 So hi everyone. Thanks for joining our Zoom meeting today. Today we plan to be hearing from Mr. Toxie Turner, who is from Liberty Medical Center of Texas, but unfortunately it seems like he is unavailable at this moment. So instead we'll be hearing from all of you. We want to hear from your stories to your ideas. I'm Kevin Wong and I'm the webinar producer here at TechSoup. This presentation is being recorded and will be emailed to everyone who registered for this event within 48 hours. If this is your first time in our meetings, here's how to engage today so that everyone can hear and participate. Please keep your mic muted for the quality of the recording. If you would like to respond live, please use the raise the hand function that is located at the bottom of your screen or the Zoom menu. And we will ask you to unmute to ask your questions or comments. Close captioning is available if you need it. So feel free to turn on the CC button located in your Zoom menu. As I previously stated, Mr. Turner was unable to make it today. So I'll be turning it over to Aretha Simons, who is the webinar producer here at TechSoup. Awesome. Great job, Kevin. Awesome. Awesome. As you guys met Kevin Wong, he's our intern here at TechSoup, the webinar producer. Hey Carol, how are you? It's so good to see you. I miss you. There are a lot of faces here that always come our ED chat. And if this is your first time on ED chat, put a one in the chat room. For those of you who have been coming to our ED chats, you know this is a place where we come and share ideas, make connections and share resources. And be for, oh, lots of ones first time. I love it. I love it. Yes, this is great. This is great for you who are here for the first time. Before we came on, Kevin and I came on and Nicole was here. Now I'm not going to tell you too much about Nicole because I've already grabbed her and asked her to be a featured speaker. But she was able to share with me some things that I think that you all have in common. And one of those things is finding funding, finding someone to give to your nonprofit, especially if you're a new nonprofit. Is there anybody who is a new nonprofit that would like to share with us some struggles or successes that you are going through? You can use the raise your hand option or just raise your hand here because sometimes we don't always see. I see you. It says in Tessar. I don't know. Oh, would you like to unmute yourself? And you can share. I'm going to put you on speaker. You'll be the unmute yourself. Okay. Hi, how are you doing? Great. Yeah, my name is into ceremony. I have an nonprofit organization for education development. I am teaching literacy in Iraq. Oh, wow. How is that going for you because you're nonprofit here. So are you an NGO where you. Okay. I'm an NGO, but I am working for Iraq for literacy in Iraq women and children, students and women with those and especially. Awesome. Thank you for you do. And you know what, let's, because a lot of people don't understand the NGO status because 501 C three status is a status that you must have here in the United States in order to get grants for people to write it off on their donations to get donations from corporations. And so when you go to the NGO status that is, and I'm going to let you explain that I know what it is, but I want you to explain in your own words, what the NGO status is. So it's not government organization. Right. I should hear because I am living here. But my main focus now at least is literacy. So I started in Iraq. It is my home country. And I will start it here for the Iraqi women to teach them English. Yeah. So now I buy phone by, you know, zooming meeting with the instructors, everything is like at home, the instructor local instructors. They send them money to print books and the notebook, pencils, whatever, and the cost for teaching hourly work. Awesome. Awesome. How hasn't zoom been incredible. Like, look, she's in the United States and she's able to talk to people all over the world. I, Janice, I see your hand and Jay Lyman, I see you. Janice and then I'll go to Jay Lyman. Okay, hi good evening afternoon morning whatever time of the day it is for everyone. Anyway, my greatest challenge with starting this organization is to get committed and I like to say to use the word committed lawyer, board of directors. I mean that is a great challenge for me. So if anyone has any ideas or suggestions that you can lend to me I would appreciate it. Yeah, I love that and that's always the biggest challenge for a lot of nonprofits, and not just to get them, but to keep them. So those of you who've been around for a while, would you like to share with Janice, some of your feedback. And I haven't forgotten about you Jay Lyman about board of directors. Judy I see you oh she's just joining Carol you want to share some tips for Janice. I think the most important thing is to make sure their vision and your vision aligns, and that I always ask my board of directors annually to do a personal passion statement. So we know why they're there, and if they're passionate about the mission. And that way they can self exit, if it's not the right passion at that time because everybody's passions change and grow during their duration of volunteerism or nonprofit work. Wow. That was powerful. That was great. Thank you Carol. Jay Lyman, would you unmute yourself please. So, we were totally new to the game we started. When the war started in Ukraine, we flew over just to help and hoping that we could just go for a few months and then help and then come back but we quickly realized there was a very serious need for nimble organizations that spoke the language that could connect donors to real community needs and articulate community needs where they're at so I'm in Kiev right now. We're distributing supplies daily, working on building relationships and the two struggles that we've been dealing with or are learning how to focus in something that's ongoing, unlike a lot of situations where there's kind of like an aftermath with a crisis, you know whether it's a natural disaster or something like that. There's very much an ongoing and evolving situation, including the safety of our volunteers