 Well everybody, thank you so much for joining us on this Monday for another episode of the nonprofit show. We're really excited to venture into the conversation of project management today. And we would not be having this discussion without the support of our sponsors so we want to thank all of them so much for being with us. And as any of you who are regulars to our show know, many of these sponsors have been with us from day one and day one was generally defined by me for a two week commitment. Don't worry, we'll be done in two weeks. And here we are 300 episodes plus so we want to say thank you. Yeah, I mean everybody and almost everybody that that could figure out how to dust off that crystal wall we're saying the same thing. Again I'm Julia Patrick CEO of the American nonprofit Academy. Well my co host, Jared ransom the nonprofit nerd herself CEO Raven group is actually on a plane somewhere going somewhere fabulous. So we'll talk about that tomorrow and she'll rejoin us later in the week. But more importantly, we have three guests on today from project management for change, Harry Zolkauer. Hello. He's waving away, Beth may hello. Hello. And then candle a lot. Did I say your name correctly candle with the silent tea it was helpful. Hello. I love it. I love it. Well, you guys are really, really interesting because you're like the total top of the food chain when it comes to brain cells and intelligence, and we have been able to get you here with us to talk about project management. And so that give us the whole thing what is project management for change. We are an all volunteer organization. We bring project managers together with nonprofits to help them better execute on their missions so that they can deliver social change. So that is a pretty heavy lift. I mean, I'm stunned by that. So let's start from the beginning because when I think of project management, I think of it almost like the purview of construction. You know, and so talk to us about what that actually can mean. I think it's probable that the reason why you think about construction is because construction is a very concrete pun intended example where you are building something physical, right, but project management is useful for numerous types of projects and they can be creating something that's virtual or just creating an effect or result. So to answer the question what is project management first I have to talk about projects and projects are used to create specific outcomes usually those outcomes are tied to an organization's strategic goals, and those outcomes can be products, services, or capabilities that are new, or they can be improvements to existing products services or capabilities. So we work with nonprofits to provide project management support to help them better execute their missions and create social change. Wow. So, I got to ask you this. You know what, I talked about projects and I forgot to talk about project management so, and the punchline is that project management is the means by which we apply limited resources. When resources were unlimited project management would not be as important, especially for nonprofits or project management is the means by which we apply limited resources so that's people technology, time and money to achieve that outcome that we want so that's what project management is. Okay, but now let me ask you this let's say you're working with a cultural organization, and then next to it that you're working with, let's say an animal shelter, and then you're working with maybe a medical foundation. Are the tenants of project management going to allow you to navigate the processes or do you need to have specialized project managers that are familiar with medical technology cultural institutions, shelter services, whatever the case may be. I'll give my short answer and then I'll open it up for Harry and Kendall. Absolutely the project management tenets apply to each of those cases, equally as well, and a project manager who also has domain expertise, that's even better. Yeah, I was going to say, if you don't want me buddy in here is a little bit to the CBD program we'll talk about a little bit but Julie a very good question I think if you're a project manager it's almost like being a liberal in liberal arts, he can, you can apply it to just about any field. You know it's it's it's like you said it's the basic tenants that kind of crossover all disciplines and in different areas so for myself personally I've been in various different disciplines and so my project management experience carries over to various, you know, healthcare or education etc. So, talk about, you know, digging a little bit deeper, and you're, let's say you're a nonprofit you've got this big project coming forward, and you, I always believe in that line you don't know what you don't know. Oh, the stress of that. What does a project management system do to impact that nonprofit I mean, can you walk us through a little bit more of what that relationship might look like and what the actual tasks could be. I mean Harry, do you want to talk about this, or was this is going to be something that Kendall talked about. I'm just going to talk about a little bit more generally, but I think both Harry and Beth have set it up very clearly that you know there is a relationship in almost any project so I think like with any professional service. There's a general set of tenants, where people can be effective and helpful and then the more as best said domain knowledge you have the better in many cases, depending on the nature of the problem. There's like counseling services or something right where, where maybe somebody trained in a field is helpful but then it's for specific types of things, more domain knowledge is helpful same thing and things like systems engineering and engineering, right there's some general principles, and then there's domain knowledge that's helpful. The question really gets down to what is the organization is case a nonprofit meeting. But what caused us to start PM for change, those of us that had kicked off the nonprofit PM for change to support nonprofits was the basic, basic underlying deep kind of tenant that we had seen in my own excursion through the nonprofit world association world. I had realized that like all organizations, as Beth had said right you're wrestling with a lack of enough money right because ultimately money is constrained so economics fundamentally operates on is a scarcity deal. And the science of scarcity and what we realized though with nonprofits, it's not really just money right