 And welcome to everybody. And before I introduce our esteemed guest, Brenda, I want to invite you all again to put in your information into the chat because we are also about connecting with folks and networking. And again, my name is Susanna Ehrler and I am one of the co-organizers of TechSoup Connect Texas and I'm your host today, your local host. And today's event is titled Making Nonprofits More Effective, The Role and Benefits of Sustained Collaboration Networks. But before I start, we're gonna talk for a second about our local chapter and I am gonna share a quick share screen slide that Carolyn made and so that I can tell you just a little bit more about our local chapter. Here it is. Hopefully it will share great and I'll be able to, I know you're seeing more than you need to right now, but as soon as I click on that presentation mode, then voila. All right, this is us. This is our hashtag. We are, as Eli mentioned, part of the tech clubs around the nation and the world and all programs are free. We are managed by a group of volunteers and hint and tent. If you have some extra time, we would love to have you as a volunteer and these are the presentations we made this year and we're looking forward to next year. We have become the Texas chapter. That's a recent new thing. So our scope is broadening. Stay tuned for that. Click, here's how you can connect with us on LinkedIn. Beautiful little slide action there. And we salute Capital Factory because they've been a wonderful Austin sponsor. Yay, thank you. And here is, if you wanna take a screenshot of that, that is how you can find the club, the group, the chapter online. And I've also put that into the chat and thanks again, Carolyn, for making this beautiful slideshow. I will now escape and unshare. I'll stop the share and now we're back. Okay, so thanks for watching all that and sharing your information into the chat. And let's get started. Today, making nonprofits more effective, the role and benefits of sustained collaboration. Our guest today is Brenda Coleman Beatty. She's the CEO of To Thrive 4, a national business strategy consulting company that provides services for private and public sector organizations. She specializes in helping organizations navigate operational and financial challenges. Her work includes interim executive management for development and training, strategic and business plans, as well as organizational assessments. Brenda has a bachelor's in international relations from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and a master's in Latin American studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Her civic engagement includes work with Austin Together, Leadership Austin, and the new philanthropists and more. She is an active advocate for head to toe healthcare and has as such been a part of working with the Dell Medical School, the Texas Council for Developmental Disabilities, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Central Texas, Intracle Care, and more. And related to today's presentation, based on her years of experience as a national and local executive and consultant, Brenda is gonna share details today from her sustained collaboration training, coupled with hands-on experience leading and navigating an organization through COVID-19, including details about how it sharpened her knowledge about collaborations. This sustained collaboration experience has helped Brenda provide consultation services more effectively and thoughtfully to organizations who through collaboration strive for continued excellence and who want to have more meaningful impact in their communities. So now it's my great pleasure to welcome our guest, Brenda Coleman Beatty. Let's give our best hands welcome to Brenda. Thank you so much, Susanna. And when you approached me over six months ago, it was like, yeah, I could do that in December. And here we are. I thank each of you for being here this evening to tis the season to be overwhelmed, engaged and full of commitments. And Susanna, I want you to pick my lottery numbers because you said, Brenda, normally five to nine people show up at 24 RSVP. So your numbers are pretty correct in terms of the lottery. So pick my numbers and tell me when I should play, okay? So thank you so much for that introduction. And I'm going to do a screen share if you will to sort of kick off my presentation with everyone. And so let me just ask you how many of you are actually all set for the holiday? Oh, I don't see too many hands. I see a few, but not too many. Okay, so we already know what this is about, but let me just share with you the synchronistic nature of what we are talking about today in that almost a year ago to this date, I made a gift to myself. It was one of the best gifts I've made in over a decade. And so what it was, we're all on these lists serves and other things where we get this mail, say sign up for this, sign up for that. But I was experiencing a strong pet peeve relative to my prior board experience and what I was experiencing with my interim role of an organization. I'm like, you know what, there are too many nonprofits, we're all competing for the same dollars. This is in December of 2020. So you remember that was just a little bit on the other side of what we thought was is COVID gonna get any better, right? And I'll come back to some specific examples, but we were competing with so many other nonprofits for dollars. And that's another conversation for another day about funders in how they can also facilitate us working better and being funded better and differently. But all that aside, there appeared this thing about an organization that was starting a pilot called the Sustain Collaborative or Sustain Collaboration Network Pilot. There were nearly 60 brave folks from throughout the US who said, you know what, we do this in our respective communities and or tell me more, we want to learn more. So after all my experience which Suzanne has already talked about, I won't duplicate it, but it's always my professional goal to if you will sharpen the tool. So instead of staying static saying, this is the way I've done, this is the way I've been as an exec, this is the way I've consulted with and for clients. Let me see