 Thank you for joining us on Feed More Tech Talks. I'm your host, Nicole Jones. And today's event features a conversation with Diz Katit, founder and CEO of Liquid Donate. Hello, Diz. Okay, so a little bit about us, your hosts for this event. We're the TechSoup Global Network and we've been equipping nonprofits with the solutions that they need to build a more equitable world. We've been doing it for over 30 years. So from discounted tech products and services, article, webinars, events and more, we deliver the training and tools that nonprofits need to be better, stronger and faster for transforming their communities. So together with our partners all around the world, we've served over 1.3 million organizations and we've delivered more than $16 billion in tech tools and services to date. And part of being this network means that we cross path with a lot of really smart and passionate people like today's guest expert, Diz Patit. Diz is the founder and CEO of Liquid Donate, a sustainable social impact solution for businesses and nonprofits. Liquid Donate combines Diz's years of experience working with the tech companies to implement social impact programs along with her love and passion for the work and people of nonprofits. So today she's going to share some important technology solutions that food banks and pantries need to be thinking about, especially when it comes to managing volunteers, deliveries and inventory, just where to start? We know this world of tech sometimes can be really overwhelming and where do we start? We're running really tight organizations and we want to spend more time on the front lines serving the people who need us the most. So let's go ahead and welcome Diz. Thank you so much for being here with us today. We're going to kick off with this first question. Tell us a little bit more about how your background and how you got into food security. Awesome. Well, first of all, thanks so much for having me, Nicole and the TechScoop team. And I'm so inspired by all of the people who are in the chat. It's not often that you get to be in a room virtual or otherwise full of people who care about the same things that you care about. So it's such a cool community. So thank you. As far as my background goes, I know you gave a little bit about my work in the past, but I really started when I was 16 as an activist. I saw issues and I wanted to work on them and correct them. And I wasn't exactly sure how I would be able to interact with those issues and make a difference. So I tried a few things throughout college, different issues that I was working on, some activism. And it was great, but it really started when I was the 15th employee at Postmates. I joined the company and I was able to work on building out our customer service team and what those expectations were for how we would treat customers. I helped to work with our product managers to build out a lot of third-party delivery solutions like the third-party delivery tablet that is still being used today by most third-party delivery services. And then I went on to quit to work at a nonprofit for a year. So right in the middle of that time, I was working at a nonprofit until I came back to Postmates to start our social impact team. And so I was a member of the Pledge 1% team and we worked through all of the different social impact pieces that we wanted to do that would really leverage our existing business model for good. And one of our pullers was food security. It just made sense because we primarily did food delivery. So we worked on building a number of programs, one called Food Fight, that allowed restaurants across the country to just press a button on their merchant tablet and have us can pick up their excess food and take it to local shelters within 30 minutes before they close the doors so that we also weren't asking the employees at those restaurants to stay late. We were building all of our solutions, whether it was the original delivery tablet that they were using or this insight program. We were building it directly with the folks who are on the ground level, which is something that I think is really, really important to do when you're building new products that are going to affect real people. The second product that I built was called Bento. And what it did is it allowed people who didn't have access to smartphones to text the word hungry via SMS from the type of mobile device that they had. And then it would allow them to use the Postmates Pickup Service so they could go into any restaurant that was on the platform and it would allow them to pick up their food with dignity, just the same as with all of the other customers that were going in there. And it was paid more on the back and by a foundation that we connected with. So providing access to food is so important. I mean, access to food is a human right and I'm sure that everyone on this call can agree with that. And that's probably a portion of why they do this work. So it's important work and it needs to be done. And yeah, I'm excited. I love how you walk and speak both tech and nonprofit, right? We know sometimes those things don't always connect having diversity of our skillset whether it's in tech and nonprofits and being on the frontline of nonprofits make a lot of us really busy to be able to think about the technology solutions we need to be able to run more efficient organizations. So I love that you're speaking from both of these experiences. So that being said, what are some of the solutions that you think are most important for these food