. You do need to make money. And nonprofits do not pay any taxes. True or false? False. You pay taxes. You pay taxes, if you're traveling, you're gonna pay a hotel motel tax. If you are selling something, you may need to pay some sales taxes. I'm not an accountant, so don't ask me too many deep questions about that, but you pay payroll taxes. And really, it depends on the state and the cities sometimes, because in some cities, nonprofits pay fees, and fees are taxes. In fact, in Houston, there was a huge hubbub five years ago, because as you know, Houston has had some hurricanes and had some terrible weather, and their sewage system needs repair. And so the people in Houston started saying, we can't tax our citizens anymore, and we can't tax our businesses anymore, so let's tack on a fee to the nonprofits. They have money. They're seeing you building a bunch of buildings and stuff, and they think, oh, they have money, let's get them to pay. And so it was a fee to pay for the sewage, to fix sewages. And the nonprofits, a specific group of the nonprofits, got together and started yelling and screaming and getting all their donors to get and their contributors to get together, and eventually they were able to get that overturned, and it didn't go through. But it's funny because it wasn't the typical nonprofits that we think about like the United Way, South Asian Army, animals, arts, and culture, and things like that. It was the churches. Have you been to Houston? They have some really big churches there, and the churches knew that it was based on number of congregants and different parishioners and people that they had coming to their services. Coming to their services, sometimes you actually use the other room, which causes the sewage fees, et cetera, and so they didn't want to pay that, and so they were able to get that to not happen. In Hawaii and Pennsylvania, there have been at least one, and I think Pennsylvania has happened twice, where there have been bills at the state level to eradicate all exemptions, tax exemptions for nonprofits. So in those two states, you wouldn't pay federal income tax because you're not exempt through the federal government, but if there are any state taxes, you would pay those if that went through, and more and more our politicians, our congressmen, and again, this is not anti-government, they're just looking at ways other people are doing this and they need to find funding and they don't want to increase taxes, so they're looking for new ways of doing it, and that's just what happens. In one community, if you are a nonprofit and you have a light post outside of your organization, you're going to pay for that light post. In one community, I think it's Champaign, Illinois, but please do not quote me on this, they have a toilet tax, it's again a sewage thing, they have a toilet tax that nonprofits pay, and a place in New Hampshire has a bed tax, so if you have a bed, if you're a homeless shelter, or an animal shelter, you have a bed tax. So these things, these fees or these taxes are sometimes called pilots, and I'm not talking about people up in there, it's called payments in lieu of taxes, and you'll hear the nonprofit quarterly and chronicle philanthropy and different people talking about this, so I wanted you to understand what pilots are, the payments in lieu of taxes, so basically it's a fee that a nonprofit has to pay for doing business, a certain business, and again, I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying, I want you to know that that's happening. So it's obviously, the Texas Charitable Nonprofits is an economic force. We generate over $50 billion in total revenue and have assets of over $96 billion. You know which community has the most assets per capita in Texas? I know you don't. Lubbock, Lubbock, because it's a fairly small community, and they have a major university with a major hospital and things like that, so that's kind of how that works. But you have assets, and those assets actually have increased and doubled, if not tripled, in the last 10 years because nonprofits have more assets, and if you're sitting here going, well, I don't have a building, you have computers, and computers are assets. You have furniture, and furniture are assets. You know, all those things you itemize in your audit or in your accounts payable, they're assets, and so that's part of that. Obviously, nonprofit sector is a sizable employer both adding both paid and volunteer workers to the economy. So when you go to that car dealership and to ask for a donation for your event or for your organization, one of the things you could say is look, you know, we employ this many people which brings in this much money into the economy, and because of that, people are more, my staff or people are more likely to buy, are able to buy a car from your dealership because you know, you're buying cars, you're buying food, you're buying clothing, you and the rest of the nonprofit sector, folks, and so that's part of it. So obviously, nonprofit organizations not only contribute to the social fabric, not only do we do good, which is great, and I'm not even talking about what you're doing for your clients because now your clients are able to go out and get jobs maybe or do different things and buy different things, right? For some of you, not maybe so much the animal-serving agencies, but. So again, all this is about the economic force that we bring to bear. Nonprofits cannot lobby or educate others