how I can learn more. So that was the best gift to myself December, 2020 when I made that. We had a six part series which started in actually January of last year and it was great. So it was a great gift to me. So let me fast forward. Let me just get to the crux of the matter and begin walking you through some of my thoughts and suggestions. You know, it's a simple question, but do we ever ask ourselves if nonprofits can do better specifically with regard to the people in the communities they serve? I believe that, you know, COVID has been so traumatic on so many levels. However, I believe there have been numeral silver linings of aha moments and lessons we've learned. Now the practice is if we've learned them, are we gonna continue to practice them and tweak and hone them? And so I'm going to share how COVID accelerated how we had no choice, but to learn and do differently. And so I wanna talk about why all this matters to our community. Also, Rich Smalley, who is the co-founding member of the Austin Together Fund is on this call as well. This is a graphic from that website. It's actually Austin Together, not all together, but the link there, which you'll have the slide back does go there. So simply put, people wanna know what is... I don't know. Hello? I don't know if that was background noise or if someone said something. Okay, keep going. What is sustained collaboration? It's basically how do we come together as nonprofits to make a difference in our community with a real intent to have fundamental change? You know, we talk about change is good and change management is innovation and we have chief strategy officers and so forth, but do we really have fundamental change? And I would argue with you that I still struggle to see that among our nonprofits. We are blessed in central Texas that we do in fact see, if you will, incremental change, but fundamental change is hard. It's a lot of work. And by the way, you will not be in everyone's fan club when you do that. So we're talking about collaboration that makes a difference for the people we're serving. As you look at nonprofits, what is their role? What is their part in this community? And how do we continue to sharpen as nonprofits to continue to make a difference? And then I'm gonna fast forward and say this, post the George Floyd event, you had lots of folks making comments about, oh, we're gonna do this better. We're gonna do that better. And I'll be honest with you, I'm gonna call it out. A lot of it was window dressing, a lot of nonprofits struggled to say, okay, how are we serving the people of color when the main portion of our boards are people who are not people of color or representative of the people we serve? So again, a lot of questions that presented opportunities for us, instead of beating ourselves up, what fundamental change did we look at? And again, I'm real fanatical about making sure I give due credit where my sources come from. So you'll see that at the bottom of most of my slides, just so you know where that comes from. So sustained collaborative is basically how do we improve the efficiency of the services in our communities, I just said. But most importantly, and by the way, this is from the Austin Together website. How do we align services? I do a lot of organizational assessments. In fact, I've done 35 throughout the country for nonprofits and I've probably done, probably close to 10 for for profits. And I call it realignment. And sometimes that gives a euphemism because some people don't wanna hear that, what in the heck are you doing? Let's realign, almost like a car that you wanted to run well for a period of time before you say I'm gonna buy a new one, right? So you realign it, but you also get it into balance. Likewise, sustained collaboration for nonprofits is a similar sense of, do we ever go through other than our periodic strategic planning purposes? Do we go through and say we need a realignment? Strategic planning, we check the boxes and say we did it. And yeah, it still goes on the shelf, but perhaps not as much. COVID has- COVID has a fucking sense, boy, when I'm fucking for the West Bank, boy. That's a boy, enjoy that work, pay your rent, boy, help, boy, when I'm fucking here and all these- And so, I mean it, I guess you get the background. Yeah, it's a fucking sense, boy, please. God, that shit up, bring your face up, take off, get your face up. Okay, was that a classic Zoom bombing? I don't know. Okay, but I'm gonna continue. I'm gonna continue. So all that said and done is, aside from really being serious about fundamental changes and realigning, much like you realign a car to rebalance it, you realign, then you have to balance after you do the alignment. If you're doing the alignment and don't balance, your car is not gonna work well, okay? Likewise with nonprofits. So sustained collaboration network is the organization that supported the six-week course that I was one of the 60 cohorts that participated in that. And basically it's a network of people who are nonprofit funders and people dedicated to making a significant but fundamental change to realign the organization. And long story short, it's getting out of short-term thinking. We think if we fix this right now, we'll band-aid it because sometimes making the hard decisions and hard choices, no one wants to go there. So we band-aid it and tell ourselves this is real change, but it's not fundamental change. So the sustained collaboration network actually is a national consortium of what are seven, if you will, sites that have implemented varying versions of making a difference in their respective communities. And because Austin is always on the leading edge in so many ways, the Austin Together Fund rebranded as Austin Together is one of those seven sites. And I'll come back to tell you how my gift to self started out with being a participant with 60 cohorts to learn about sustained collaboration to sharpen my skills that also led me to be now an advisory committee member of our local sustained collaboration network, Austin Together. So in the social sector, it's become cliche to say that no organization can go it alone. We often say, oh, I can't go it alone. I think it's nice wording. It's good to