 Good morning, everyone. Good day, good afternoon, good evening, no matter where you are in this world. We are delighted that you have joined us for another episode of the Nonprofit Shows Ask and Answer. We do this every Friday. We are thrilled that Fundraising Academy is the title sponsor of this fabulous day. And we're really excited because we have Jack Gallato, CFRE, one of the expert trainers from Fundraising Academy coming to us from the Coachella Valley. So that definitely makes him cool. And Jack, you ready to dig in to some really good questions? Yes, absolutely. Bring them on. Bring them on, baby. Okay. Before we do that, we want to make sure that we thank all of our presenting sponsors. Zoom around your part-time controller, American Nonprofit Academy, Nonprofit Nerd, Fundraising Academy, Staffing Boutique, Nonprofit Thought Leader, and the Nonprofit Atlas. These are the folks that are with us day in and day out. Also, if you have missed any episodes or you want to catch up on some more things, you can find more than 500 of our episodes on Roku, Amazon Fire TV, YouTube, and Vimeo. And then wait, there's more. We are now taking all of our current episodes and putting them into podcast format. So wherever you stream your content, you can now get the daily nonprofit show, which is really, really exciting for us. Some really big news for us, which is super exciting. We are going to be broadcasting live at the AFP Icon event in Vegas. Jared Ransom will be there, and we're going to actually be filming from the Bloomerang booth. So we want to give a shout out to them. They're giving us a corner of their entire loose space. And so if you are in Vegas, stop by. I have heard that Jack and the fabulous folks at Fundraising Academy are going to stop by. Oh, absolutely. Can't wait. It's going to be a lot of fun. It'll be a lot of fun. I'm going to stay behind with our executive producer and our studios here so that we can keep things going. This will be our first live remote. So we're very excited about it. But yeah, go come by and introduce yourself to Jared. If you're there, she'll be broadcasting between 930 and 10, but she'll certainly be in the exhibit floor space. And so I know she would love to meet you and we would love to see your face. Again, we will be there. I believe on the third and the fourth, although it runs, you know, several days before and even a few days after, but check us out. It'll be a lot of fun. Okay, now down to the nitty gritty, the questions. Okay. Now you know, Jack, I love the city withheld name withheld when they're anonymous, you know it's going to be juicy. Our CEO is not a great speaker, nor is she comfortable speaking in public. However, I feel we need to be out in the public and addressing our area of service to the community. We serve human shelter services in our city. How can we help her navigate this issue. Wow, what a great question. You know, the last part of that question tells me that this is a really good person. She wants to help her CEO become a better public speaker so that they could get out there and talk about their cause in a way that will bring in revenue and support, etc. And since she's asked this question, I'm going to assume that she would like us to give her some strategies about how she could help her CEO. The first thing I would do is help her be prepared for public speaking, give her help her organize her materials. Help her to understand that everyone gets nervous in front of the public help. Here's the best thing and it's always worked for me Julie is do a dress rehearsal. You know, when, when we used to do these big asks of donors or one of our board members was going to go out and speak to the rotary or the, or the lions club or the Chamber of Commerce. We would help them with the speech, and then we would help them with address rehearsal, which I think is a great way to help someone prepare to be a public speaker. Let her personality come through. And that's so important. I think public speakers who use humor, and the most important part of being a public speaker is telling stories. Don't read from your notes. Now they're in human services. Tell a story, some success story about someone they've helped, and you'll grab that audience and you'll feel that beautiful love that they'll give you when you tell them a success story, especially something around human, human needs, whether it's a food bank or a homeless shelter, whatever it is. You know, I love that and I would say that a big part of public speaking in in the human shelter services is trying to commit convince communities to allow them into the community, and then the municipalities to fund it support it. You know, adjust zoning whatever that might be so it seems to me that this has got to be on the front burner. The question to you is, what, how does it work if you can't get the CEO to be proficient or the CEO doesn't want to do it. How do you feel about having somebody else within the organization, be the, the. I mean, if you have tried all of these techniques, and she still says you know what Jack, I'm not going to go out in public. Yeah, then you have to step up or someone else in the organization, maybe the director of development, maybe the chief operating officer, whoever can build that rapport with the audience that they're going to be speaking to. I think the most important thing other than telling stories when when we are working from the nonprofit when we are trying to talk people into supporting others in some way is to connect to the purpose of our nonprofit, whether it's the purpose of sheltering people who are homeless, whether it is feeding the poor, whatever it is, and whoever is best able to deliver that message with enthusiasm and feeling and passion, then that's who you