 Julie and I are extremely grateful to all of these presenting sponsors you see right in front of you. Many of them have been with us for the entire year in some way, shape, or form. And as you can see, the logos are getting more and more, they're getting brighter, they're getting bolder, they're attracting other national brands. And we are just so extremely grateful. But the biggest thing that I like to say about these sponsors, Julia, is that they're not just here for us. So I'm sorry if you thought so. They're actually here for the entire sector. They're here to support all of our listeners, all of our viewers, all of our raving fans because they truly believe in the good work that you do. And they are right beside you to support you in your cause and your mission focus. So thank you to our sponsors and go check them out online, give them a like, some love and follow them. They're great leaders in the sector. I learn from them often. And we are so fortunate to have their voices on this show regularly. So again, thanks to our presenting sponsors. Yay team. And I want to personally shout out Katie from Staffing Boutique and Steven from Blumerang who were two people that approached us and they've been with us and believed in us when we probably didn't even believe in ourselves. And that was a year ago. So pretty amazing. Again, I'm Julia Patrick joined by Jarrett Ransom. And today we're going to talk about lessons learned in this year's frame. And so Jarrett, again, I thought I would just share some things by the numbers. So in the very first episode we started, we pulled it together over a weekend. The lockdown, if you remember, happened kind of on a Friday. I said, let's do this. Monday we went live. It was a little rocky. We had four viewers, one which was your mom. Of course, you know. We had four viewers. And so now from that, from a year, we've added a channel on Roku and Amazon Fire TV. We have our own channels, which is like blows my mind. On Roku alone, we have 500 homes who've like added us to their channel, to their watch list. So that means like when they turn on their TV, it's like NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, whatever. The nonprofit show. The nonprofit show. Okay, that freaks me out. On Vimeo, on our Vimeo channel, which again is just another one of our platforms, we've had more than 250,000 views. Wow. Yeah, crazy. We've done 270 episodes, just about. We've had 250 different guests. Oh, unique guest, very cool. Which is super interesting. We've had, during those shows, we've had one moving company come in, arrive while the guest was on. His items were being shipped from the Pacific Northwest to Brooklyn, to New York, across the country. He had to like stop the interview, live interview, and let the moving man in. That was interesting. We've had at least three Amazon deliveries that were interrupted. I mean, I know there've been more. I think you had a wedding dress delivered to your home during one of the shows, if I'm not mistaken. I did. I guess a friend of mine used my home as her prep station. So yes, a wedding dress arrived. Wedding dress. We had one dog fight, kind of like on-air dog fight. We had several pet appearances, where like cats would come through, where dogs would come through, and that's just good. Yeah. We had a couple of coughing spells, which we got through. Yeah, and sneezing. And sneezing spells. And then the, I mean, my personal favorite, because it happened to me, was we had one pant drop. And that was where I was interviewing somebody you were not on, and my pants literally slid off, which you could not see. And I had to conduct the rest of the show with my pants. Pants slid off. Down. Mike dropped to a whole new Julia. Yeah. It was such a, it was such a proud moment in my broadcasting career. But yeah, that is wonderful. And I think Kevin, our executive producer, helped to compile that list. And Kevin's really working on his job security. And I think he's done such a fabulous job. We, we could, I know I couldn't do this without Kevin. So Q, you never, you never see his wonderful face, but he is behind the scenes. And such a great asset to this team. So thanks for compiling that list. I hadn't heard that yet. Yeah. Is that hilarious? Well, you know, there's more to come, I'm sure, because it's a kooky world. You know, as we're going through the different things that we've learned, we want to know what you've learned. You can go ahead and use on the bottom of your screen, you'll see a Q&A button. Go ahead and activate that. And we would love to know what your comments are. And then we'll pull those in as we, as we move forward. It's really an amazing thing. And I think one of the first things, Jared, I wanted to talk about change and what we learned about change. Yeah. As I just take a deep breath, right? Because it has been such a year, so much change. And one of the things that I have said, probably like a broken record, is really believe that our sector, at large, the nonprofit, social profit sector, has been well overdue for a shakeup. So this is, you know, a change by default because of the virus. And in fact, all