say that I'm collaborative. I'm working with my community and all my other organizations, but we beat down the same doors for the same funding when we do the same programs. And we don't look at, for example, how can we stop triplicating or if there's such a word quadruplicating our efforts and work together and know that we can't do it alone. And I want to come to something that's just really happening right now. It's the perfect storm accelerated by COVID. Demands for the community services, particularly since COVID have just been insurmountable for a lot of organizations. Government funding is declining. Yes, we did have all forms of stimulus and casing and point in our own community. Rental assistance funding doesn't exist anymore. Think about that domino for a lot of the health and human services and other nonprofits in our community. You know, we're really at the eye of the storm now. When you look at all of those things, once that funding that was the bandaid got us over what we thought was a hump, but where are we now? Smaller donors are getting less because their portfolios decline. And then more philanthropy is being concentrated in fewer hands. The philanthropists are saying, we're gonna join together, but that means that some of our respective grantees may not overlap and be the same. Another good thing. And so before the economic implosion, so to speak, that COVID created, it was like, are we looking at resources and do we just think they're infinite or are they finite? I'm here to tell you they're finite, but we continue to want to have our organization to say that our organization is gonna do it better, but John Dole's doing the same thing and saying the same thing. So again, if we combine resources and look at collective impact, there's another movement that actually started by the Canadians called collective impact, which I, if you will, become up to speed on more so as well, but collectively can we do more and better and effectively together? So one of the things I wanted to share with you is there's some old data, but it's still pretty relevant. I actually checked in with Mission Capital who provided this data in 2013. I've also reached out to the RGK, Gronje and George Kacimetsky Center for Philanthropy because Patrick Bixler and Robert and Bob Springer do a lot, David Springer rather, do a lot of work over there in terms of data regarding Austin's sustainability and nonprofits, but back in 2013, we had so many nonprofits per capita. And I'm here to tell you that number has worsened in terms of their even more because there's so many caring and wonderful people, they say, I'm gonna start a nonprofit for that. And of course, because of my compelling reason to exist, I'm gonna get funded. And then they beat down my door and your door is a lot saying, you know what, I need some money, but where can I get it? Because I'm competing with Jane Doe, John Doe nonprofits. So again, Austin, we have great heart, great talent, but we don't assess who we can do better together with as opposed to saying, I need to start my own nonprofit. So one of the things coming full circle again to COVID, it raised some of our ugly scars. When you look at what's called the run rate, if you will, if you go back to the studies that Mission Capital did, they did two different posts. They took a pulse of our community, the nonprofits, post one and then post two. This is a result, one of the many from the data that show, if you will, what was happening in our community. But if you look at this, you see that 45% were saying, we need to engage in strategic partnerships with other organizations. They realized that because of that funding issue. So they were driven because funding was drying up. They weren't driven because they wanted to make collective impact and impact the services and the quality it was driven by necessity, which is we got to do something. Cause if we don't, then, you know, we're going to have a more challenging time than we thought we had with regard to raising money. So you just look at that number and that's from May of 2020, just so you know, that 45% of the respondents said, we need to do something differently. And that includes facing the reality of engaging with partnerships with other organizations. So collaborations tend to have a naughty word. Sometimes people perceive that when you say you're going to collaborate, it means, oh my God, I have to tell you the truth. What people say is, I'm not going to become a life works. For those of you who are familiar with life works in our community, you may know that it's the compendium or combination of what were 13 different nonprofits that then became life works. And if anyone knows Susan McDowell who's been leading that effort over that organization for years now, if you know how much better off our community has been because those organizations woven together are having a huge impact together as opposed to 13 different organizations. And because of that, I believe life works has had a greater success rate, if you will, with funders because they see they're doing, if you will, a continuum of care that ranges from, we're going to work with you, getting them off the street, helping train them, helping them get their GED, helping them get housing, all the way to say, we're going to run other programs, right? So it's not as scary as a life works. When people hear the word collaboration, nonprofits in Austin, they say, I'm not going to become a life works. I'm saying, you know what? But, but, but it's not just a life works because the same collaboration involves to mystify in that stereotype because there are a range of possibilities. You know, it could be as simple as one of the things I'll talk about specifically as it relates to this group is technology. You know what it ranges from, we're going to start conversations and see if we're going to hold hands all the way to say, are we going to get married? And then there's dating in between. First we're going to say, we're going to hold hands, share services, let's share some things that we don't need to duplicate. Are we going to share HR folks? Are we going to share technology support? Are we going to share what have you? In the middle, there's a lot