should go with. I think is an amazing comment and before we move on one more question. How do you feel about having like a board chair, do this or do you feel like they're a little too removed or do you have any thoughts on that. The board chair could be perfect. Suppose your board chair owns her own business, and she's a member of the chamber and she's a respected business woman in the community. She's a perfect speaker to go in front of that Chamber of Commerce. They know her, she knows them, they trust her, they see the work she's doing in the community, and she's talking about, here she is a volunteer. Board members are volunteers. Who better to show the public, you know, the importance of the nonprofit than a volunteer who speaks on behalf of the organization. I love that. And, you know, maybe that's something that we can all learn here, learn from here and that we're not probably asking our boards to do that enough I mean we're asking him to go out and represent, you know, all this but to actually frame this up and get them into a trajectory of doing this. It's pretty exciting. Right and you know, here's what we do with our board. You've probably done this with your boards, give them talking points. Yeah, all of it. Yeah. We have to arm our board members to go out and be advocates. Right. For our organization and ambassadors and that you know that's from Kay Sprinkles AAA way for board, for board involvement in your organization to those are ambassadors and advocates and we have to help them do those things for us. I love it. That's really cool. Well, I hope this works out. I, I would imagine that there are a lot of folks watching the nonprofit show together. There's a nonprofit show today that are shaking their head going. Yep. That could be me. That could be my organization. Absolutely. I mean, because it's brutal. It's a you, if you love it, you love it, but boy if you don't, it's, it's really a harsh thing to have to do. Okay Nancy from New York writes, Have you heard of development officers receiving commissions. I don't know more about this, but it seems as though they're being called bonuses, and yet it seems the same. Are you hearing about this as well. Wow, this makes me think about the AFP code of ethics. Yeah, I mean, well you're a CFRE so. The AFP code of ethics says no on commissions commissions are not acceptable form of compensation. Now the second part of her question is very interesting to me about bonuses. I'll tell you this. If you say, we're not going to give commissions, but we're going to give bonuses, but really what you're doing is giving a commission. Your donors are going to see that. Remember the other thing about the donor bill of rights that AFP publishes Julia, they say that if your donors have the right to see both the revenue and expenses of your organization. If you're putting in your annual report that you gave the major gift officer a $10,000 bonus, you know, I think donors going to look at that and wonder, what's going on here was, why did that happen. How did that happen was my gift use to compensate somebody above and beyond what they are their salaries. Here's the other thing that I don't like about bonuses. It's the lazy way for employers not to increase your salary. And I didn't see that coming. So I think some employers say, you know what, I like Jack. I think he's doing a great job, but I don't want to have to increase his salary so that every year, it's just another base salary that I have to increase. I'm going to offer him a $10,000 bonus instead. I don't like that. As an employee, I want to be compensated in my salary, whatever it is, as opposed to an easy way to skirt around giving me a raise. And you know, Julia, in today's market, we're in the driver's seat, employees are in the driver's seat. So we should really start looking at compensation, whether it's the offer of commissions and I've been offered commissions a couple times at or bonuses and say, wait a minute, what's going on here. You know, I, I've never heard it framed that way and I really appreciate you saying that because it does change the way we are valuing our teams, and undoubtedly there's a big scramble going on for many reasons about this we talk about it a lot in the in the for profit sector, the nonprofit sector and our families, you know, with our teams. But one of these things Nancy I'm thinking is that, you know, there are many ways to create employee retention, if you want to call them bonuses or perks that that can drive employee satisfaction, maybe extra days off, maybe a travel allowance, maybe a personal training allowance where you can say yeah, you can go to this seminar or get this coaching or, you know, there are ways that we can honor our employees also bonuses are taxed. You know, and I mean, our tax, you know that can be the sort of thing that just put somebody in a tizzy within their own family unit and all that. I agree with you. I think you've got to be very careful about the concept of commission versus bonus and, and in an audit format, how that comes out and is reported and what that ultimately does. Yeah. You know, transparency is the cornerstone of ethics and accountability being transparent as nonprofit organizations we have to be held to a higher standard of transparency, you know, and if you if you say well we can't give commission so let's give a bonus. It feels icky to me. It does. Now let me ask you this, what if an organization said okay, here's your, you know, here's your the goal for your portfolio. And if you reach this, you're going to get an added week of vacation, or you're going to do you see some of those types of things as being, you know, kind of off the table or still. No, I think that would be great. In fact, I think many people would rather take some