with from donors or from fees or things. It's this whole ability to get what you have with your staff to get it done on time to to be able to focus on things and be able to deliver to that end result because the project is delivering something that's like a temporary endeavor, which is why it would work for any number of things right whatever you have a start and a finish you could think of that as the beginning of understanding. There's a project. So what we found was in nonprofits, not enough money is one thing but it also ends up being not enough time, not enough staff alignment, not enough skills on the staff for a specific donor requested type of program or some part of the mission right. So, in my mind, working with associations and nonprofits, there was this thing I called not enoughness, you live in a world of scarcity, a world of just not enough. Yeah. And what's interesting is project managers for whatever field they're in their lens on the world, and they traditionally have kind of happened into project management because they came out of engineering or sciences or in another field right and then they got asked to do a temporary endeavor that had to be done at a certain time right. So what happens is we train in the techniques of managing scarcity. It is very specifically, how do you get something done on behalf of a stakeholder was just saying executive, you know the organizational powers that have to be done by a certain time, right at a certain level of quality and complete what they really wanted within the budget. And if any of those things are not happening, you got to tell people, and that kind of tenant of we got to talk about we have scope schedule and quality, we got to be ready to communicate it. We've got to make sure that our stakeholders are online, and that we stay on top of our budget is what project management is all about so how could you not need it. And so that's how we wanted to get into it so we can get into some of the steps but I'm going to tell you one of the first steps that I also ran into one other experience with nonprofits on top of it so all you nonprofit solution out there. Project managers are not your checklist people. So many times, I'm like we make big bucks to do this stuff sometimes right and I don't mean being the one who builds in the entire large building I mean project management happens in so many layers and so many places, but where it's not about making sure people check it off. That is an outcome of some projects at some parts of tasking, but it's actually a strategic issue, and it ties to what will we get done here in this organization, and executives getting to say if you're an executive nonprofit you're going to love this. I need someone to point a finger to and say, figure it out and make sure it's delivered in September, by January, by the time of our next gala by the time of our next annual symposium day or annual right nonprofit you're working towards. So I think getting into the steps and is what project manager able to lead through, but it starts with what are we trying to achieve and buy when and what resources do I have because we can't miss we can't miss that. And that's what we train in. Okay, so I feel badly that I invited you all in this show, because I suspect that your email and your phone phones are going to blow up because that give them your email. I'm like, holy cow, I need to be talking to you people myself. I'm fascinated fascinated fascinated by this. Okay, wow. So we got to ask them the question about continuous value delivery. Like, what does that mean, and how does that factor into this whole concept of project management. Yeah, so this is very exciting. So we have a signature event that is what we call the day of service which is originally was at on Martin Luther King's birthday where we got nonprofits together with volunteer pro bono project managers and what was to expand beyond that and to have this relationship to be able to provide services year round to nonprofits rather than in one day so this is a really, really exciting program and what I really want to press upon. So this group is, there are a lot of people who are professional project managers out there that we're hearing who really want to help nonprofits pro bono. It's almost like hey free. We're offering all this free service. And I think what we're trying to do is get the message out to nonprofits that we are out there. We're volunteers were professionals we can help. And so we have engaged, you know, several nonprofits but there is this energy out there where we can basically we have an eight phase program, starting from doing a needs assessment to a project kickoff to do an implementation delivery, all the to project closure and what we typically have is a is a short term project. But that short term project can lead to either other projects or continuation of the first project so I guess what I wanted to impress upon the nonprofit community is that this service is now available. We've got people that are rare to go we've got people that specialize in grant writing and fundraising for development all of this going on. And we're actually having an open house coming up if I may plug that nonprofits coming up. So Monday, April 26. What we have a WebEx that we're going to basically discuss in more depth what the continuous value delivery program and how valuable it can be to a nonprofit organization. And we'd love to have your group be on beyond that open house and we can delve more deeply into how they how they can benefit. Okay, so you said, as we called the F word and the nonprofit sector fundraising. So you could actually navigate or find talent that could navigate more intellectual endeavors more financial endeavors not just physical site specific. Yeah, so it's a lot of what we do and I think Kendall's mentioned this is a lot of what we can offer is strategic planning and, you know, tactical planning, as well as strategic. So I think, you know, we have a lot to offer as project managers in that regard. Plus what we do is we have a team which is a little different than other, I think other types of programs where we just don't have one project manager we have a team so if there's a subject manager expert that we need to pull in with a grant writing or a certain area that will pull that person into our team. So, yeah. And let me let me offer clarification in there too I think just to make sure that that we all can can really see a benefit in this. There's the role of project management and how it can help and project managers and how they can