on their needs. False, that is false. I have a funny story and again, I have lots of stories, obviously, and I just hear these and I do a little research, but I don't always know if they're true or not, but I have been told, I have been told that the reason that we as nonprofits think that we cannot lobby or use the L word, as some of us like to call it, the reason this whole thing got together is that back in the 1960s, there was a magazine called Life Magazine. Some of you may remember it. Some of you may have subscribed to it. So Life Magazine did the story on nonprofits and there was one line in there that says nonprofits cannot lobby and we have been living with that ever since. Now you cannot lobby in our traditional definition, like we said at the beginning, you cannot go and you cannot try to influence a politician to vote on a certain thing based on saying I want you to vote this or you should vote this or here's how to vote this, but you can educate, you can advocate for your nonprofit. So, and that's what you need to do. You need to spread the good news. You need to spread the good news about your nonprofit as well as the rest of the nonprofit sector. So one of the things you can do is the title of this presentation is the Six Degrees of Advocacy and I use the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon and yes I actually did take that picture. He was at points of light a couple of years ago. And the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, to synopsis if you don't know it, is basically if you take any actor who has ever been in the movie, so Clark Gable, Walter Matthow, it doesn't matter who it is, that if you look at who they have been in movies with, so you say Clark Gable's been in a movie with Vivian Lee, who was in a movie with Walter Matthow, who was in a movie with Brad Pitt, who was in a movie with Kevin Bacon, that's kinda how it works, okay? So what I say is take this to another level, let's talk about the Six Degrees of Advocacy. You are within Six Degrees of President Obama, of being able to ensure and advocate your message to President Obama, or Senator Cruz, or Senator Cornyn, or Mayor Castro, or Mayor, I don't know her last name. Taylor, I knew her first name, I just couldn't remember her last name. So you are within Six Degrees right now of Bill and Melinda Gates. You're saying you're going, yeah, right. Melinda and I went to high school together. Okay, and no, I can't call her up and ask her for a loan. But the point is, is that you are within Six Degrees, so that's why I want you to go out, and that's why it's so important for you to talk to your board members, talk to your staff, talk to your neighbors, talk to your volunteers, talk to your clients, and everybody about your organization, because years ago there was this commercial for a shampoo, now I'm really dating myself, that said she told two friends, and she told two friends, and so on, and so on. Well, that's what I'm talking about. So I'm telling two friends about your nonprofit, who tells, and those two friends tell somebody about your nonprofit, who tells two friends about your nonprofit, who all of a sudden tells it to Melinda, and all of a sudden you get a check. Now it isn't that easy, I know, but that's how it starts. It's called grassroots advocacy, and it's starting at the grassroots with the people that you know, with the low-hanging fruit, and when you talk to them, and you show them your passion, and you show them your information, you help them to build the whole picture, not just of your mission, and the people that you're helping, or the animals that you're helping, or the arts that you're doing it, not just that, but this is the economic force, because sometimes, to some people, money talks. And so if you are able to articulate in a compelling way why this community would be devastated if your nonprofit did not exist, not only from the social aspect, but the economic aspect, you're going to meet their needs no matter who it is, and they're going to tell two friends about your nonprofit, and they're going to tell two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on. There's a method for fundraising that I teach called, in my nonprofit classes, called friend-raising. It's also known as the Benevon method. Many of you, some of you may actually be clients, but what I suggest is that you use this method for advocacy, not just for donor retention, or donor development. So the idea is you introduce a couple of friends to your organization. You have them come, you have coffee with them, or breakfast, some food thing, and talk about your agency. You're not asking for money, you're not asking them to do anything, you're just saying, I know you know I work at ABC Agency, and I just want you to know more about it and what we do. And maybe they meet your executive director if you're not the executive director. They learn more about your agency. And then a couple of days later, you call them up and you say, so what'd you think? And chances are because they're friends, they're gonna say, oh, that was great. I really appreciate knowing about that. Okay, great, thanks. Well, if you've come across, tell somebody about our organization. And then, a couple of weeks, couple of months later, this is again, this is usually a fundraising thing, but I'm telling you, to use it as advocacy, you invite them to your organization. And it's a tour of the campus, it's a program, it's something that shows your