of the pandemics, and that's really what we've been navigating. And I like to attribute, you know, attributes are the right word. But I like to bring that up. I like to honor the fact that we've been through a lot of change. We've been through the social injustice, change and divide. We've been through the political change and divide. We've been through the viral change and divide, pharmaceuticals, right? Like so much in that. And our sector really had to be innovative. And I am so grateful and honored to play in the space with so many amazing leaders, Julia, you one of them as well. But the pivots that have been made, the change that everyone has been willing in some way, shape or form to put into place. And that's new. That's not something that I think our sector is really interested in doing. I don't think that overall we're really big risk takers. And we certainly don't, you know, risk our philanthropic dollars. That's so tricky. So a lot of change. I think you're right. And you know, to your point, my sense of it is, is that people were so freaked out, so frightened, and they weren't willing to make a change. They kind of made changes that were catastrophic. Like you don't have a choice, you got to do something. I don't know about you, but I feel like now that we've been through this, people are going to be a little bit more receptive to embracing change. And they won't be so fearful because they've gone through the worst. Absolutely. Now, you can't have 500,000 people. Pardon me? Let's hope it's the worst, right? That we ever have to endure in our lifetime, right? Yeah, yeah. But I mean, to lose 500,000 people, you know, in such a short period of time, I don't know, I'm wondering about that. I'm wondering, it'll be interesting to kind of see what occurs. But I think that's for me has been a huge lesson to know that we can be nimble and we can't take risks. And then if it doesn't work out, moderate the decision, re-navigate, and we've said the word pivot 15 times a day for 300. I wish Kevin had counted that and put that in the compilation, right? Like, here's our viewers and here's the MIME that's the P word. But I think you're right, Julia, is we've now, all of us, experienced change. And so when an opportunity for innovation, for disruption, for change presents itself again, I do think that we've practiced this change muscle, we're able to strengthen this change muscle, we're able to engage, right? Going back to kind of that learned behavior and muscle memory of, oh, we know what it's like. We've done this. Remember when, what if we try X, Y, and Z? So I do think that many of us, many organizations, leaders across the world will be a little bit more familiar and willing to make changes. Yeah, which I think is super exciting. I wanted to get your thoughts on funding and fundraising and development during this time. Certainly tremendous stress, re-evaluation, rethinking, and what are some of the things that you learned about fundraising during this time? I learned that people are generous. People are so generous. There has been some of the most, and again, I take another deep breath, Julia, because this is just, this is so much gratitude. I am just elated and honored and proud of our communities across the world of how we've stepped up to support one another in the midst of all of these various pandemics. And so we've seen the statistics. We've seen that money was given with fewer strings in 2020 than any year before. So it was giving unrestricted. It was giving to help whatever the need was, right? Foundations, corporate sponsors, they said, you need the money and we've already committed it to X, Y, and Z. Use it however you need now, right? So that was a big change that we've experienced. Giving Tuesday was higher than ever before in the nation. That was a statistic. And these are facts that we can lean on to say, this is the truth. We have experienced this across our nation. I think we have definitely seen the increase of donors. So like the number of donors increase and that means we've engaged some people that have never been philanthropic before with their money. And so the importance of engaging them forward, future goals, the important, but some people did not experience this, right Julia? Some people hit the pause button. Some people, many a days I wanted to do the same, pull the covers up over my head and not face it, right? We wanted to live at a fort and just read books all day long. But the reality of what was going on in our world, the organizations that did not hit pause have honestly had some of their best milestone years because of the unrivaled unrestricted support of the community. Yeah, I think it was really interesting. In the very beginning, we had folks that would say to us on the ask and answer show or they would just email me and I know they emailed you. We have board members that are saying, we need to suspend our fundraising or asks because A, we're not gonna have events and B, it's a time of duress and the economic picture was just falling, falling, falling, falling. And so it's not appropriate to be asking. And that was a big discussion for a lot of