of, well, let's inch a little bit further. We did that well. Let's see what else we can try all the way up to a full blown joint venture and merger. So I continue to warn people, don't think of that as a bad word when I say collaboration because it's a range of things. It's not either or, okay? So going to that point, this is a great slide from the Sustain Collaboration Network part of the training that I went through which talks about what I just said. You know, you have alliances and networks. You have shared services. Is it co-location? Is it shared staffing? What is it all the way to a life works, okay? So don't get scared when we talk about nonprofit collaboration because we're looking at sustained organizations who do good work who have impact and can have more definitive and lasting impact if you will, legacy impact if in fact they look at sustained collaboration in a different sense. And it's a good exercise to go through even if there is no marriage you may continue to date in some form or fashion. So, you know, one of the things that I did these with the pop ins and the pop out start to make sure they pop in right. Okay, so we all know that for a variety of reasons including technology that it is probably one of the most expensive items in addition to staff. Staff salaries usually consume the largest percent because that's what produces programs. That's what manages programs. That's what if you will helps us sustain the good work that we're doing in our community. But it's also technology is an area where you can look at what are the opportunities for collaboration that makes it affordable and allow us to hire the people to do programming while we share the cost of certain services, okay? So you guys know this well, right, Carolyn? I think you were probably there on the front end with what were called the circuit riders. This was when the nonprofit technology enterprise network N10 came together. It started out by saying how do we as nonprofit technology folks work with grantors and grantees? So technology, well, maybe you didn't anticipate that you were gonna be on the forefront really of sustained collaboration but in a different way. And there are many more prospects and opportunities. So this is a history which many of you as members already know about, but I've had to put that slide to give you some credit because you were perhaps ahead of your time. And I think there's even more need and spaces and places for the technology piece of what this group does. So let me get to the point of the technology but leading up to that, let's talk about the runway. So also another thing that Mission Capital did as part of their survey results, they went through a process to say, okay, nonprofits and this is roughly about 200 of them that participated in this particular survey. Not Mission Capital said, how much operating money do you have? So if you got no, not a penny or a dime more in the door today, how long could you go? And on average, not so much average but the median if you will was four to six months for nonprofits and there were very few that could go more than a year and about a fourth that could go up to a year. So that again presented some real hard data that showed us that, okay, that runway for a lot of organization is a little bit scary and we're all competing for the same dollars and after COVID what's that gonna look like such that do we need to look at sustained collaboration and the gamut of what it can be as a possible alternative to manage our costs and do better and more effectively for the people we serve in this community. So I have a curiosity poll that I'm gonna have Susanna help me with which she's gonna put in the chat a question and it really is my curiosity and it's fed by what I've experienced with the organization I was the former interim executive director for and the current one, which is what I call the customer relationship management or CRM software. I wanna know what has been your experience as an employee or as a consultant to a nonprofit with regard to CRMs? And we all know what that is technology platform that many people use to do a lot of things. And what I have continued to learn is that sadly it's underutilized in our community because a lot of folks will use it for the sake of saying that they have that as I call Lexus and they realize once they get the Lexus that the maintenance is really high for those of you have a Lexus which is a great vehicle. You know, when you take it in for its periodic maintenance, it ain't cheap. You know, it starts at a minimum of $500 just to so we're gonna cook it up to the computer and then more things need to happen. But at the same time, I'm curious as to whether a Corolla would be equally a good fit at Toyota Corolla or Camry. By the way, I don't sell cars but I like to use that compare and contrast just to say to have a Lexus fully loaded is great but it's high maintenance and command nonprofit supported relative to their utilization. But does it Corolla or does a Camry work as well? So Suzanne was gonna put in the chat a couple of questions I had out of curiosity. And since we're a small group, maybe you can shout out some of your answers. And I'm just curious by show of hands, how many of you, so Caroline, did you have a question? Well, I have definitely some experience working with nonprofits and they have CRMs that they've acquired and basically no one's taking any time with it. And I have in the past few years gotten with one group that had a Z2 neon perfectly fine reasonably priced not the most expensive razor's edge kind of thing perfectly fine platform. And so I did spend a lot of time on it. I took it apart and put it back together because I'd say a half of the names on there, in there and the data was wrong, people were gone. And so, but what was going on at the same time is siloing within the organization. And so we had the program people that just had their Excel spreadsheet for their constituents and they just, that's it. They were not ever gonna learn the Z2 neon. So anyway, I cleaned it up and then I presented it back to them. I mean, it took months to do that and updated it so it was really strong. And then it hooked into our Mailchimp. So everything was