and and it's funding. So, so trying to react to all of those needs and then at the same time kind of build some focuses that allow for continuous funding and you know people are getting tired of hearing about this stuff again and again and so trying to figure out ways to fund what we're doing here. Wow. Thank you for sharing and thank you for what you're doing a lot of people pivoted to help Ukraine and so thank you for being bold enough to do that. I just put a link in the chat for those of you who are an NGO or who are working with organizations outside the U.S. I put a link to TechSoups Global because I don't know if you're partner with other nonprofits who are part of TechSoup or maybe they can give you some advice. I just saw a hand go up and then I saw Mr. Turner show up in the room. Kimmy, is that Kimmer? I don't know, Miss Baker. Would you all meet yourself? You're very cool. I can barely hear you Miss Baker. Kimmer? No, I can barely hear you. There you go. My accordion incorrectly. Sometimes they happen to me. Is that better now? Yes. Okay, okay. To answer your question in terms of difficulties being a nonprofit, one of the things that I'm having learning and trying to manage is being part-time with the nonprofit. There are so many things that needs to get accomplished, but we don't have the funding for me to be full-time to get these objectives in. And so I'm recently learning how to not kill myself. And so I think that has been, for me, my biggest challenges. I have this major mission in this vision and wanted to be a nonprofit of service, but just not having the resources to get us to that next level because of timing and funding. Wow. I think that is probably everybody on here, whether you've been in a nonprofit sector for a while, it's finding balance. And especially if you're a new nonprofit, a lot of people start the nonprofit out of passion. They're still working full-time or part-time. And it's just a never-ending cycle of, you know, trying to get funding, working, trying to manage your family and everything like that. So I'm sure somebody will give you some tips in a moment. I see Alan and then Joseph Tan raising them. I'm talk to, we'll go to you. Hi, Alan, how are you? Hey, good morning, everybody. I'm from Vancouver, Washington, suburb of Portland, Oregon. Janice, an answer to your question. I have an association management company and we have a foundation to an answer to your question. Getting started as a nonprofit and finding the right board members is different than thriving. There's some really good people who can help you get started as board members who don't want to make the long-term commitment, but they want to help you get your project going. So sometimes showing them that, you know, it doesn't have to be a lifetime commitment that you're making. You want people to believe in your cause. I think that's most important. But realize that a lot of people just don't want to give up any portion of their 24 hours a day that God gave to us. And they don't want to commit, over-commit themselves. So if you just say, this is what I need, just somebody to give you the ideas, the stimulation to keep moving forward on your cause. You'll find the right people eventually to come on board and then help you thrive and go to the next level. And it may be those people that helped you get started in the very beginning. But they are two separate, they are two separate roles and I wish, I wish you well, but believing in your cause is the most important thing you got to look for with your board members. Wow, that's good advice, Ellen. Thank you so much. Hi, Joseph. Welcome. Hello. My name is Joseph. And I'm here in Gainesville, Florida. I started a nonprofit in 2019 and had to close it due to COVID. Then we started again in 2020. My hardest challenge was to find board members that were that were dedicated, you know, that have your same point of view. Particularly, I had trouble with the treasurer position and that really set me back a good bit. Other than that, I would have to say grant writing, finding a grant writer isn't, it's not easy. I agree. I agree. And then Kim put in there about grants to finding somebody to do that. And we'll touch on that in a moment. Thank you for sharing Joseph. Toxy is here. He was, he is our featured speaker. Talk to I don't know if you have a PowerPoint or you were just going to share. I have a PowerPoint presentation as well. You can go ahead and share your screen. Okay, perfect. So, and also thank you everybody for being here. So I was running a little late, playing a little injured today. This is day three, I believe, my second round of COVID. So you guys are getting all my good energy today. And after that, it's going to be back to the bed for the next, you know, several hours. But let me pull this PowerPoint up. Well, thank you for being here. And we hope you feel better soon. I mean, that's, that's dedication. So we appreciate it. Thank you. I'm not sure how many of y'all sports fans were not but you know you hear about this Michael Jordan flu game all the time. So this is my, my version of that. So hopefully I'll have similar success. One seconds pulling up my notes here. Along the same lines of what we were talking about when I got on. I'm going to, a lot of this presentation is honestly going to be focused on the phases kind of the board. You know, as a nonprofit, when a lot of us when we start off, you know, we know we have those minimum requirements and then the kind of what the board does and their functions and their roles kind of change, and also kind of parsing the between, you know, where the board is and where other members of the organization are. So we'll talk a little bit about that so hopefully maybe I'll be able to answer some of those questions. And just so you guys know, you know, we're still walking and kind of fleshing out this concept as an organization ourselves. So hopefully for some of the new organizations, maybe I can save you guys. Some of that some of that pain, but anyway, so I'll start off by introducing myself. My name is toxic Turner. I am the president and CEO one of the co founders of Liberty Medical Center of Texas. I'll give you kind of the