organization fulfilling its mission, showing your organization working, doing the great things you're doing in your community. And they see that. And you call them up a couple of days later and say, so what'd you think? And I'm telling you, almost every single time, if you have done this right, the first words out of their mouth will be, oh my gosh, I had no idea you did this, or that's what you did, or whatever. Oh my gosh, sometimes God. I had no idea you did that. And that's when you've hooked them. That's when you've hooked them as a potential donor. That's why you've hooked them as an advocate, as a potential volunteer, as a potential board member. And this is a recruitment method you can use to recruit new board members too, and recruit more volunteers. And then later on, you invite them to actually some kind of event. Now then, you can ask them for money. But the whole idea is to use this to help them because maybe they'll start getting your newsletters and they'll start learning about your organization. And then what happens is two or three weeks later, they're at the grocery store and they're talking to somebody and somebody has an issue or a challenge or something. And they say, you know, I know about this agency that does this, this, this. Maybe they can help you. Or maybe you'd like to contribute to them. Or maybe you'd like to volunteer with them. That's how it happens. And I've seen this happen again and again and again. Does it take work? Yes. Does it take effort? Yes. Does it have impact? Yes. Now again, when I started at the beginning, I talked about pie. And you kind of laughed a little bit. And the whole idea is, you know, we want to hold on to our piece of the pie. So we want to hold on to our resources. We want to hold on to our money. We want to hold on to our board members. We want to hold on to our volunteers. We want to hold on to everything. And people talk about, you know, keeping my slice of the pie. Well, my answer to you is, why does everybody have to eat pie? Why can't they eat cupcakes and ice cream and cookies and all those other wonderful things? Why are we holding on to our slice of the pie? Why aren't we sharing? Because when we share our resources, we all become larger. We all become bigger. We all become more successful. So you need to get your slice of the pie. In order to get your slice, you need to incorporate the statistics that I've been talking about in your corporate solicitation. So like I said, when you're, sorry, that was mine. So when you're going to a corporation, when you're going to somebody, like I said, instead of just talking about the social mission of your organization, which you've got to do and you should do, and I'm not telling you not to do, you need to talk about the economic impact you're making. You know, and maybe it's through your clients. Because we help these 25 people learn how to get jobs, now they're going to potentially make this much money, which will come into the economy so that they can come and buy your products. You know, economic message. And that way you're showing to them by contributing to your nonprofit, you're supporting the entire community. So by helping me, my organization, you're helping the full community. There needs to be a paradigm shift and this is not something that we are going to be able to do immediately, but we need to start working on it. Right now, nonprofits are expected to work at 90 cents on the dollar. We are supposed to do more with less. Do you see that happening with ExxonMobil? You know, people are always coming to us and saying, well, you know, you get handouts, you get stuff free, you don't need to pay, you don't need to make as much money as an ExxonMobil or as a normal organization. Well, if that's the case, then we're not going to be able to pay competitive salaries. And we should be able to. That I know that goes into the Dan Pallada and I don't want to step on his toes, but it's about the I'm Overhead thing, is being able to articulate why we are an economic force and why we should be paid the same rates. Maybe not the same rates as an ExxonMobil, but a decent wage, which I think that a lot of us are, but I know that a lot of us are not. For instance, in Maine, they enacted a law, this did come into play, that tops the amount of money an executive director can make at a non-profit at $80,000. Now $80,000 is a really nice salary and I'm not saying that's bad. But I'm asking you, do you think they topped the amount a bank president can make? Why are they doing that for a non-profit? Why is it different? I understand that we hear about these six figures or million-dollar figures that some non-profit people are making. American Red Cross always gets dinged for this or some of the large national institutions and I'm not totally saying that's right or wrong. I'm not doing that, but I'm saying they're making six figures and if you look at their budget and you look at the number of employees they have, it's comparable to any Fortune 500 company. That is making quintuple that amount of money, not three, not four, but five times. So a Fortune 500 CEO is making five times the amount of money that a CEO at American Red Cross is making who has the same, not the same budget exactly, but a comparable budget and comparable number of employees. And so these are things that we need to help people to understand. As I said, and I've been hitting you over the head with it, but it's because I think it's important we need to