kind of extra, you know, a holiday or week off or, you know, have four day weekends or whatever it is to be with their family or their friends, etc. So I think I don't, you know, and it doesn't really affect the bottom line in terms of, you know, increase in salary or, you know, paying a commission or anything like that. So, you know, I think, you know, you mentioned perks, there's a lot of great perks that involve time off. Right. Right. Interesting. Okay, cool. Well Nancy. Thank you for bringing that up. I have been hearing about that as well Jack. In a roundabout way from just different people that we've had on the show or the communicate to both Jared and I so it's interesting that it is kind of, you know, perking up and so percolating up so. Cool. That's a really interesting thing. And I think, you know, we need to be watching this Jack. I think we need to be seeing what the dialogue is too. Wow. And people please it's free go to AFP dot org. Look at their code of ethics look at the donor bill of rights. They clearly articulate the yeses and knows of certain behaviors, things that we have to do full disclosure transparency all of those things it's really important. Awesome. Thank you. Okay, let's talk to Francis in Houston, Texas. Francis writes, I need to develop some additional employees. Oh, this is hilarious. Some additional employee perks, and I'm not working with additional funds. Do you have any creative ideas that can help us build stronger employee satisfaction and retention. Hello, Francis. We were just talking about this. Yeah, I know. I love this question. It's such a great question. But the first thing you have to do is you have to have an organizational commitment to manage retention and employee satisfaction, which is has to be part of your culture, your organizational culture that says, we want to keep employees, and we want them to be happy, satisfied employees. Look at the great resignation that's going on. It's happening in the nonprofit world, as well as the for profit world. And the reason I think for so much of that is that we are not, our employees are dissatisfied, especially after what we've been through over the last two years. The second thing after you decide that you will have a culture in your organization of this is recruit the right people, the people who you can retain and satisfy. And I always say this, what's your culture, people will take a pay cut Julia for a better work culture. In my own career, I've left employers who paid me higher than those than the job I was going to, because the job I was going to was more cultural a good cultural fit for me, create a culture that builds teams. And I'm not just talking about teams where at the beginning of the meeting, you tell them something from high school that no one else knows about you. That's, that's a nice exercise, but teams are those processes that culture where everyone shares their successes and their work challenges. They have transparency, I can't emphasize transparency and organizations top to bottom, not only an ethics and accountability but have a culture of transparency, you want to keep employees enabled them to do professional development, like every Friday at this time, they are permitted not to have a meeting, but come to the nonprofit show. That's professional development it doesn't even cost you anything. Recognize them for their successes. Yeah, I love that. Remember people manage to retain employees, manage to keep employees satisfied. I love that. I think you're right and, you know, for some people watching this or even tackling this issue. That's not even going to be in discussion instead they're going to be looking at their spreadsheet saying, Well, we can afford to, you know, buy and bust passes are okay we can afford to end early on Thursday afternoons are okay we can afford, you know, better deductibles on our insurance or whatever. I mean, but I like your approach, Jack, it's much more systemic than that and saying, start back up here before we get into the brass tax let's figure out what our attitude and mindset is. It's all about culture, you know, in fundraise me say culture of philanthropy organizational culture is so important, not only for those at the top the board, but right on down to the, to the person who we consider at the bottom of the, of the employee chart. Everyone needs a positive culture. When I worked. You know, I'm working right now for National University and the fundraising Academy, but important to me so important to me was opportunities that they gave me for professional development. If I was the major gift officer but I wanted to learn about plan giving, they would send me and those were the best employers in my career. You know, develop, you want to be a CFRE perfect go for it will give you some time to do that. Interesting. I love that. Well good deal well I hope that helps you. Nancy that's amazing. Okay, let's get back to your neck of the woods, if you will, this is coming to us from a couple hours away, Southern California, Los Angeles. We're struggling with getting staff members to return to the office. Some on our board suggested we offer a higher hourly rate for those who are on site, instead of work from home. Wow, this blows my mind. What do your Julia and Jared think I'm going to insert Julia and Jack think. I love this question, but the first question I would ask before I would talk about this and I think everyone should get a higher hourly rate. I mean that's just the way I am. But before I would answer the question with a higher hourly rate. I would ask myself, why are they reluctant to return to the office. What has happened in our world, our country that is causing this slow return to the office and maybe it might be that they don't feel safe yet. So you