 Hello there and welcome. We are so glad that you're here today. It's another episode of the non-profit show. Our ask and answer is the episode that culminates the end of the week, and it really helps us set the charge for the weekend as we hopefully rest and relax for a brand new week coming up ahead for all of us. Do you want to honor and give a shout out of gratitude to Fundraising Academy at National University for allowing us these opportunities to provide the ask and answer episodes. We always have a representative from Fundraising Academy, and today we have one of my personal favorites, Muhee Kwaja joining us. Muhee is a trainer at Fundraising Academy, and he's also the co-founder of the American Muslim Community Foundation. He's been on several times and always brings his A-game with a lot of skilled expertise and experience in our sector. I'm Jarrett Ransom, your non-profit nerd CEO of the Raven Group, and I will say Fridays are one of my favorite. The questions that come in, the opportunity to talk, and as I said to you earlier, Muhee, I think we'll riff off a couple of these, because between the two of us, we should probably combine our years of experience, but we've got some great experience between us, and I'm really looking forward to these questions today. But before we dive into the questions, I do want to remind our viewers and our listeners that we have an amazing team that supports these episodes, so day in, day out, marching towards 800 episodes. So I wanna say thank you so very much to our presenting sponsors that include Blimmering American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy at National University, where I guess Muhee joins us from today, non-profit thought leader, your part-time controller, staffing boutique, non-profit nerd, as well as non-profit tech talk. So these companies, as I mentioned, many have been with us from the very beginning, which was March of 2020. So this month actually recognizes three years of broadcasting for these episodes and many, many amazing guests. And I just really feel honored to be alongside here. Most of our episodes, if not all of our episodes, are on Roku, YouTube, Amazon Fire TV, as well as Vimeo. They're also on the podcast platform, so wherever you stream your podcast, you can download and listen to the non-profit show. We hope that you give us thumbs up and reviews there as well. That would always be great to have. So before we jump into this question from Robert, I do want to give you the opportunity, Muhee, to please share with us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your role at Fundraising Academy and maybe if we're so lucky where you're joining us from today. Oh, definitely you're too kind. Thank you for the illustrious welcome. So I started my career back in 2009 after graduating from the University of Michigan and stumbled into development through their summer internship program and was really fortunate to have a lens through the university to see how the alumni, how the hospital, how the athletics department and everyone in between helped raise billions of dollars for the university. And it really was an eye-opening career opportunity for me and having switched from mechanical engineering of all majors to history and psychology, I had no clue what I wanted to do. So I was very fortunate for that DCIP internship and it led me on this 14-year journey now. So I've been a one-person development person, I've been a chief development officer, I've been an individual major gifts officer, everything in between from events to grants to everything nonprofit people have to deal with. So happy to share this journey with you and whatever answers I come up with, hopefully you find them helpful. And I'm joining today from Jakarta, Indonesia. So my current role as a trainer at Fundraising Academy is remote. So I get to enjoy the flexibility of logging in wherever I can, whenever I can and honored to be here today with you. Thank you. It's so fantastic to hear about your journey but I also think to have you show up and to model the remote, you know, living and workplace in today's date is so inspiring and reality as well because as we know, many of our teams, many of our nonprofit teams across the nation are working with remote workforces and staff and so it's really cool to have you model that here for the nonprofit show. So, okay, we're gonna dive deep into these questions. I believe we have four for today's ask and answer and the first one comes to us from Robert, city and name withheld and I'm gonna start it off by reading it aloud, toss it to you, Moohee and then we'll see if I have anything to add but you're usually pretty good at those slam dunk. So, okay, Robert wants to know, while we are based in a large American city, our board wants our development team to start working in a rural and regional parts of our state. We work in the Midwest and could have a larger donor footprint. What are your thoughts on this? Take it away, Michael. This is a really great question and I think it's of course mission dependent. I think if the beneficiaries or people in these rural and other area, local areas, do you have board members that are reflective of those communities? Do you have some donors who can introduce you? What's the in and would this expectation fall on the current employees or is the organization willing to hire somebody local from those