banks and pantries and other hunger relief organizations? What do you think they should be thinking about when it comes to really optimizing their operations with technology? Absolutely. So we spent a lot of time at Postmates and before our acquisition by Uber building out our social impact team and structure. And we ultimately decided on building a tech for good suite and that tech for good allowed us to partner with organizations like TechSoup, Pledge 1%, and a number of other organizations that were highly connected to the nonprofit community. And we were able to really ask what is it that folks need access to? This isn't a solution that we built but helping nonprofits access volunteers within the tech community has been something that's been really helpful. There is a website called signupgenius.com. I'm sure a lot of folks here know about it but with millennials and Gen Z being so online, it's really helpful for folks to be able to go online, to be able to find a calendar of events of volunteer opportunities for your nonprofit and to be able to sign up and receive automated emails that remind them to come to your volunteer event. So signupgenius is a great way to do it. It's free, which we wanna make sure we're not being cost prohibitive to nonprofits and other organizations that are doing great work that need volunteers. And then my second note on this would be that it's actually possible to just email tech companies that are based in your area and let them know that, hey, I'm so-and-so from this nonprofit, we need access to volunteers every Friday from two to five PM and we would love for your staff to come help. Whether you're asking them to do a shift of clothing sorting or food prep or whatever it is that you need them to do, that's great. You can spell that out for them so they know what they're getting into but you can also ask for specific tech solutions as well. If you want them to do a virtual online class on how to use Google Drive because that would make your organization more efficient or you want them to come in and make sure that your internet is as fast as it can be and kind of help you evaluate those options. There are people who are willing to do that and asking them for that specific skill set that they have is going to one, it's gonna engage the employee more and help keep them engaged in the volunteer effort. It's gonna make them feel good about what they're doing and you're also getting a really high quality, free pro bono volunteer to help you with something that can help your organization be more efficient and longer. With that, yeah, that's a great thing to mention about just asking, asking a lot of these companies for support, for volunteer support, a lot of these tech companies do have some type of employee advocacy program, social impact program as you mentioned and they're willing to step in and help and donate some hours and great tool to sign up genius, free for volunteer management. In addition to this one from Naomi, I'm not familiar with it, but in it lies and Naomi said it's not free, but lots of tech grants there. Great, yeah, check out our chat. We're gonna be adding more links and resources from what Diz is sharing today and plus all of you here, a lot of you are experts in this and have some tools that you really love. So please drop them in chat so that others can benefit from them as well. So let's move to the next question here around inventory management. At TechSoup, we've been doing a lot of research with new security organizations to understand some of their unique challenges and time and time again. And we hear about the challenges around inventory management. So how can small hunger relief organizations start to use inventory management solutions? How have you seen organizations use it well? Yeah, awesome. So big question. Inventory management is one of the most difficult problems to solve whether you're a tech company or not. And based on what you said a moment ago about like expertise, I did also just wanna take a step back and say that the folks who are in this room who are doing this work every day are the experts and it's really important that folks who are working on the tech side or working on anything that's trying to actually be helpful to an organization doing this type of work really needs to be relying on the folks who are doing the work and asking them what it is that they need, but also helping them to realize what is possible. I think that's one of the things that really gets lost in translation between tech workers and nonprofit folks is that you can ask for someone to teach you how to use Excel. You can ask someone to redo your website. There are a lot of folks who will do these things for free and it's really important to dream big about what it is that they can do for you because they wanna help you and they wanna do something that's really meaningful to what they do on a daily basis, but actually direct that towards something that they care about, which a lot of folks care a lot about food security. So wanted to mention that because I'm definitely not the end all be all here by any means and it takes a community to really put all this together. So as far as inventory management goes, inventory management is one of the most difficult problems to solve and equitable access to goods and services is something that was always at a loss when I would talk to nonprofits. They needed this or that and they didn't know how to get access to it. That's the main reason I started Liquid Donate. My co-founder and I spent so much