brief introduction of where we came from, well, how we got started, and that kind of thing so I'm not a veteran myself. I've just always had a passion for the veteran community and the sacrifices that not only they make but other family members make as well. And I've always just kind of wondered you know what can I do to help you know where do I fit in to this equation, since I didn't sign up to serve myself. And when this idea first came to me the very first fall call that I made was to my friend William. He was a veteran, you know, also been in health care as an entire adult life. I worked at one of the largest tech extra practices in Houston, but I called him asked him two questions. One, does this exist, and then two of it doesn't exist is it possible. So the first answer he gave me was no it doesn't exist on this exact form and to yesterday's possible which set me willing to do the work and so he and I started this journey. Three years ago at this point, I'm unfortunately will pass away in January of 2020. So he won't be with us physically to see all the through but in spirit. He's here with us. And so Liberty 100% of Texas we're an organization working to open a clinic for veterans and their families here in Dallas for orthometriplex. We're going to start off by doing mental health services, but eventually we plan to expand into pretty much, you know, all clinical services and so that is our mission and our visions to honor the sacrifices of our nation's heroes by providing them, you know, healthcare for highest quality. And so that's what we're setting up to do. That's a little bit about me a little bit about us. So I'm going to start by answering the questions that were laid out before us, and then we'll get into the actual, you know, meet up the presentation. So, the first question that was put before us was how long we've been a member of Tech soup. So we've been with Tech soup for about two years now. We found Tech soup when googling just resources for nonprofits and they were one of the very first things that pop up when you're doing your search. And so just from browsing around the website finding, you know, the many resources that they have, you've been, you know, taking advantage of those for the last, you know, two years so we don't thank you Tech soup for that. The product I would say they be used the most from Tech soup is this zoom platform, because they do offer a discount for zoom and so that's one of the, you know, probably one of the most. I would say companies that's grown the most over the pandemic last couple years is zoom probably more than anybody else because that's pretty much how we meet, even though now it's a little bit, you know, safer for us to meet in person, because of convenience and just kind of understanding the many advantages that it gives us, you know, zoom has definitely been, you know, one of the best things. And the other big resource to use from Tech soup is webinars like this one. And some of the many other courses that they have. I've learned a lot, you know, as a lot of nonprofit leader. And many times I see courses come across my actually for them to other members in my organization. Of course that may be relevant to them. It was something marketing related out kicking over the marketing if it's something that's related to fundraising kick it over to different members of the fundraising team so Tech soup is amazing resource if you're not taking advantage of everything Tech soup has to offer I strongly encourage you to get, you know, more familiar with the many things that they have. So, the next slide here. Talk about our strength. So, our strength as an organization is an easy one. I'll say, just simply because it's something that everybody in America can relate to either you know they serve the military themselves somebody in their family serve their neighbor serve the list goes on we all have a way shape from the fashion of the connection. And I think also though, we all have an understanding of some of the deficiencies that we have in our healthcare system. So, you know, that is probably I would say, you know, our biggest strength, you know, by far and away. So, so from there, you know, we just kind of have to translate that into helping other people understand kind of the, the why and the how they can be part of fixing something that seems to be such a, you know, a macro problem, and just kind of breaking it down to a micro scale and helping them understand what their individual impact will be. So our weakness, which is going to be with this presentation is going to be primarily about here today. So, as a nonprofit, you know, again, you know, we have those. Everybody has a mission. Everybody has a vision. There are minimum requirements for whatever state you're in that you have to have in order to establish yourself as a nonprofit organization. There are the minimum requirements that the IRS puts before us, you know, in terms of the documentation that we need. However, though, having that, you know, strong, you know, core group of people to, you know, run the day to day, those key players are a big part of it. So, you know, you start this nonprofit and we all have these, you know, general ideas of, you know, what the board positions, you know, mean to us. And that has devolved as you go through, you know, from your beginning stages to, you know, the second stage to our remaining stages you want to kind of, you know, line up. And it's just a matter of identifying, you know, when those those times come and being prepared, you know, to adapt, not only as a company, but as an individual leader as well. It's really important for you to recognize that because you have to communicate that in a way that's palatable to other members of the organization as well so they can also understand, you know, why these roles are shifting. Why, you know, somebody's hours may not be the same as, you know, somebody else's hours. You know, why you may not see a certain individual was often as you see, you know, others of us, you know, in the organization so that's one of the many, you know, challenges of being a non-proper leader is also being sure that that is, you know, kind of a part of your job. You