advocate essential all non-profits play in our community, not just ours, but all non-profits play. And obviously, like I said, by advocating in the sector, by helping and educating people about the entire sector, and I don't expect you to remember everything that I said, but if you just remember one or two things, do you know non-profits employ six times more people than the oil and gas industry? Do you know that 75% of non-profits have revenues under $25,000? Scott wants a dollar for every time he's heard me say that. But just having a couple little things that you can throw out to people at a dinner party really makes you a much, much more fun guest. I say that in jest, but I also don't because if you've seen me at a dinner party, that's just what I do. I talk about it. You work for the non-profit, you're a non-profit consultant. Oh, you don't make any money. I don't know, okay. This is what I do. This is why it's important. This is why I'm out here advocating for the effectiveness and sustainability of a non-profit sector. So, you know, being able to articulate just a couple of things. As I said before, I told you the story ahead of time about non-profits not being included in health reform. Now, we were included in the higher act because some of our larger entities like Points of Light, Independence Sector, Center for Public Policy got us on there. So we were included as part of that with small employers. But you need to be ready. And actually, it says prepare now for 2015. It's December. If you haven't been working and advocating and been up to Austin to meet with your Congresspeople, it's a little bit too little, too late. But I still encourage you to do it because anytime you talk to people, anytime you educate people, anytime you advocate for your organization to politicians, it's a good thing and it's a positive thing and it'll help you down the road. But some of the, if you don't like some of the things that are coming out of Austin, then you need to work to change it. And you need to get other non-profits because if you walk in the door, it means, you know, it's one thing. It's one person. It's one organization. But if you get 100 people, or if you team up with Scott and San Antonio non-profit council, and this is not a plug, he did not pay me for this. But if you team up with other organizations, then you come as a group, then it's all of a sudden important because do you know what the most important thing to a politician is? Anybody wanna guess? What? Votes, it's interesting because some people say money. No, votes. The most important thing to a politician are votes. Now they like money because it helps them get votes. But the most important thing are votes. And if you have 100, 1,000, 10,000 votes that you can influence, you can say, well, you know, we're doing this and this is what we're doing. And what you're doing is going to hurt us and you're gonna hurt 300,000 people who could potentially vote for you, then they'll start paying attention. Not gets a little bit into lobbying there. But the whole idea is to make sure that they understand that we have a voice. And as I said, they're watching other states. They're watching, you know, when you go to conferences to learn how to do things better, right? Our politicians go to conferences to learn how to do things better. Our politicians, our city, you know, just the parks and rec department goes to conferences to learn how to do things better. And what they do is they start talking to each other and they find out, oh, you know, you're charging the nonprofits for that. Oh, wow, maybe that's a new source of revenue for us. Maybe if we start charging them for using that park for their special event, we can get some new revenue. So that's what's happening is people are talking to each other and they're starting to say, well, you know, nonprofits have money, so we can start charging them. And there's other states like delays without holding, withholding and paying. I don't know if it's happened yet. In New York and in California, both those states at one point had gone two years without paying the nonprofits for services that they have used. So if they have a workforce agency and a nonprofit is running it and it's paid for by the state of California, the state of California went two years not paying a nonprofit for services rendered. I don't think Walmart would like that if you went in and say, I'll pay you two years from now for my groceries. But yet they get away with that because we don't have a voice because we're the nonprofit and we just, we don't speak up for ourselves. And as I said, government contract fees, pilots, more fees are being considered for nonprofits and new fees and as I said, new taxes. And I say again, this is not meant to be anti-government. Government needs to secure revenue. I want potholes fixed. I want new parks. I want new things in our community. So that's great. I understand that. They need money to pay for that. But does it always have to come from the nonprofits? In Minnesota, which is one of the best places to live if you are a nonprofit, they have something called the Nonprofit Sector and Community Solutions Act that is actually transforming the way they work with nonprofits. It's actually developing new ways that they work with nonprofits. In Connecticut, they're the first state that actually has a cabinet level position that is specifically for nonprofits. So in those two communities, people are starting to learn more about