time realizing that there were organizations that needed access to items. They might post something on Instagram and say like, hey, we actually, we need a donation of 500 to go containers this week because we have an extra population we need to serve that we don't normally serve. Can someone send us $100 to help pay for that? Or once again, it's just asking, making a link to the website that the item can be bought. Those things are because there are a lot of community members who are like, I can't volunteer my time, but I can give you my money. So in those situations, it's totally okay to ask and people feel a lot better about giving a product versus just giving a dollar amount toward a kind of ambiguous cause. They wanna be able to say I bought those 500 containers or whatever it might be. So with Liquid Donate, we also knew that there were so many items that individuals have, that businesses have and that retailers have that end up in the landfill because they don't know what else to do with it. And so what Liquid Donate does is that we actually match and move thousands and thousands of items that would otherwise go in the landfill that are still super high quality, a lot of times brand new to nonprofits all across the country. So on our website, we have a free marketplace, people can go to it and they can see that we have clothing, we have food, we have all kinds of different items, office supplies, laptops, technology, anything that needs to be donated or anything that someone wants to donate, they're able to post it on there and have a nonprofit or a school claim that item for free. And then we also handle all the logistics and the inventory management of that. So if someone needs a hundred pin cups, we got it and we'll give it to you for free. So it's really important to keep all that stuff out of the landfill and also provide that equitable access to nonprofits for those items because your donor dollars are always for better or worse going to be going to programmatic work and any money you pay to spend it towards that is going to be something that is probably going to be what you're looking for, at least in my experience. We've got some good conversations going on and chat here, people definitely wanna learn more about Liquid Donate. So we've included a link there anywhere else. We can learn more about your work or is your website the best place. Our website is the best place. It's liquiddonate.com. It's a nationwide program. So folks who have items that they'd like to donate, they actually upload them directly on the website at liquiddonate.com slash donate or they can just text 845 donate one with the items they'd like to donate and then they'll get posted on the website with a banner that says what city they're located in and then you can either go pick it up for free. It's really important to us that we're always providing a free option. The items are always free, pick up is free. So there is a free option for everyone whether you wanna volunteer to go get it or someone from your staff, depending on your situation. And then we also do offer shipping and delivery for items as well within reason. And so we've had a lot of people take advantage. Fantastic. And we're gonna answer some more questions at the end here, but I wanna take this one from Ed, kind of specific on a solution that Ed's looking for. But I think a lot of people can relate to this question and turn looking for something that can run on both a computer and a smartphone, right? Cause we're out in the field, we're having to be out in the warehouse, being in the food lines, checking in guests, things like that. So how can we track our guests and patrons using a computer and or smartphone and also manage volunteer schedules. So yeah, what are some tools that you love that can travel with you regardless where you are and help do some things like managing and tracking volunteers? So I don't know one that does everything that Ed is looking for, and it makes me wanna build one. For me not to be. Which cannot be my solution to everything, but it just drives me nuts that these things don't already exist. The closest thing that I've really gotten to that is a website called epoch, E-P-O-C-H. And their website is epochapp.com, E-P-O-C-H-A-P-P.com. They have a mobile app, they integrate directly with Slack if you're using that technology solution and it works on desktop or web. So what they do is they handle all the volunteer management for you, you can access it on the go, you can check in volunteers, you can have them fill out any volunteer forms and that they need to fill out in advance of arriving. It keeps track of volunteer hours. It's a solution that came out a few years ago and when I was working at Postmates on our volunteer program, I kind of helped build it with what we were doing manually on spreadsheets already with our volunteer program internally. So it is a really great solution. It is unfortunately not free, but it's fairly low cost and it would be really great to see how nonprofits could access that and use it as well. And yeah, you know, maybe once we get more funding at Liquid Donate, I can build that too. I was gonna say, people are asking you to build it, build it, just build it. I know, I know there's lots of things. And Nicole has this really salient point about it's annoying that we have to have different software for each task, donors, client services, volunteer management. And it's tough, you know, there are some specific food bank platforms out there and yeah, there's a hodge, it's a hodge pod but