rural areas to be a donor manager for them? So a few questions that come to my mind and around the workload, making sure that it's something that can be managed based on the current structure of the organization. You know, one thing that stood out to me on this question was, you know, they mentioned that the development team was asked to go rural, but I didn't hear that the programming was going rural, right? And so that might be a bit of a disconnect, but there could be, as you were saying, Muhy, you know, there could be an immediate champion in that rural vicinity that could absolutely, you know, wave the flag of this mission and really start to galvanize support, perhaps in those, you know, more remote areas. And so I love that you brought up like is this an existing person? Will this be a new person? Maybe Robert, something to think of this is that it is an established person within that rural and that regional part of the state. I know that many national teams, you know, will create regional offices, if you will, or like certain geographic areas to expand their footprint, as you mentioned here. So, you know, one thing that I know we've seen over the last three years, Muhy, is the net that we as nonprofits have casted to our supporters has gone far and wide, right? Because of what you're demonstrating as well, is that remote connection, you know? It's no longer, this is only supportive or for the individuals right here in our backyard, many people can either, you know, maybe participate in the programming, but so many people can be a part of the fundraising and the financial support. So Robert, we hope this is helpful in the Midwest. You know, it could be a big task for you, but I think you're up for it. We'd love to hear back on how this manifests forward for you, so good luck. All right, we've got a lot of long questions this week. So we're gonna get through them, but this one comes from, it looks like the entire group of boards, to the board members of a Dallas, Texas organization. And they wanna know, does it impact a donor's sense of our nonprofit stability when a new CEO is announced? We have had a long-term founding CEO replaced by a new CEO who only lasted two years. We have a new CEO coming in who we think will be amazing. Should we keep the new CEO leadership somewhat quiet during the transition or should we really promote it? Ooh, this is a really good question and I can't wait to hear your response, Moony. Yeah, you know, think of the incoming CEO, like what is the best welcome for them? If you really think they're gonna be amazing, try to promote it in that way and share your excitement. I think that a unity stronger front, presenting it with the board support makes it a much smoother transition. Two years, you know, lasted only two years. I wonder why they frame it that way. I think two years should be celebrated. You know, it could have been challenges, but you know, you have to take some wins out of situations, even if they're difficult and understand that, you know, maybe the workforce isn't as career-centric as the founder was and that was their passion and their baby, so they were able to stick with it for that long, but you know, I've seen a lot of people take other positions because it helps them increase their salary. I've seen people leave jobs that they love because of things like being able to go remote. So there's a lot of different factors in these that just adjust to the lifestyle that we're living. So I would say, embrace the CEO, support them. Donors understand these transitions and if the donors have confidence in the mission of the organization, a turnover in leadership can be alarming, but if it's coming with, I would be more alarmed if I didn't see an announcement from the board than if there was one, so. You know, that's exactly what I'm thinking. And you know, nonprofits, we should come from a place of transparency, you know, not only financials, but talking about transition as well. And so I think if we didn't announce this transition, as you mentioned, it could actually bring more concern to the supporter group because there was no announcement, right? So I think that could be a piece of it. Mui, I'm gonna put you on the spot here and I know it's not quite the same situation, but you moved from an executive director role into, you know, another role and you brought in, if I'm recalling correctly, an executive director for the American Muslim Foundation. Could you share with us, you know, how that transition happened? Cause I'm curious and really around the communication because I'm curious if your personal story might shed some light on this for our boards. Yeah, sure. Happy to share a little bit more about American Muslim Community Foundation. As a co-founder, I was full-time and realized that after doing that for two years, I kind of burnt myself out. And I was able to take a step back, go part-time with AMCF and hire an executive director, hire a nonprofit manager, hire a donor manager and really create a team where I was doing all of those things in my own capacity, but I decided to take a pay cut and bring on other people to help us really scale and implement processes and bring in other people where my skill set was really strategy, donor relations, fundraising and these other people brought in their skill set to really ramp up the organization. So I wanted to avoid being an