really coordinated and working well. And by the time I was done, I worked with that group for about a year. And by the time I was done, they just still, the board was asking them, the staff to use it. And they just refused to take the time and they kept siloing. Well, I've got mine over here, you know. I couldn't get them. And so Carolyn, I wanna thank you for sharing that because what I have experienced but more data will show, I think, exactly what you said. But that's my curiosity because I suspect that's more of the case than the exception in our community, which leads me to something that I'm just putting out there which is, you know, there's a, you guys may be familiar with businesssoftware.com. They put out just two weeks ago, a 2020 edition. By the way, I don't endorse them. I'm just sharing data that's available. But they looked at the top 40 services compared to Salesforce. So my whole point here from a technology standpoint of how you as an employee or a consultant to a nonprofit can look at, do you look at the range of options for your organization or do you have them lead you down the path to say, I want the Lexus? I know a Corolla may be great, but the Lexus is what I'm told everybody's using. So I just put that out there because in terms of sustained collaboration, there's so many organizations that go to Carolyn's point, they have some aspect of the silo. And if they're gonna keep Salesforce, how are they integrating that to be more effective tool? Tool being the keyword for how they function as an organization, but what data are they gleaning from that to improve the impact of their organization? So as a technology consultant or as a nonprofit employee, what are you doing to support saying, let me do some sniffing to see what other organizations are out there where we can share the consultant costs or the cost of managing and maintaining Salesforce if that's possible by the license as opposed to duplicating your costs which is draining your budget for something you don't use and you don't get the data out of. I can tell you this, I've run a multi-million dollar capital campaigns using Excel spreadsheets and Microsoft tables and charts and I do tell them, I finally say, look, you can do it. What's really required for technology like that data management platforms is the person using it, persons using it are fully engaged with it, understand it and actually document what they're doing and who they're talking to and what the addresses are and whatever information that's in there. So I guess I would say, I think nonprofits feel they're trapped into, I have to have this expensive CRM and they don't because if you're never gonna use it, I have seen another large, I worked with another really large nonprofit and they have razor's edge deluxe, they had the Lexus, they had the Rolls-Royce, no one was using it. At that time it was 50,000, I'm sure it's more expensive today. And so what I'm trying to do is to put this ball in your court as consultants and nonprofit organizations because more data from Mission Capital Survey from May of 2020, look at it. What type of collaboration opportunities are you looking for? And it's technology and digital access. Digital access for the people they serve, many people of color or people in lower income socioeconomic communities, the technology going to the point that I'm trying to make that I hope is relevant for this group in terms of why you exist. Yes, you can do the TechSoup package, but what are you using to drive it? What are the systems underneath and supporting it and staff? And again, it's low hanging fruit. It's perhaps the easiest way to start holding hands with an organization towards the path of even discussing collaboration of any kind. But you can see the data show that technology was the number one thing of 221 nonprofits that said, you know what, we need to do something. And again, technology and digital access. Another study that just came out recently, that Rich is familiar with as well, is C as in the ocean sea change. They're based up in the Northeast, but they work predominantly as one of the seven sustained collaboration networks in the country. They put out a primer on nonprofit collaboration. And you'll see, and I highlighted the number one, well, one of the high challenges, a common challenge is the IT integration. Again, going back to what Carolyn has said, going back to what I've seen. So there's a niche that whether it's through, oh gosh, I hadn't thought of it that way or I hadn't pushed the envelope from a collaboration perspective, meaning as to IT support, IT consultant, have you looked at organizations to say, on behalf of the organization I'm consulting to or an employee of, am I doing my due diligence to say I'm here for the mission and why we exist and how can we look at if in fact there's synergies with other nonprofits like us because that's a huge issue on any level as well in terms of organizational effectiveness. Brenda, I was just gonna say, ROCA, ROCA in California, which serves youth offenders in the justice system. If you, I saw one of the finest programs on use of technology, smart, integrated, breaking down silos. It was during a social solutions conference a couple of years ago. And so if you ever, I'm just telling you, they were so, so smart and really a nice group of people. So I would just say that was good. Braille Society is another one. Very good. Thank you for sharing that. And if you could put it in the chat, that'll be helpful too. So, you know, I'm calling this slide the real deal about sustained collaborations. It's not all ample pile of mode with the nuts and cherries on top. It begins internally and comes from a source of strength. So it's a strengths-based, based constructive, positive approach, but it is a hard one when you look at EDs, when you look at board leadership because we're all used to in the nonprofit role of saying, I paid my dues as an ED and by darn, I'm not gonna end in a musical chair without a chair. And when you're a board who's been a significant donor or you're driven by the mission or in some cases responsible for creating the organization, you're like, oh my God, does that mean that my identity, my baby goes away? So