there's also some all in one but it never does exactly what your organization needs, right? The specific needs of your organization while you might be like another food bank or pantry still, now you've got some of your own operations and you have your own process and way of doing things. So it's tough, it's hard. Let's see, you know, I think we'll save some questions and comments for the end here. So we can move into our next part here, Diz, but thank you for taking some of those first questions and we'll continue the conversation and just a bit here, but I just wanna move on to say, you know, a lot of us are here today for the same reason is to help feed more people in our community. And for many of us, it's getting harder and harder, it's getting more expensive, there's growing demand, we've definitely seen that as a result of the pandemic. And so this seemingly solvable problem is why we spent the last year at TechSoup understanding what organizations like yours are doing to make sure people in the community do not go hungry and what some of those associated challenges are with that we're hearing about here in this chat. So with that, here's what we heard. We heard that you wanna connect with one another, like you're doing here today in this event, that you want advice on things like you can handle your spreadsheets on tier management, client records, data security, right? The list goes on, and that you want solutions that meet the unique needs of your organization. So we created this platform, this community-based platform called Kwan and it's a space where you can come together with your peers, like many of you who are here today and other stakeholders, people like Diz as a Quad member, by the way, so you can find Diz in the space and coming together to work on the issues that are most important to you while saving money on the tools and training you need to feed more people, because we know we're on a shoestring budget here, right? And we wanna make our money work for us so that we can ultimately serve more people, that's the goal. So what do you get as a Quad member? Well, first of all, and I'll probably say this kind of multiple times, that Quad is an all-in-one membership for nonprofits to build connection, you're gonna get individualized support, and again, access savings on tech products and services that your food charity needs to serve more people. So when you become a member, you're joining this community space of others, just like you, that you can access 24-7, and this is where your crew's gonna be hanging out, they're gonna offer you advice, they're gonna share best practices and give you the encouragement that you need to keep moving forward, because we know this work is important, but it's hard, right? And we're doing this together through sharing ideas, but also receiving the encouragement that we need to keep going. As a member, you're also going to get templates, you're gonna get how-to guides, we do lots of events with experts, so we kind of go deeper into some of these topics and themes that you're hearing about today, and you're also gonna get a dedicated member support rep to ensure that you're getting the most out of your quad membership, right? They're gonna be holding your hand to make sure that you know what you can get and how you can get it, and that's why we have here the lovely Mr. Aaron Dowell, who is going to be at your quad customer service rep, like he's gonna be here to guide you and make sure that you're getting the most out of this, so yeah, tell us a little bit more about what that process looks like, Aaron. Sure, Nicole, thanks. Hi, everybody. Yeah, so I'll be your support once you get the membership, which, as you see, it's 200 bucks, $200, that's based off of the average annual spend of our members. You'll have an initial consultation with me around to understand your goals, your techniques over the course of the year. I'll place requests for you for products, courses, and services. I'll tag you in relevant conversations within the community space, based again off of the profile I was able to get from our initial consultation. I think this is an opportunity to provide more services to the sector with greater impact, because with one fee, you can get what you need, but you don't actually have to pay over and over again, like you would normally looking at products, and I would be the one placing the request for you. So what we have heard over the course of a year and a half talking to food insecurity or since the course, and they don't have resources. So in some ways, this will remove a little bit of that rub, a little bit of the time you have to take to place requests and think about the products. I'm here to kind of go over that initially with you. And again, maybe you're used to coming to TechSoup, placing a request one month, placing a request another month, and another month, paying for it, taking out your credit card, or figuring out how you're gonna get the funds for it. With this membership, you pay once, you talk to me, we have a consultation, and over the course of the year, if you need a product, you email me, I get it for you, it gets fulfilled. So you don't have to do a lot of the little things that might add up and take some time. So yeah, that's the gist of what a Quad membership is, products, courses, and services with administrative fees removed to this dynamic community space with ever building digital content we're gonna add and support from me. Yep, yeah, getting to work with Erin is a treat, I promise you, extra bonus. That's