organization with founderitis, right? Somebody who's just there and I wanted to really expand the team and allow us to grow. So that was a decision that I made with the support of the board. And we've had challenges along the way and trying to figure out a good balance. So even with a thoughtful transition, there'll always be challenges that come up and arise, but I think that the way in which it was communicated with our stakeholders was one that's continuing to tell our story of how we're growing and transitioning and being more grassroots and growing together with our client base. Thank you. I know I put you on the spot, but I love when you share that story because it is personal, but it's really just so telling for how this transition is strategic. And what I would like to add to this as well is yes, let's celebrate those two years as you mentioned because the leader, the CEO for those two years could have come in for where you were as an organization in your life cycle so critically pointed for those two years, moved you to a new direction or in a new space of the life cycle. And now you're ready for a different type of leader or a different kind of focus leader. So I'm right on the page with you, Muhee. Let's not say only lasted two years, let's really celebrate that two year leadership because that in and of itself is strategic and now it's time to take another strategic move, if you will. So I hope that's helpful, but I love having you share that because I do think that it likely resonates with a lot of people. So thanks for letting me put you on the spot. Okay. So this one's coming from St. Louis, Charlina here. Are you seeing more people returning to national conventions and trainings or staying with online options? I ask this because I have been tasked with budgeting this and we would get a lot more of four hour money if we engage with online training since there are no travel costs. Looking forward to your responses. This is timely. Very timely. I think the challenge with online options is it doesn't allow the person who's taking advantage of the professional development, in my opinion, to really pause and stoke it all up and have time to let it sink in and come back to their work because as soon as the online session is over, you're back in your work immediately. And a lot of the time, the benefit of going to in-person trainings is the networking, the atmosphere, the excitement, the stepping away from work and life to go somewhere new and interact with like-minded people. So online is commonplace. It'll always be there. But as we know, in person is coming back in full swing. So I highly recommend you budget for it. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Fundraising Academy's very own Cultivate Conference coming up on Thursday, June 1st. Take a look at our website and sign up. We've got our early bird pricing right now. I believe it's only $79 for a whole day in San Diego. Jared will be there, I'll be there. And one of the more famous conferences I'm sure you've heard of is the Association of Fundraising Professionals International Conference icon. And that's gonna be taking place in New Orleans and such a wonderful conference. Fundraising Academy will have sessions there and we're present there. So I'm a big fan of in-person and I've always seen it as a way for me to reflect on my career, reflect on my journey, come back to my organization, more nourished and stronger and enthused about my work. So I definitely would suggest including traveling your budget, including professional development in your budget going forward as much as you can. Yeah, great plug, I love that. So thank you for both Cultivate for Fundraising Academy at National University in San Diego, June 1, and then also the AFP icon coming up very soon. Actually, middle of April in New Orleans. So I will be at both of those IRL for a shout-out to Julia Patrick in real life. And you're so right, Muihiya. I do think adding this to your budget and what I would recommend, Charlina, is maybe go back to what your budget was five years ago to see how you were investing in these, you know, travel and conference and personal development. Maybe go back to those records if you can and if you don't have access to them, your accounting team absolutely should have access to them to see what was spent maybe on average five years ago. I know I'm looking at a lot of donor information, Muihi, from five years ago because that was pre-pandemic, right? And so I feel like it's very similar, Charlina, if you look back at your travel and what you were providing at that time. The other thing I will add is I have absolutely heard many of these conferences are no longer offering a hybrid option. So I do think that that online and that hybrid option may very well be disappearing in the very near future. I don't think that, you know, there will never be another online conference. I think those will still exist. But I do think that the hybrid is probably starting to disappear and you'll see that more and more as we move forward into 2024. So good luck and hey, we hope to see you in San Diego. All right, so this one's coming from Flagstaff, Arizona and Jeffrey wants to know about an online auction. So the question is, we are kicking around an idea of doing a mid-season online auction without any event. We would run it and promote it like it was attached to an event, but