help in the nonprofit space which we believe. And one of the other underlying things was that is typically a skill that nonprofits don't think to buy or can't afford, because in a sense it's mission agnostic right it's getting support in your management space but to get things done right. So that's why we were trying to offer it so probably we've covered what is project management where project managers and why we decided we thought this would be helpful in your market. Where where Beth and and Harry are talking to now is looking yes for continuous delivery and how we can help. That's the role of our nonprofit called PM project management PM for change, where, broadly speaking, we're saying we're clearinghouse we're trying to build the clearinghouse of the supply of project managers who want to help with the nonprofits that are in a position to be helped where there's a verification of their need that we can begin to work together. So we had the one major event that Beth has run. Wow, at least probably four of the seven times has happened including a massively successful virtual event. And then Harry has taken on the rolling wave of continuing to support some nonprofits past a day of scoping or strategic planning. And that's the continuous value aspects of it right, and I think we're in the sense our nonprofit is a clearinghouse we're kind of preaching the word of project management. But we're also trying to make sure that there's something that getting to your point about actual use and I think that's where, where Beth is really trying to lean in with Harry now about the different ways we can actually get into the actual effective use of project management as it's applied to the project managers. I think you can also Beth has a lot of experience with observing a question you had asked earlier. So how do, how do project managers feel about this, I mean they're being lined up to do that. So there has to be some value to them to right it turns out there's reasons. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm really interested in that because first of all, there's something that I don't ever recall. I mean Harry is the person that we originally started chatting with. And it got me to thinking about. I don't know of another nonprofit that's actually use this type of strategic leadership, other than when they were physically building something and you know, that's kind of saying something considering the number of nonprofits that are out there. But I think that we're talking about a lot of the same things and we understand that we do have to manage projects and everything, but bringing in an actual professional educated person that understands how to manage strategy. Holy cow. That's it. That's a huge, huge issue. Here might be your, the trigger for your audience to think about what do I have a project. Yes, something that has resources. Yeah. That needs to be done in a certain time. And that needs to get started pretty clearly where everyone goes like yeah, yeah, that's going now. Okay, so if you have kind of like a, it got started. It's got to get done by a date or in another event, some some sort of future event, and there was some money associated with it. And I'd go one step farther probably in terms of some real reality. There's probably some multiple stakeholders like not only are there people working on it and not only do I care but there might be a donor of funder, an oversight group, another nonprofit, a community. There's some other like complexity like that just a little complexity. If you can check the box multiple stakeholder probably some money. Oh it's going to get going and it needs to get done. You got a project. I love it and I love that you framed that up. Because failure, you got a project. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a risk of failure. Okay, wow. So you'd like totally. You've got my head spinning because I can see this engagement piece for so many nonprofits and this question just popped into my head as we kind of started talking. I would imagine as a nonprofit. Once you embrace this methodology and this process. It's like we say in my family mama got to have it, you probably are going to want to replicate this approach for other projects and I'm wondering, can, is this something that when you bring in a professional and you can observe kind of what they're doing, but it helps you to even figure out future strategies. I think it's important that I'm a big advocate of the, the old saying, don't give the man the fish feed him to fish. And so the way Harry has built the continuous value delivery program. It's not we listen to and we go off and do something and produce it for you. We collaborate with you explain what we're doing and why we're doing it and we're, we're developing these relationships and we're coaching. And that's as important as the project we're helping you carry out. I love it. So we don't have that much time left, but I want to get into kind of like what the profile of your project managers might be how they're impacted. Because this is a big deal, given that you're taking time, energy and effort towards something that you all get paid pretty well for, if you don't mind me saying to to to extract that talent and place it into a nonprofit that might not even be in your community right when your folks are working throughout the country throughout the world around. So skill space, but just at a high level, skill space volunteering is a very powerful concept. As a volunteer, you can learn or refine skills that you don't get to use normally on your everyday paid job. And that can be really satisfying. And it can also help your resume. In addition, you expand your professional network, our PM volunteers enjoy working with nonprofits and giving back to their communities, and often experience more appreciation, doing the more change work than they typically experience at their normal paid jobs. In fact, we have at least two volunteers PM volunteers who have ended up on the board of directors for the nonprofits that they supported. That's how much they were appreciated. And, and finally, those of us who are certified, we can use our volunteer hours to earn professional development units which we need to maintain our certification. Finally, as a PM volunteer on the executive team at PM for change. I love the force multiplier effect. I love that we help nonprofits around the world, and then they help their communities. So we're taking local action and achieving global impact. And that's why we like to say we're changing the world one project at