the other things that you get. Oh, well, it's not this nice, it's true, it's a fact. So part of the other things that you get with a Quad membership, we talked a little bit about some of the savings, well, here it is. Just these four products alone right here, Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, Norton Security Deluxe, QuickBooks Online Plus, Windows Operating System, these are just a dozen, or I should say, few of the dozen of products that we have in our catalog, and these are just some of the most popular ones that a lot of nonprofits get from us. Right here alone, that's just about $200 in savings when you become a Quad member. Also services, you get access to popular services like Salesforce Data Management Assessment, a digital marketing consultation, website security and hosting. Again, just a small sample of the services that are included in your Quad membership. So these three right here, that's the savings of $163. And then the courses, we have some amazing courses available, and with a Quad membership, you get access to all of them. So unlimited access to over 170 trainings in our TechSoup catalog with really basic things like IT support, you know, tech planning, email marketing, and some of the popular courses that we have, grant writing, our Google ad grant, and then on cybersecurity, right there, those three together with a Quad membership, you'd be saving about $350. So this is what Quad looks like. So in addition to all those savings that you get, you also have this all-in-one platform, right? This community space you can log in at any time and you can interact with other members in space. You can interact with Diz, for example, Diz is in here, she's a Quad member. So here's an example from one of our food security organizations, they're sharing a free tool to help with pantry pickup and delivery. So this is just one of many examples of what our community is talking about. And then we've got different resources and templates and articles that are specific for your organization, like what kinds of organizations operate food security, right? We know it's a complex environment and it's not just nonprofits, right? It's other organizations who have especially had to step up in the pandemic to make sure that no one's going hungry in their community. We also have Excel templates for food security organizations, right? To save you time, why create something from scratch when someone else has already thought of it? Sharing those, in addition to document management solutions, that was a huge challenge that we heard in our research with food security orgs. We designed a space for you. And we're putting what TechSoup just so well are these savings, right? Is being able to provide you with savings on tech products and solutions. We're putting it all here and one to make sure it's easy for you to access. And this is another example of something you get in Quad. You get these events with experts. So it's like a little taste of what you're getting with this today. And we go deeper within and you're in good company. Without a doubt, this is just a small sample of some organizations who are already part of Quad and you'll see the diversity from food banks to food rescue orgs. We've got senior citizen councils, after school clubs, churches, right? Like we're all part of the fabric of helping to make sure our community gets fed. And we all have a lot of learnings and challenges to share. So yeah, that is who you're gonna find in Quad. We would love to see you be part of this community. So if you want more information, go ahead just let us know in chat and we can make sure that we get a call schedule with you and Erin will also drop a link where you can learn more about Quad and really kind of spend time with understanding everything that's included. And yeah, this is a pitch without a doubt. This is a pitch and we're a nonprofit ourselves. So we don't wanna sell you anything unless we think it's really gonna be valuable for you. And like I said, we package this up to make it the most useful, the most valuable for other nonprofits for doing this important work day in, day out. So thank you so much for listening and we hope you're excited about joining. And with that, let's dive into our Q&A. So I am gonna check. I know my team's helping to circulate some questions that we have here. So I think the first question here is just to go back to Diz. If you can join us back on screen here is to learn a little bit more about some like other specifically delivery management tools. Like we know that is something a lot of our food security organizations are wanting to get involved with but sometimes feel intimidated of like, where do I start and what's available? How do I make sure I get the food into the hands of people who need it who are unable to come on site to actually pick it up? That's a great question. I'm not sure that anyone has really solved that problem yet. Practic. I think continuing to push tech companies and other organizations like them to offer their services for free or for cheap is something that needs to continue to be. There are programs at DoorDash for example where they do a food fight type program that is food security based where you can actually have them do deliveries on behalf of a nonprofit. And at Postmates, we were working with a lot of different vendors to help them get their items out as well. But it's not something that I'm currently involved in and I don't wanna misrepresent that. It's a difficult problem that someone needs to solve. And for