nonprofits. Toronto, this is one of the best stories ever. They have a real return on investment for donors. So what that means is, and it's a little bit harder for nonprofits if this came about, a lot of you would scream, but it would be a good thing, trust me. What happens is nonprofits in Toronto have to give Toronto, the city, some information about how impact they're making in the community. So how many people they're serving and what the economic result is of that. Now again, like I said, some of you would balk at this. But because of that, when Toronto citizens fill out their return, their tax form, they get to take off not how much they gave, like $100 to this charity or nonprofit, but they get to multiply that towards that impact number to show the real value. To show that, okay, instead of $100, I get to take off $10,000 off of my taxes because that $100 was used by that nonprofit and then that nonprofit was able to do this, this, this, this with that $100, which had a greater impact in my community. Again, and the trouble is, this has been talked and discussed a little bit by nonprofits in some communities and the nonprofits balked at it because it's too much work. It would be more paperwork. If you as a donor knew that you could take $10,000 off on your taxes versus with a $100 gift, would you like that? Would you give more? And in Britain, they also have a nonprofit advocate at the cabinet level position. So there are some good stories. There's some good things happening. There's some things where places where people are starting to understand that nonprofits are important and that we need to be working with them. But not enough. So what do you need to do? Well, you need to get prepared. You need to start, hopefully I've given you a little bit of an incline. You start thinking about, whoops, changing your perspective and advocating for the entire nonprofit sector, talking about all the nonprofits, using some of the statistics that I've talked about. You need to stay informed. I have some resources I'm gonna be talking about in a second that you can use, but come to these advocacy workshops. Obviously, you guys get it because you're here, okay? There are a lot of nonprofits that are not here. So if you could do me a favor, and this is not a commercial for me, but tell one person, other nonprofits, about this class, about what you came to today, what you learned, hopefully it's positive. But tell one other nonprofit person so that they know the next time that there's an advocacy workshop, it may be something that they'd be interested in attending. So tell one person. So stay informed, get information. Collaborate, partner with other nonprofits, look for ways to partner. If you don't know anything about that, contact me because I can help you with that. But you need to collaborate because we're stronger together. And get engaged. Be aware when there was a bill that was going before Congress just last week, and I know Scott sent all of you an email about that. How many of you contacted your congressman or your senator about that? You? Two? Really? It's pretty simple. You click on something and it goes, okay? Maybe a little bit harder than that, but pretty much we have to do that because otherwise we don't have a voice. We don't have a stake. And I say at the survival of the nonprofit sector is in the balance and you're sitting there going, oh, Mary Beth, you're just over. No, I'm serious. We have a target on our backs. There are people who want to do away with nonprofits. It is not an unimaginable thing. In some ways, some people will say it's happening right now. And I said I talked about the Small Business Administration before. And just so you know, we get linked into small businesses. The Small Business Administration identifies a small business as somebody who has 150 employees or less and has a budget of $5 million. That's what they think a small business is. Okay, raise your hands if that's you, a few of you. Yeah, there's a couple of nonprofits. There's a few of us that that's us. Yeah, that's fine. But I don't think it's the majority, especially when I tell you that 75% of the nonprofits have revenues under $25,000. And the last thing I'm gonna leave you with is Coke and Pepsi. Some of you may have worked with Coke and Pepsi in the past. Has anybody worked with them? Both of them? Excuse me, I haven't had the pleasure of working with both of them. And one of the things I can tell you is there's not a more vicious war than Coke and Pepsi. The mission of both of them is the demise of the other. They don't care about R.C. just so you know. Or Dr. Pepper. I'm not kidding. The, if you go to Atlanta and you go to the Coke headquarters and you go into the secret valves of the Coke headquarters where I have been, they talk about this. Eliminating Pepsi is their goal. And vice versa. I had a friend who worked with Pepsi in the high ups and that's what their goal is. And yet, Coke and Pepsi have partnered with the American Beverage Association, a non-profit. They have partnered with the American Beverage Association. They have given money to the American Beverage Association. They have advocated for the American Beverage Association because the American Beverage Association is fighting the tax on soda. Now we're not living in New York City. So I believe none of you are paying a tax on the Coke you're drinking today or the Pepsi, right? So the American Beverage Association is using the money and using the