a time. I love it. I love it. Kendall, you look like you had something to add. Well, she's spot on there and I was going to, my thought is there's a bit of a story that you might like from the association or nonprofit perspective which is where part of the impetus of this came from. Your, your audience may appreciate this was I was running a large organization of project managers doing professional development in project management. And we wanted to have the membership connect. Right. I mean, some of your people may be worried about membership sometimes. So how do you keep your members rolling. And I was sitting and thinking what what is not being asked of project managers what's not being done what turns out project management is a huge untapped resource of professionals who would love to help in their community. And what was happening is we were being invited to do work in the community that is along some of the many events people have fun runs and bicycle rides and fixing things and you know engaging in community activities. And what Beth just said is so magical the idea of the skills base volunteering I got exposed to that through other nonprofits points of light, for example, it said, why aren't you using these things well we are our my natural thought and many of my colleagues was oh you mean doctors and lawyers do pro bono work. Right. And I was like, no, no project managers could do it. And everyone needs it, I think, let me ask. Just tap the well and there was project managers everywhere saying you know whether they only want to give four or six hours once a year at a day of service, or whether they want to join in a structured pattern of reuse or continuing growth you just said that to something gone to the of their nonprofits. It turns out there's a lot of people that while they don't work in nonprofits or associations would love to serve their communities or to use their skills and talents with others. And that was just nobody had asked or struck. The first I don't think anyone had asked or not commonly asked and secondly and this is what Harry and Beth bring forward. No one had set the mechanism for that engagement, and that's what we wanted to be able to do. So that's the call to action. We try and find the project managers but frankly there's a lot that want something to be able to do something and then connect that with nonprofits such as you represent who might have the demand. What does that look like I mean how many projects is PM for change able to, you know, commit to a year and what does that look like I mean, I know you all are in the east are you are you embracing projects throughout the, the, you said you were global but do you tend to have regional processes or what does that structure look like. Yeah, that's, I mean that's a good question I think right now it's you know it's kind of a natural road out from the Maryland DC, Virginia area but it's right now this program is like skyrocketing. And the funny thing is is that we've got all these volunteers are ready to go. And we were looking for nonprofits right now so to your question right now I think we've right now we've got about five or six projects that are in, you know, simultaneously going on but that can very easily multiply very very fast. So we've got the capability, and we're just now asking the community to come come visit us. So, we've had hundreds of project managers involved. Yeah, if you counted all of them over time in the different cities and around the world but across the United States. And be careful what you wish for my friends, because, you know, we have our live broadcast. We have our archive. So, these, these episodes go up on to Roku Amazon Fire TV, our video channel our archive piece that we have with YouTube. And it's just amazing to hear this talent level. And, you know, this is a thing I hear morning noon and night from nonprofits, we need help with strategy, we need help with strategy you know and nonprofit leaders are great at controlling passion, talent, commitment, and even money, even though these are these are things that are tight, but they're so good at it but the strategy piece. I believe is the Achilles heel I mean and we just hear this time and time again. Wow well you guys have just made my head explode. I want to put everybody's information up on the screen, so that you can get to PM for change.org, because there's just a lot. And we've got several questions. Where do we find more information and how do we sign up. We would like to reach out to PM for change to get on board in New Jersey. I mean, yeah, absolutely and we have more and more of those types of questions coming in so go to PMforChange.org, check them out. You've had the ability to get in front of the minds of greatness today with Harry Zulkauer. Harry, thank you for reaching out to us by the way, because I think you're that one that that really did, you know, connect, I think with me personally and then we were able to put this together finally. Okay, thank you so much. I love your insight and the things that you had to say, and Kendall left. No, it's a silent D. Kendall, I loved your, the way you're able to frame this up for us and give us some perspective because it's just a really cool thing that your sector would see the value in joining with the nonprofit sector as we all know I mean, you have so many nonprofits doing amazing things that make this world and this nation of ours better and so what a magical partnership to have your folks bring their talents. Again, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American nonprofit Academy. Thanks and we'll be back with us shortly. She's actually traveling today, and we'll hear more about that when she gets here. Hint, look for the little sombrero that we've placed over her head in tomorrow's episode and that might give you an indication of what she is up to. We want to remind everybody we have our book club. Join us on the exploration of some of new ideas, new ways to get things done. Without you can get some books about project management we might have to find out if we can get some of those types of things on our book club. Again, thank you to our sponsors this has been one of those things that I hope that has helped you help us and so we are so very excited that our sponsors would allow us to have this conversation. Very candle. What a great way to start our week. You're welcome. I love it. Hey, it's been amazing as we like to end every episode we want to remind everyone to stay well. So you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Thanks everybody.