example, like, yeah, I think the options that are out there are a bit too difficult to use right now for a nonprofit unless they have a tech team that can integrate directly with the API, with that code that the tech company is able to provide. I see someone in the chat said that they're, oh, yeah, cool, yeah. A LinkedIn feed is using DoorDash and DoorDash will be integration. So that would be great. And back to your response about asking for help, right? Like a lot of the stuff is complicated unless you have someone kind of dedicated to champion that solution for you at your organization. It's hard to get it up and running and then continue to make sure it's being used in the best way possible, whether that's inventory management or delivery management. But yeah, that's cool about LinkedIn feed from Naomi. Thanks for sharing that. So yes, yeah, I think that's the caveat with a lot of these things is not, there's not one size fits all for these solutions. So I think that's a good segue into this question here about just, you know, there's lots of solutions out there, software solutions out there. So what approach should a nonprofit use to help make a decision? What would you recommend for them to like evaluate in their evaluation process? What should they be considering costs? I think costs is probably number one. And then beyond that, what is the area that is served? So a smaller organization like Replate or Copia, those food rescue organizations that will, you know, pick up food from events in schools and take it directly to nonprofits who are part of their platform, you will need to know exactly like how far out they will deliver because if you want to use a solution, you need to know if it covers the service area that you are, that you're going for. So cost delivery area. And then I think what you will and won't accept. I think that there are some services that are being built depend on receiving things like only fresh produce that has been gleaned from grocery stores, for example, whereas other organizations only take non-perishable items in having the ability to make it super clear so that things aren't getting donated that you can't use or then have to re-home is also something that's important about being clear and not making more work for the nonprofit. Appreciate that. Let's take one more question here. This is specifically about liquid donate and Maryam asked where do liquid donate items get stored or are you matching people directly? If you can explain how that works a little bit more. Yeah, so we like to match people directly. That is ideal because it obviously reduces emissions and it helps people within the community connect even if they're doing a no contact pickup. So for example, some individual who's moving might want to post that they have a couch which really just happened. And someone else in Sacramento was able to go get that couch for free. And the nonprofit was actually in this situation, the nonprofit paid to have it delivered. It was a small fee and the nonprofit then received the couch which would have not been matched to the nonprofit otherwise. We avoid warehousing as well. So what we really do is we focus on that one to one connection between folks and really prioritizing nonprofits. And we're building another solution that is specifically for retailers for their returns so that when they have an item that is at the return counter that can't be put back on the floor but is still a good quality that it will automatically be offered to nonprofits in the area that have signed up. And then people who need that item will be able to go get it from those organizations. So from those companies rather. So great, great. And I know I said last question but either if you wanna answer this or someone in the community, I know for sure we've answered this in quad but Summer would like to know what are some of the best free apps for food pantry clients checking. So yeah, don't know if you can listening off the top of your head. Yeah, yeah, let's find out. Shine in everyone. Yeah, LinkedIn feed I don't think is free but I know that's a component of what they do. They do lots of other food bank food pantry related related activities. But yeah, I know we've got a list in quad but if anyone can list out some good free apps for food pantry client check in please drop them in chat. And I think just ending with this now on a logistical question around is quad a one-timer reoccurring fee and it's a reoccurring. It's an annual fee, $200 fee. So yeah, I know we're at time. Does I wanna leave you with final words on just what do you wanna say to the food security organizations who are here with us today, final word? Yeah, I would love to say thank you for the work that you're doing. It's really important. I hope that this conversation has at least if you haven't thought about it before helped you think about what you can ask for. I know that I'm personally inspired by bringing together all of these different things into one thing that would work really well. And so yeah, I think I'm sorry that I don't have the answer to everything. I wish I did. And hopefully by being having a business like Lilliquidoni and I'm hoping that we can continue to inspire other folks to build companies that benefit not. Thank you so much for being here with us. Does really appreciate your time and yeah, we'll include more information about Lilliquidoni. We'll Lilliquidoni.com is the best way to learn more and we'll follow up of course in an email too. So folks can get in touch. We're interested in learning more.