have to reassure, yeah, they're worried about the pandemic. They're worried about infection control in the organization. They're worried about all this. I think the first thing you have to do is create a safe work environment. And then you have to tell them of the procedures that you've gone through to make it a safe environment. I just saw a statistic yesterday, 89% of the American workforce wants to come back to the office part time. They want a hybrid model of employment. So that's the important thing that we have to remember. That's what they want. Let's be empathetic with them. Let's set realistic expectations for them to return to the office. We can't just say to, you know, Julia, our employee, Julia, you from now on you're coming back full time. We have to work with her and her individual situation as it relates. Things change for working parents during the last two years. They changed dramatically. Now they may have lost their childcare because of the pandemic. So now they are the full time employee plus the full time caregiver. We have to set realistic expectations. My niece has a two year old and she works for a high tech company. And I love the way she's doing it. She is starting at the end of May. She will be returning to the office for one day a week. So that's really important to her. That's manageable for her. And then further on throughout the year it will be two days then three days, et cetera. What that company is doing for her is they are establishing a routine for her. Here's the other thing. She doesn't have to be in at nine o'clock. She doesn't have to be in at eight o'clock. She works in that great city called Los Angeles. So you know what the traffic is like there. You could be in at 10 o'clock now. She has to go to Culver City from San Pedro, which is quite a ways. So she could be in later to avoid the traffic. I love this establishing of a new routine for her and dropping her son off at childcare, et cetera. Make return to the office gradual people don't force your employees back all at once. That's really key. Have you heard anybody talking about this in terms of staggering the hourly rate or the wage? I mean that's pretty interesting to me. I think that assumption in that is that everyone is motivated by money. And let's face it, we are motivated by money. But in some people's lives, that's not the number one motivation. Think back to that, the perks of retention. This again is tied into employee retention. She's a working mom. Her husbands are working dad. They cannot just stop what they're doing after two years. When her baby was born during the pandemic, and he's now two years old, it's not going to be the same thing. We have to set, it's a new standard. Yeah, yeah. It's a new dawn. And I think too, you know, with things being so fragile. I love that you said, you started off by basically saying query your teams and figure out what it is they want. You know, be really, really honest and if you have to get a third party to do it, so that you get an outside voice that can help you really synthesize what the mood and the tenor is because the cost of bringing somebody new in is crazy money in the long run and then the short run. And it is a tough, tough way to go. Well, wow. You know what, I could just, I could just say this, I think, and I'm going to make a prediction and you could come back to me in a couple of years and see if it worked out. Those employers who manage their employees return to the workforce are going to have way more productive employees than those who forced them into it. In a large organization, you could say if you're the CEO of some big nonprofit organization, you could say to your managers, go to your five, 10 employees and come up with an individualized plan for them to return to the workplace. Yeah, that's a beautiful thing to do for them. Yeah, I love that Jack, that's a fabulous idea because it, it works on building culture and establishing trust on so many levels and getting honest feedback and not having to just be charismatic from the CEO on down. Well, wow, our time has blown by us so fast, Jack. I'm just always, I love your energy, I love your passion, I love the things that you say and what you bring to the table is amazing. Here's Jack's information. Jack, you're going to be at AFP icon. So if you see him, you're going to be doing, your team's going to be doing two trainings. Two trainings we're doing two trainings on Tuesday. One is handling objections and then the after I'm co-presenting with my other trainer, and then the after we're doing cultivation and stewardship. But even if you're not coming to those, come up, introduce yourself to me. I want to give my business, I just got a whole bunch of business cards. I got to give them away, Julia. Yeah, that's fabulous. Well, we'll definitely meet up and see what we've got cooking. Definitely at AFP icon, we're very, very excited about that. And then we want to thank all of our presenting sponsors for being here with us and Jack, a lot of Fundraising Academy, Loom around your part time controller, the American Nonprofit Academy, Nonprofit Nerd, of course our friends at Fundraising Academy, Staffing Boutique, Nonprofit Thought Leader, and the Nonprofit Atlas. Again, these are the folks that have really been here, Jack, many, most of them actually since day one and we're now in year three. I really want to say thank you to them. I mean, it's crazy to think that we've been doing this now for going into our third year, but we have, we have a lot of exciting content coming up, and we're going to be doing some really unique things as we grow and as we help our Nonprofit sector grow. As we enter a weekend hopefully of rest and relaxation, we want to remind everyone and ourselves to stay well so you can do well.