it would be a standalone. There would be no tickets to access the bidding site, just registering with an email. It would run for two weeks. Any feedback on this? Yeah, I love this opportunity. It sounds like a low-cost effort. It allows you to still have a touch point with your supporters. But a few things come to mind, you know, are you gonna have people who are primed and ready to bid? Will it be engaging? Have you done this before? Just a few things to keep in mind as you maybe are changing what you've done in the past and trying something new, but it sounds really great. And hopefully the items that you have are engaging and people will be fighting over them and bidding back and forth. And it does really well for you. Yeah, and I will add, and I shared this with you before we even open our green room chatter, but my son's school does an online auction. And I've noticed that that has been very beneficial or it seems to be very beneficial. I'm not on the planning committee. I did set that boundary, right? But really looking at it from the engagement piece because the auction can go to people, you know, not just that are tied into the school, but it could go to the entire family unit, right? So extended family members, grandparents, cousins, you know, anyone really to support the school. And I have seen that, you know, really benefit. One of the things that I will say, and I laugh every time I see it, but it goes for a lot of money, is a front row parking space. And I just think that's hilarious because I know the pressure and the chaos when it comes to school traffic. And so, Jeffrey, as you think of what might be a hot commodity, like I always love experiences, you know, where can I go? What can I do? What can I experience? But also think about for your constituency base that might be immediately local, right? What are some of those opportunities that you could include in this? I agree with you, Muhy. It does not sound like a big, heavy lift, but what I do think will be, you know, a big piece of its success, Jeffrey, would be the marketing communications that goes into this to really stress and share the importance of raising these funds and what it will allow your organization to do. So there's so many online auction events that I think, you know, if you partner with them, they can also, you know, sync or integrate rather into your donor database. So I think this is a great opportunity, but what I will also add is my final point here, Jeffrey, is to track and measure its success, analyze what it does. So you can see if this is something worth adding to your annual fundraising calendar going forward, because I do think that this could be something that you might wanna continue, but you might find that it was a total flop and not something that you wanna continue. But I think it's worth, you know, checking it out. So good information. Yeah, a few additional thoughts come to mind as well, is like, are the vendors going to be donating any of the proceeds? Are they discounting the items? Are they taking care of shipping? And how would those collected who are winning? Is this something that you can maybe even try to do outside of the region of impact nationally all across the US? So a few things that could make this a lot more lucrative, but I think that running it and promoting it like it was an event makes sense, but really allowing yourself to do this as a standalone and not have the pressure of a full on gala as well is a really smart way to do a mid-year type of online event. So kudos and best of luck. Yeah, best of luck and great, great additional points there, Muhy. Thank you so much. Again, for those of you watching and listening today, I've had the great pleasure of having Muhy Kwaja joining me. I always love to say the alphabet behind his name. It's M-P-A-C-F-R-E and C-F-R-M. He serves as a trainer at the fundraising academy. And again, Fundraising Academy is with National University. Another shout out to the Cultivate Conference that is coming up June 1. I almost said January at the other J, but June 1 in San Diego. So we'll be there for that. And again, please check out the American Muslim Community Foundation that Muhy is a co-founder of and still very involved. So thank you, Muhy. It's always a pleasure. I know it's nighttime or now it's probably first thing in the morning for you where you are now, but I hope that you are having a wonderful Friday or almost Saturday. Thank you so much. Pleasure to be here and can't wait for the next one. Yeah, thank you. Well, and pleasure to have the support from our ongoing presenting sponsors, which include Fundraising Academy at National University, also Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, non-profit thought leader, staffing boutique, non-profit nerd and non-profit tech talk. Again, these companies, many of them, if not most of them, all of them have been with us from the very, very beginning and so very honored to have the ongoing support. Please check them out. They are here for you, as I like to say, they're here because their mission is your mission and they wanna help you do more good. And speaking of doing more good, we like to end every episode with this mantra that is extremely heartfelt and we wanna remind you, all of you, including ourselves, to please stay well so you can continue to do well. So thanks everyone and thank you, Moohi, for joining me.