nonprofits. And I think those nonprofits that pulled the reins are now seeing that that was a bad mistake. That, you know, go ahead. I understand, I understand the complexity of making that decision, you know? But what we've seen is so much tried and true generosity. We all wanted to help. No one knew what to do, right? And so we opened our bank accounts. We opened our purses and checking accounts. We opened our whatever we had to give, you know? We in kind donations, the amount of food that's been supported and donated to our communities. I mean, it is just, and I get it, it's very complex. It is very complex to make that decision. When our nation is under duress, how do we ask for support? Right, right. You know, another thing that I thought was really super interesting throughout this, and I'm gonna say several pandemics, not just, you know, COVID-19, was the interesting lessons about leadership. And in the beginning, I felt like there were a lot of leaders who were, we're gonna be empathetic and we're gonna be, you know, full of grace, and we're gonna just kind of see how this goes and not push our teams as hard as maybe we were in the past. On the other hand, I felt like I saw a lot of leaders saying, I'm gonna push you harder. We're gonna have to lean in further, but I'm not gonna be on top of you. I'm gonna let you figure some things out because you're working from home and you're trying to figure out things, but come back to me with those KPIs or how you've reached your goal. So I suspect when all is said and done, there are gonna be a lot of leaders that'll be like, this was the transformative year of my career and I will have forever been changed. Not just when we come back, it'll all be the same when we report back to our offices or our campuses, but a complete shift in how we lead. You know, that's really interesting and I haven't thought of it that way. You know, one of the things I have seen is the ability for leaders at all levels because I also believe that every one of us has the innate ability to lead, right? We are all leaders in some form or fashion. And I have really seen so much in conversation about having their own chitty chat chat session before Zoom meetings that have that really like natural exchange of how are you? How are your children? How is your family? How is your partner? How are you mentally, right? If you need to take a day off, if you need to, you know, stop working at 3 p.m. so that you can be a homeschool teacher, right? I've seen that a lot in our leadership space and that to me is very empathetic and authentic leadership which I admire. I hope it sticks, right? But you're right, leadership overall, I've seen two forms of this and this was very clear to me with a client when they expressed to me that they have two types of leadership within their organization. It's the fight or flight, right? It's the leaders that are willing to run towards the fire and then there's the leaders that are like high telling it out away from the fire. So it's that fight or flight of how are we showing up as leaders in our space? And again, that's at all levels. That's how I'm speaking and addressing it as leaders at all level, right? You too are a leader, right? And so that fight or flight I think has been very, I don't know, just highlighted to say what kind of leader are you? Do you run towards the fire or do you run away from it? That was fascinating. Yeah, I think it's an amplification of what you are at the core, that you have so many leaders had to step up and say, okay, this is the risk we're gonna take. This is what we're gonna do, it might not work and then we're gonna figure it out. Another thing I wanted to talk to you about is work from home. And in the very beginning, I was looking back in my spreadsheet and oh my gosh, everything we talked about was work from home, work from home. I mean, down to like, the protocols from what you should say and how you should dress. I mean, we had experts that came on the show time and time again. And now we're just like, if you haven't caught on to this then we're on to other things. And so I'm fascinated that the American workforce that has been so office-driven really since the Industrial Revolution has in a manner of weeks changed how they respond in a professional environment to a work from home. And I think this piece of it is not going to change. I think there are a lot of folks that miss their coworkers, miss getting outside of their home, miss their pencil holder and everything and all that at their desk. But I just don't see that we're gonna all of a sudden have an all clear whistle blow and everybody's gonna rush back to their offices. I think that this work from home model is gonna be something that is a hybrid that we move forward on. I'm laughing, Julia, because I know you see you but so many of our architecture designs now, even homes include that work from home office, right? It includes that home office or even what I've as an office which it might have been your liquor bar or your dry bar or whatever it was, right? It's like you turn that into an office. You have a little laundry pocket. You turn that