advocacy and partnering with Coke and Pepsi to two organizations that are at war with each other to ensure that there is not a tax on soda. Now, if they can do that, why can't we? Why can't we work together? Why can't we pull our resources? Why can't we pull our money? Why can't we at least talk about the non-profit sector and how great we are and how wonderful we are and how much we're doing for the social as well as the economic benefit of our city, of our state, and of our nation? So that's the presentation. Just to give you some of the resources I told you that were to be available, ah, sorry. So, yeah. So if you really do want to know some things about the rules of legislation and lobbying and advocacy for non-profits, one of the best things you can do is go to this website and you can fill out a 501-H. It will take you five minutes if you have trouble figuring out your name. Five minutes. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but not much. It is very easy and basically the cool thing is as you fill that out, you pretty much covered your, you know what I'm talking about. Your ass, that's, you thought I meant something else. You're covering your assets when it comes to lobbying and education and advocacy and everything. There's lobbying rules for a 501-C3 from the independent sector. As you can tell, all these have a link, so when you receive the presentation, you can go to those links. And those folks who are on Nowcast, if you contact me, which my contact information is at the end, I'd be happy to send you the PowerPoint as well. So you can find out the rules for lobbying and then there's also information about beyond the cause, the actual whole paper, if you're really interested in reading that. So there's some resources. Other things you need to be know about, and I talk about this in every single class, so if you've been to any of my classes, you already got this, I know that. But these are my favorite nonprofit websites and you should know about these. GrantStation, if you're ever looking for grants, they're one of the best resources for finding grants. I think GuideStar is great and I think Foundation Center is great, but their grant information is only based on the 990s and I've already told you that the 990s sometimes are two or three years old. So the information you're getting from GuideStar and Foundation Center, which is still good, is dated. GrantStation doesn't copy and paste anything. All their data, all their information is based on real conversations with foundations as to who they're giving, what they're giving, when they're giving, where they're giving, et cetera. Now, because of that, GrantStation has 8,000 or so entries and Foundation Center has 80,000, but the other thing is GrantStation takes out all those nonprofits that are only single destination. Isla, the Austin Public Library Foundation is only giving to the Austin Public Library or Children's Medical Center or whatever. So they take out all the scholarships and they take out all the single source donations and they also take out anybody who is not currently looking for getting granting, is not in the grant cycle. So that's at GrantStation. You should be getting emails daily. Yes, you need to get more email. From Chronicle of Philanthropy and Nonprofit Quarterly. I get an email from them once a day. It's five or six headlines. I read the headlines, see if it's something of interest to me and move on. So you need to be getting these because that's how I get this information. That's how I know what's going on in Maine. That's how I know what's going on in Connecticut. That's how I'm keeping informed. Five minutes every day, that's all it takes. Included with that, you should be getting Scott's email. Every Friday, right? Which is the reader's digest version, which probably has some of these things in it. So if you missed it, there you go. You should be looking at Blue Avocado. Now Blue Avocado is a newsletter. It's not coming out as often as it used to because Jan, who's the executive director of the organization, is now the executive director of California Association of Nonprofits. So she's a little bit busy, but it has an archive. At Blue Avocado is a great resource if you're interested in board information because it's called Board Cafe. They have HR, they're just a great resource if you have questions or you're wondering how to manage your nonprofit better, how to do things better, how to do volunteers or different things like that. It's a great resource. Board source, you should be aware of board source. Board source is the ultimate information about running an effective board. And one thing I suggest in the nonprofits that I work with is instead of waiting until the end of the year or the end of their term to give your board chair a gift, at the beginning of their term, give them board source membership as a gift, then they'll start getting webinars and books and yes, all of these things have revenue streams. They have books to buy, webinars to buy, conferences to go to, but all of these have a lot of free information on the website as well, okay? So you don't have to pay anything. The board source is a great resource and if you want your board chair to be more effective, look at board source and it also will give you answers to questions. Idealware is, they love me saying this, it's like the consumer reports for nonprofit technology. So do not go out and buy donor development software without checking with them