there's some common challenges that are there to begin hand-holding, let alone dating, let alone a marriage. And then there are tons of things you need to do. But one of the unintended, but good consequences of collaboration that has been post COVID and post George Floyd is that it does enhance the opportunity because the bottom line is people look at the impact of people impacted by COVID. The people impacted were a lot of people of color. Everybody was impacted by COVID, no denial, but people of color, the digital divide among other things. And so it was a wake up call for people to say, oh wow. So there's some form of collaboration because I don't have all the tech money or the tech staff. Can we collaborate and do something that in many cases, serve populations that overlap between our organization? What can we collaborate on? And then do those discussions lead to other forms of collaboration? Again, I'm trying to pitch the point that sometimes it's starting out small as opposed to we're gonna go all in, which may be appropriate for many organizations, but to get from the scare factor, let's look at something that's very utilitarian that everyone's trying to solve. So I have to talk about my favorite because here a year ago, I started with my training through the National Sustainings Collaboration Network and little did I know that another gift would be in April of this year, 2021, that I was invited to be a member of the committee of the Austin, the advisory committee of the Austin Together, formerly known as the Austin Together Fund, because it does fund based upon an application and a deliberation and so forth implementation and then from there perhaps feasibility first and then perhaps implementation of a collaboration, okay? So it was created in 2019, again, it's one of seven national, if you will, networks throughout the country, but it really has made a difference in this community. I'm biased, but I've seen it, I've experienced it as an advisory committee member being part of those arrangements of handholding and maybe we're gonna date kind of things that are confidential until such time as they're done whatever form of fashion they're done in. But if you go to the website, which the link is in this slide as well, you'll see that for the first two years, so in two years, 27 grants to 40 organizations to look at how do we look at whether it's even feasible for us to do some form of collaboration, okay? And then we have an ambitious goal to look at 50 more collaborations over the next three years. So it's no eagles at the door in terms of this advisory committee, it's pure heart of people saying, we know our community is doing great stuff, but we know it can do even better. And I think probably one of the biggest highlights that you'll see on the webpage when you go to it is what I'll call the Greater United Way for our community where a united way of the capital areas, we know it has now, if you will, merged with or if you wanna think of it in reverse, the United Way of Williamson County is now part of the United Way of the capital area. So if you think about it, it really is United Way of Central Texas. And so that was one of the, if you think about a sustained collaboration networks the Austin Together organization was integral in bringing to the table to help them start dating and holding hands and providing them with guides to help them with knowledge and expertise going through this process. So we have something in our front yard that's a great example of how sustained collaboration can work and does work. And also I'm gonna go to the next slide which says, you know, it's not a universal solution, sustained collaboration. It may not be the end all be all for all organizations. But what I do want you to have is resources in mind being respectful of the time and maybe having some dialogue before we end in 10 minutes is give me a couple of resources to go take a look at the sustained collaboration has a report that came out. So this is the link here in the deck that you'll get that has the full report. You have even within the Austin Together website. We have a link to a great article that talks about management services, a la technology services, if you will. And then Carolyn and Suzanne and you're probably familiar with the recent article in November, I believe talking about time and expense best practices for nonprofits looking to thrive. It talks about those kinds of services. And then Mission Capital also has the digital equity resources on its page. So one of the things I do, I don't love reinventing or creating something for the sake of putting my name on it. My thing is we have resources that tells a lot of things, a lot of data, a lot of things that are saying other people have done this research, but my pet peeve is, what have we done to bring it together to then go forward to have fundamental change, impact and effective nonprofits in our community. Lots of data exists. And then the last one, I think I provided the link to the CRM top 40, which is yes, Alexis sells for some, may think is there, but there are others. Again, I don't endorse that. It's just a resource with information that through a simple Google search I provided for you guys who are consulted specifically and in-house staff too, from IT perspective to have to look at. And so with that in mind, I'm gonna end, and if you will be more conversational with you while you're still here because you may have questions or even examples from your own front yard or backyard that you'd like to share. Thank you, Brenda. And before we give Brenda a hand, I note that Alan has shared some information about the use of a CRM at your nonprofit or nonprofits. Would you like to unmute yourself and describe it? Yes, hi. Thank you for that presentation. Great insight and very necessary in these times. For our second non, we have two nonprofits, one of them we're not even gonna look for funding, we're gonna keep it 100% volunteer because we have so much energy and people around it. We have the mayor, we have the city council who's done it in their district with 500 bucks. So it's done very people-centric participatory. We have five Alamo colleges and the chancellor. And so we're putting it