into an office. So there are so many ways of how this work from home really has changed our nation. I'm going to be so bold to say our nation, right? And it's fascinating because so many leaders across the world, no matter the sector, right? Have balked against having their staff work from home. They won't be productive. What if they're doing something else? How can we trust them? Holy cow, right? Boy, has that paradigm changed. And in fact, so many of our speakers and guests rather have come on and talked about how... It's been the opposite. Their teams have been more productive. They've been more engaged. They want to stay home and work from home infinity, right? Either in long-haul and perpetuity or they want that to be a component of their now work style when they do go back into the office. So this work from home has been fascinating, but you're right. And then there's also all these memes, right? You even told me, Julia, that the industry, the clothing industry, all a spike in blouses and just like staying from your waist up, the clothing industry's spiked for everything above your waist. And shoe sales, I mean, they've all plummet or changed. I mean, it's all athleisure. And yeah, I mean, I was thinking about this, one of our guests who's a really prominent leader, thought leader in the nonprofit sector. And we have her on a couple of times. And on like the second or third show, she was speaking and I was looking at her background. And I realized she had taken a closet and she had like pulled the doors back. She'd painted the inside of the closet and kind of slid her desk or her table, whatever. And she made it kind of like her Zoom studio, if you will. And it was really subtle, but it was like smart. I mean, this gal figured out a way to look professional and be in an environment that she could produce from. And so yeah, I think this work from home thing is gonna stick and there are gonna be a lot of people that want to go back, but part-time. They're not gonna be just, you know, they're okay. Well, and Katie with staffing boutique, right? She's come on and shared about how the work from home, right now it is temporary work from home. Most of the postings that she makes, that she makes mostly on LinkedIn is where I see you being so active Katie is it'll say, you know, this organization is hiring temporary for now or work for home indefinitely. Like that has changed even how we post in our job descriptions, how we interview. And we've also talked about those crazy conversations when, you know, a supervisor will call in a staff meeting and someone's like, I moved to Montana so I can't make a meeting in Florida. Right. Yeah, oh yeah. That's like the next big thing coming down the bike. I agree. Thank you so much. You know, another big thing that's been a huge lesson for so many of us is the whole world of video conferencing. And we've all had to figure this out. You know, we know about, when you have a product that becomes a name, it becomes a verb as in zoom. Like we're starting to zooming, you know, we're now zooming. That's when you know an epic shift. But what I would love to get your feedback and lessons learned from video conferencing is that relationship with donors and how, you know, 12 months ago, if you had said, yeah, I'm gonna zoom call a donor, there would have been like the ultimate gasp and clutch of pearls. Like, oh, you can't do that. You can't video conference, you know, a donor unless they've gone to the other side of the world. I'd love to get your feedback on that. So I was an early adopter of video conferencing well before March of last year. And whether it was Zoom or another video conference platform, that is actually something I've done with major donors. And so it wasn't new to me, but it is new as a best practice in our sector, right? It's known. And again, I pride myself on an innovative disruptor being one of them to say, here's a way for us to connect, right? So I've done that. And in fact, when I've worked with some international organizations, that is the best way to connect and to show the program when you are physically somewhere and you cannot bring everyone with you, right? But wow, has that been interesting? Some donors, some individuals are like, yes, absolutely, let's do this. Thank you so much. I want to see your face. In fact, Tony Beale, right? With Fundraising Academy, we were just talking about how a face-to-face meeting now doesn't always mean sitting in front of you at the local coffee shop, right? It means sitting in front of you, looking at your face. So that is here to stay, I do think, because as everything does start to open up with travel, we've become a little comfortable with this. I know I have. I went to a networking event last night and it was virtual. Got to meet with some amazing women across the Southwest. And I don't know that I would have the ability to meet with so many of them if it was in person, right? I agree. I'm kind of bummed that at some point, the virtual will disappear more and more. I don't think it'll disappear forever. I do think it's here to stay. But I was a little bummed by that because I like my party