first. They act like consumer reports, so they rate donor development, they IT services, not to mention they have great information on policies. They have a social media policy that if you don't have one, this is a great place to get one. Idealware, they do webinars and they have a conference and they have books to sell and all that, but it's a great resource. TechSoup is the garage sale for nonprofit technology so you can go that and you can, if you're a nonprofit, now you have to fit into certain qualifications and it is kind of hard sometimes to deal with, but once you're in, you're in and you can get, for instance, Microsoft Office, the entire thing for like 30 bucks, $30, so it's a great resource, not to mention they have webinars, they have books, they have different things to sell too, but it's great and a lot of times they offer free classes as well. Non-profit risk management center, they're out of Virginia, Melanie, their executive director is fantastic, they provide information on risk. They have an actual entire leg of their website is about volunteer risk and the issues with it. They're a great resource for policies so if you need to write up some new policies and procedures, they actually have a software that, yes, okay, you'd have to buy it, but a software that can develop a policies and procedures that's specific to your organization. Now I know what a lot of you are doing, you're taking the template from another organization and basically changing it to adapt it to you. I saw that done with a childcare agency, the template they started out with was from an animal serving agency. True story. So if you don't wanna do that, they have this and everything I think is fairly reasonably priced so policies and procedures, insurance, D&O insurance information, so anything involving risk that's a great resource for more information. I've talked about independent sector, independent sector has great information, statistics about who's giving, who's volunteering, that is where you should be going to get your volunteer statistics, your volunteer value. If you don't know the value of a volunteer hour, I believe is $22.15, I may be wrong, but I think that's what it is. You need to know that. You need to be able to calculate that because foundations are going to start asking you that. They're gonna start asking you for how many volunteers you have, how many hours they volunteer, how much they bring in economically to their organization. I've counseled foundations that's talked about having that as a requirement and the reason because they know that you can use volunteers and if you're not using volunteers effectively, then you're not using their money effectively. So that's something you need to know, independent sector. C Forward is an organization that was created just a couple of years ago by a dear friend of mine, Robert Edgar, who used to be the, who was the founder of the DC Central Kitchen is now starting up the LA Kitchen, good person to follow. He started this organization and the intention of it is to educate nonprofits about politicians specifically, and he is not a 501C3, he's a 501C4, to educate nonprofits about politicians who are favorable or not favorable to the nonprofit sector. So one of the things he's done is he's gone around the country and learned about, for instance, mayoral races to identify mayor candidates who are favorable or not favorable to the nonprofit sector, as well as congressmen, senators. It's a small organization, he's running it part-time, while he's trying to start this new business so it's not huge, but it's something to be aware of. And the other is Texas C Bar. They are an organization, a nonprofit, that provides pro bono legal service to nonprofits. Now, they are really hard to get a hold of and they don't mind me telling you that. So if you call them, it may take several weeks before they get back with you, if they get back with you. But their website is phenomenal. Tons of great information, lots of things for you to get, lots of good information. So those are my favorite resources, not to mention the San Antonio Nonprofit Council and all that they do. The last thing to tell you, I told you at the very, very beginning, as I'm not your traditional nonprofit consultant, I act and work a little bit different. One of the things that makes me different is my advice and counsel are free. I did say free. You don't have to clean out your ears, I said free. My advice and my counsel are free. What that means is if you have a question, you can email me, email me is the best thing. You can email me and if I don't know the answer, chances are I know who does and provide you with an answer or a resource or anything like that, that I do for free. I provide free career counseling to anybody who is in the nonprofit sector or thinking about the nonprofit sector or doesn't even know about the nonprofit sector. So I do all that for free. Now if you have me come in to your organization and do a board development workshop or training, okay, we may actually charge you a little bit for that or I may not. I do a lot of pro bono work. My board development trainings usually run four times, four types. And I meet with the executive director and I learn about your organization to figure out which type is best for your group. Sometimes they're educational. The board needs to understand what their roles and responsibilities are. Sometimes they're enlightenment. Sometimes they know what the responsibilities