in graining the building of that nonprofit through volunteer, through coursework as part of curriculum and sociology, political science, IT. So it's a beautiful program. We don't want any money in it because it's a very revolutionary program. It actually, it's almost like a parallel government participatory budgeting. And we're kind of sneaking it into high schools all over Texas and so it's just not gonna be vulnerable to administrative harassment from any, whether it's state, city government, federal. I used to be a federal investigator. So I can tell you a lot of things, nefarious qualities of different organizations. That one's gonna be untouchable. It's 100% volunteer run under the Alamo colleges. The nonprofit, the second one is VR therapies and we manufacture the product, manufacturing 3000 of them. So it's a product that we sell. And so we tried going through foundations since last year when we started production and we had people in foundations telling us, they thought it was like a sleeping. They didn't know what VR was. We had actually the first interview we had from foundation. They thought it was a blue light that would help you sleep coming out of the headsets we manufacture. There's just a mobile phone, mobile VR. So we're like, no, it's not a blue light that shines on you to sleep. It actually is a virtual world in it. So obviously that was a big opener. Nobody knows what VR is, how we use it in hospitals, how we work with nurses unions. So we're like, this is a waste of time. We're just applying to these hundreds of applications. It's not going anywhere. So anyway, we have enough funds to manufacture and to distribute our headsets. So we're not really bothering with donors. We sell a product to children's hospitals specifically and we work with the Mayo Clinic which is the number one hospital in the country. So we're not even a, but we gave up. I mean, we had a year of applying. We're just like, this is too innovative and not tested enough. So it just didn't work as a product that could be sold to donors. Even if we would sneak into competitions or win competitions and then they won equity. And we're like, we're a nonprofit. You can't purchase us. And so that was just for fun. We'd sneak into these competitions but yeah, we're good on that. I think it's just we would love to have more collaboration with other peoples. We have a lot of organizations like the Valor program. So we put our headsets inside of veterans coming out of jail to get a backpack with toiletries and things like that. It's a program very successful here in Texas. So a lot of different collaborative models that we have. If anybody knows any programs like that, that they'd like to do therapies in VR, we manufacture our headsets for under seven bucks, sell for 25 and we donate for each sale. We're donating a thousand to a nurse's union. So that's how we work it. But we'd love to collaborate any nonprofit doing work with vulnerable populations since our model was developed for refugees, refugee camps specifically. And so yeah, anything collaborative, anyone in Texas, we'd love to work with them. Thank you, yeah. So if there's anybody in the group that has an idea for collaborating with Alan, thanks for describing the organizations. And Alan, your description dovetails into a question. I heard you ask, but I wanna also spotlight it. I think part of what you were saying I heard you say is how do you start, say holding hands or moving? That would be my question for you, Brenda, is how does it look? I know that you said that people, it might come from a place of power, the person or the entity that has the power might make it happen. But in examples that you've seen, what is it like a board member is talking to another board member and they brainstorm and how do you see step one to step two happen? That's a very good question. And so there are various ways that takes place, but I have to tell you in my experience, the most successful ones is when you have executive directors come to the table and the executive directors, you have those who are mature enough and not worried about ending up without a musical chair. So the agenda is very different. The agenda is about the community and the mission driven and the impact. And then they in turn work with their executive committee and then over time with their entire board about this handholding in particular dating process and then maybe a marriage. And then they engage us in Austin, for example, Central Texas that is with the Austin Together Fund. We provide guides who help them through that process, help them navigate. But it really starts in the most successful ones in my opinion with the executive directors. When it's board driven, it's interesting. It does, it can happen, but I have found them to be interesting and more challenging. And does Austin Together ever take the first step or is it sometimes, okay, yeah. So for example, there are situations where we will reach out to organizations and say, hey, have you two, three, whatever, ever thought about XYZ a shared service for a relationship? Can we facilitate that conversation? And oftentimes people say, yeah, let's talk about that. And some will say, yes, let's explore that further. And if they say, okay, we think we wanna submit a proposal to Austin Together for us looking at the feasibility if there's even happening. And by the way, all feasibilities don't turn out to be, we're gonna do it a lot too, not all. And so, yes, we plan, we sometimes are matchmakers or match.com, I guess if you wanna look at a parallel. That's great, the grand analogy. Carolyn, Carolyn. For Alan, I was on my phone searching while listening to your talk. Capital Factory has a health startup kind of a group. Yeah, it says it's a new partnership about just a few minutes old. Two divisions of Chicago-based Healthcare Services Corporation are teaming up with Capital Factory to connect emerging technology solutions with members and clients. C1 Innovation Lab, a Dallas-based center to incubate and develop new products along with the division of Blue Cross Bleak Shield are working with the Austin-based Accelerator. But they basically hold meetings on health tech and so that's one outcome of it. But I