on the top or business on the top, party on the bottom. I know, I haven't done the back of my hair for 12 months, is what I figure. Turn around, turn around. We're gonna talk, yeah, it would be horrifying. All matted down gray hair. Hey, I agree with you. And I think that one of the things that I've been hearing from our viewers is that this video conferencing and video communication has allowed for them to get beyond their own borders with donors. And that they can find supporters in ways that they would never, you know, ever have gotten them. And I think what we're gonna see this summer is for a lot of nonprofits who shut down or ramp up. Like, so where it's really hot, they'll be like, oh, well, you know, our best donors, they go to their cooler summer homes or, you know, we can't do anything because they're not here or in the depths of the winter with other parts of our country where things are tamped down and people are kind of hunkered in their homes. I think this video conferencing component will be like, hey, we can still do things. We can still plan things, whereby we kind of pull back for big chunks of time if you think about it in this country. I mean, in the desert Southwest, we roll down the shades for three months. Yes. I mean, it's like, instead, you want a vacation where they're vacationing, knowing that you might run into them, right? Or knowing that you'll have the opportunity to meet face to face, literally face to face. So I do think that's interesting. I've also seen, you know, what I've seen trending is people say, can we do a phone call? Like, people are more willing to do a phone call now as opposed to virtual because it was either email or in person, right? That was the bookends. And now we've added virtual, and that's become the mainstay, the one that where, you know, fatigue is also setting in. So now a lot of people are saying, hey, let's have a good old-fashioned phone call. And I still do this because there was a time when phones looked like this. I should do this. So now we have a phone call, which looks like I'm sleeping. But I think just the willingness, the ability, all of the multi-channels of connection now. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, Jared, I mean, I say this to our guests, but now I say it to you. Amazing that we have blown through 30 minutes. It's been a great opportunity for Jared and I to reflect on the great blessings of, you know, working together and meeting all these different people. One of the great people that we've met are the folks over at the Fundraising Academy. We just started a new series with them on cause selling. It is riveting. And if you have any connection to your organization's fundraising or development, you've got to jump in on these shows. You would pay the big bucks if you went out into the marketplace and worked with them on their full and robust training sessions. But this, they're coming to us twice a month for the next several months. The episodes are run a little bit longer. They're about 45 minutes and they are chalk block full of great ideas, natural relationship building opportunities. Again, we want to thank our presenting sponsors without you. We would not be here and we would not be here tomorrow. I mean, this is a huge, huge thing, investment that these folks have made in us and the nonprofit sector. Hey, Jarrett, it's been a hell of a ride. It's been fun. I would do it again if you asked me, just be honest and let me know it's going to be more than two weeks. Oh, I got to add another coughing spell to my list. Right. You know, I have to say, I really did think it was only going to be two weeks. I, it's shameful to say that, but I didn't really respect the concept of a pandemic. Were you saying dateline started like this? No, nightline. Nightline. Nightline started during the around hostage crisis. It was only going to be on for a couple of weeks. Ted Koppel was a young reporter and he's like, hey, 11 o'clock at night, no one's going to really watch this anyway, but it was kind of like, there was no broadcasting content on and it was when they could report on what had just happened in Tehran and with the hostages. And people were so freaked out that they started watching it and then, you know, two weeks turned into 20 years like that. And they, that's what they did. Yeah. That's what our future looks like. Two weeks is going to turn into 20 years. Oh my God. Yeah. Well, yeah. We're holding each other hostage, I guess. It's another way to look at it inside of our home studios. But yeah, that's when that went. That's the story, a legendary broadcasting story. Hey, we've had a couple of questions come in. One of them was when is the cause selling Fundraising Academy? It's happening on Tuesdays, every other Tuesday. And so we will have them back on next Tuesday if I'm not mistaken, but you can also get all those dates on our website, the nonprofitshow.com or americannonprofitacademy.com. Hey, as always, we like to remember everyone to stay well so you can do well. Thank you for joining us today as you have every day. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Bye. Thank you.