are but you need to shed some light on some things. Sometimes it's empowerment. The board needs a kick in the butt. They need to get going. Sometimes and unfortunately I do this more than anything else, they're exorcisms. And I perform many board exorcisms on a daily basis. So if you're interested, that's some of what I do. I do a lot of other things but I don't wanna bore you with that. My business cards are on there and I do work in the San Antonio area a lot with nonprofits. But as I said, my advice and my counsel are totally free. My information is up there. I do travel throughout the state of Texas so there's no place I don't go. So if you're in other places, let me know. That's pretty much it for today. Scott is standing up so I know it's my cue to stage left or stage right. But yeah, actually I do wanna ask. I actually have a couple of minutes so do you have any questions? Yes. Oh, Carlos, he's really nice. Yes, for those on Nowcast just so you know. She was talking about in Parasol, Parasol, Texas, they had one hour with Carlos Urresti who is a really nice friend of the nonprofits. He's their congressman and he gave them one hour to talk about and they had a group there so it wasn't just one person and he's connecting them to influencers and other congressmen and other representatives that they need to talk to to get things done to make things happen. And I think that a part of it is what you're trying to say is having 20 people there and feeding them lunch, feed them and they will come is so important rather than just one person. They're strength in numbers. You haven't heard that the first, that's not the first time you've heard that, yeah? Oh yeah. And guys, he had six of his staff there so they know who to contact and the staff numbers are what you want. Now, the staff changes every six months to a year because they leave and go off but that's who you really want and so you want that staff information. Thank you so much for sharing that. I'm so happy for you. Any other questions, comments? I got a comment. Yes. Oh, hi. Pearsall, right. Right. More effective, right. So yeah, it's one thing. Representative Uresti, as I've said, is a friend of the nonprofit. I know him. He's a friend of the nonprofit community. He gets it. But what you're saying, I'm saying it for the Nilecast folks, what you need to do is you need Carlos Uresti to help you identify the senators and the congressmen who don't understand nonprofits, who don't get it and connect you with them and some of them may be on the Appropriations Committee or other committees that are of influence to you. Thank you so much. That is fabulous, wonderful, wonderful work. Other questions? Yeah. Oh, I know your statistics, right? Yes. The statistics of the employment regarding six times more people are employed by the nonprofit sector than the oil and gas industry in the state of Texas is 2010, I believe that statistic was from 2010, which I kind of suspect where you're going is it may have increased because of all the new drilling and the new things that are going on in this, especially the Eagle Shale and different things like that. They have been employing more people. I do not think they're going to employ more people than the nonprofit sector there ever because the nonprofit sector has been employing more people too. So they go, you know, they're increasing but we're increasing too. The number of nonprofits continually increases. I appreciate that. And I apologize again that my information is dated but I'm telling you it is what it is. You know, give us some money and we'll make some more good data, you know, the other thing is I like questions but the other thing I'd like and I don't want to take up too much time but if anybody has an aha moment and this is not meant as a pat on the back to Mary Beth but this is more of a wow, I didn't know that or something that you really do want to take outside and take there because I'm asking you that. So one, that you say it out loud so everybody else knows it but two, so that it kind of cements in your head so that you actually do go and if you go to lunch with somebody later that you do tell them that. So does anybody have a question or an aha moment? You learned something, you didn't learn anything. Yes, business, yes. Right. And you told me, you say you've been at your organization for three weeks, congratulations for three weeks, making it three weeks and you indicated and just again for the now cast folks that you were surprised that I actually brought in the business perspective and advocating that versus just the social. I told you, I said talk the social. You need to talk about why this community would be devastated if your organization did not exist. I am absolutely not telling you not to talk about the mission and the social and all the wonderful things that you're doing to make a difference. I'm just saying add the economic but thank you. Yes? Right. Oh yes, we should be strategic planning for the entire sector, but we just don't do it because we don't play nice with each other a lot of times. And one of the things I do in my strategic planning sessions or my board development is there are aspects of this that I teach depending on an organization, they're nonprofit, so that I am telling the board these things because I want your board to know that. So thank you. He was telling about he, I've had more work for the student said UTSA apparently. Other comments? All right, well thank you so much.