think if you got with Capital Factory and ask about their health tech program, that might be good too. Just get some ideas in brainstorm. It's called Health Tech, I hate to even say this right now. Health Tech Austin meeting is Monday, December 6th at 7.28 right now. It's meeting, I guess, at Capital Factory. Well, let me ask before people get interested in that one, Danita and Dale, do either of you have questions for me or for the group? Yes, I did. Thank you for that. Oh, can you hear me? Okay, I have been going in and out. My computer doesn't love me right now, I guess, but nonetheless. So my question has to do with the way that you were speaking about nonprofits that are currently in existence, where you say, you know what, it would be great if you just sort of walk down this road and perhaps want to have some level of maybe just exploring the interest between coming together. So I love that premise. I would like to see it more for nonprofits that are, as you spoke earlier, were saying, hey, I'll just start one. Because what ends up happening is we don't know this road that we're going to travel until we're on this journey. And it's sort of like sometimes you go, wait, I want off this ride. It's just very challenging to navigate. But it's still fun. You're serving the community. You're doing your calling and your ministry or your passion or what have you. But I would love some words of wisdom that I can borrow so I can share with others. Because I get asked all the time about starting a nonprofit. I work with students. I work with a lot of youths. We do youth development. And so they're thinking that it's this thing where you just sort of go in the community and you just are going to get a gazillion dollars. And I'm like, no, honey, that stuff gets started out of somebody's wallet, namely probably yours or mine, or whatever the case. And things start sort of picking up maybe a little bit if somebody sees some interest. But nothing is guaranteed. So what are your words of wisdom to encourage some of these young people that maybe they might wanna do this partnership or exploration or what have you? Danita, that is an excellent question. Let me share with you something that's so easy to do. You know, when we put the word business in any term, nonprofits say, oh, you mean the bad word business? No, every organization is a business. Where I'm going with that is when you have an organization nonprofit included, we always focus on the strategic plan, but there's also a business plan. How do you exist? Why do you exist? So for anyone interested in starting a nonprofit like starting a business, have you done your homework? Meaning, who are your competitors? Who has and is doing what you wanna do? Real basic work. Yes, you have the passion. You wanna do this. You know, you will do it uniquely. I know you will cause it's you, only you can be you. However, have you done your homework? So the question is asking, it's not just young people, by the way. I know others of all ages, if you will, who say I'm gonna start this nonprofit. And my first question is, have you checked out? Have you done your homework? Like a SWOT analysis, which used to be the go-to, your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Who's your competition? And what are they doing and how are they doing it differently? Or how will you do it differently? Because when you go to a funder, I would hope you would distinguish yourself saying, find me, because this is how I'm different. Or go to that quote competitor and say, you know what, this is the niche or the strength I have to leverage and balance your strength. Why don't we do this together? Simply doing your homework, who else is doing what I'm hoping to do? And the data's out there from a variety of sources. That's great, Danita, do you have a follow-up? Danita, okay, great. Yeah, I was wondering if you had any follow-ups for Brenda, Danita, but... Oh, I have tons of them, but I'm absolutely respectful of your time. So I'm gonna reach out to Ms. Brenda directly because I don't wanna hold you here all night. Well, thank you. Why don't we hear one question from Dale and then we'll let Susanna wrap up. How about that, Dale? We've seen your beautiful smile. Why don't you share a question or a comment? Thank you. Now, I do consulting, but my primary focus is accounting for nonprofits using QuickBooks. That's my little niche. And I see two organizations that possibly could work together. And one has good city funding and one is too new to the community to do that. And I'm thinking, you know, hey, I should mention something like this, but I don't know, do I send an email with this slideshow or a... You know what you can do? Dale, you can say, you know what? I attended this quick session on Monday night and let me share what I heard. And if they're in our central Texas community, Dale, you can, for example, refer them to the Austin Together website, which the links are in the slides, which I'll provide that slide to Susanna. So they can see specifically what's happening in our community, how we do it, why we do it. And if they wanna talk to me, again, it's all confidential. We never say who we're talking to or why other until it becomes public, like the United Way example I gave you. But you can just tell them you heard about this and say, hey, had you checked this out? Do you wanna talk to Brenda? Cause she shared some of her thoughts about it. Yeah, all right, thank you. In fact, I started an email to one of the EDs. Say, I want you to see the slideshow when it comes up that just Austin Together, making sure she knows about you guys. Thank you. Yeah, and put your emails in the chat if you haven't already. And that way when Brenda sends me the slides, I can get them to you, you all. And yes, we're at almost 740. And so what I wanna do is first of all, say thank you so much to Brenda Coleman Beatty for your wonderful presentation, your knowledge, the excellent presentation that you did. We're so grateful. Thank you all to you for coming today and please keep in touch with us. The emails and the URLs and everything are in the chat. Don't forget to say the chat. And with that, I'm going to applaud Brenda and I'm going to stop the recording.