know, you're a coach in that way so managing personalities is a big part of that, you know, deal as well. So, you know, again, we all saw that that strong course housing the people that handle day to day. And so as an organization, you know, I would say we're missing some of those, you know, community influence or some of those key players in the community. So, you know, there's a lot of influence. There's corporate leaders, people that can bring resources that, you know, not only are financial but, you know, their network to the table to help bring us to the next level. And those people are just as important as those people who are day to day. So, I'll stay I'll stay on this slide just for a little bit longer and kind of talk about that. So in the beginning, you know, as I mentioned before, you know, you start with, you know, that that core group. And then those are people that are going to handle your day to day the ones that are going to be putting together the structure, kind of the setting up the baseline the culture of the day to day taskers the ones are going to be, you know, doing a lot of the the reaching out, you know, to people, the planning, finances, you know, numbers, you know, just the little the things that keep you up at night, those people, right. You know, and that's your core group, but there comes a time also we have to understand that in addition to your board, you also have to have, you know, another set of volunteers as well that aren't board members right. So in the beginning, you know, you're bringing people on, and it seems like everybody's like hey come on the board, you know everybody come on the board, and then you end up, you know, in a situation where you may have people on the board that don't necessarily be on the board they want to be involved in your organization. You also run into people who don't want to fiduciary responsibility that comes along with being on the board, but they want to help and they may be even more active than somebody who you offer a board position to. But you know they want to be a part of the organization just as much and their value for them is not tied to a board position. It's tied specifically to the contribution that they can give the time that they can give right. So it's important to again, you know, understand when you're offering somebody that board position that one, that board position that's supposed to be a two way street that board position has value to you, but it's also supposed to have value to them, and they're supposed to bring something back to you in exchange for that. So it's not like, you know, the board position isn't the candy that you're dangling to try to get them to come in. You know, no, it's like, we're having a conversation, the board position is a conversation. It's a two way conversation that goes both ways. So my mission is this. My mission means, you know, this to you, you want to come on to take this board seat, because you're going to bring these things and kind of that that understanding. And again, you know, we're still fleshing this out as an organization. That's exactly what that conversation needs to look like. You know, we've had, I've had a couple of successes recently with kind of the prototype of that conversation. But to be honest, it wasn't a comfortable thing at first because again, what we're doing here, all of us we have an idea, we have a vision, right. And trying to transition that in our minds is something that's actually tangible. It really is. And it's okay for it to be hard, but, but I want you guys to understand truly though, that what you're doing, the time that you're putting in, it's very, very tangible, it is very, very real. Because I want you to imagine it like you have a product in your hand that you're holding, right. And that is what you're allowing somebody to put their hands in. You know, think of it, you know, even like a baby, you know, you're not just gonna let anybody, you know, hold your baby right, you know, you have, you know, an infinite amount of you know time and resource that you're going to put into this baby, but you're not gonna let anybody, you know, influence it. So the same thing applies. So, I would say, you know, be as selective with your, your board, especially again if you get your core group in there. Be very selective, you know, with your board, some people you can bring into your organization as volunteers. For example, the executive vice president of our organization, Kyle Hublocker, he came on board as a volunteer. He quickly showed, you know, what he can do, because again his resume was beautiful when we got it. I mean, honestly, to this day, one of the best resumes I've ever seen in my entire life. Also guys, don't be afraid to ask volunteers for resumes. It matters, because it may not matter at that day, but down the line, or in a few months when you're thinking I need somebody for something, something, something, you already know who you have. But anyway, so when I got his resume, one of the most impressive resumes I've ever seen, you know, Cornell graduate with just amazing resume, but that has nothing to do with production. When it comes to coming to the door, the energy you're going to bring to the table, the resources you're going to bring to the table, the time you're going to put in. But, you know, then a few months of having him on board our organization and seeing, you know, what he actually was willing to bring to the table that matched that resume. It became clear to us that we want to offer him something else. So instead of immediately saying, you know, this guy's a great resume, golden goose, you know, we're going to give him, you know, the keys, the car. You know, we gave him some time to show us that what he can actually do. And it worked out for us in our favor. You know, but, but I sell us to say, you know, again, you know, we've been through, you know, people we've had people come on our board, and it didn't work out. As I'm sure many of you have had, but you can't be afraid to to move on from those situations as well. Because again, your organization, you know, it's a living, breathing entity and continue to treat it like that, which means that, you know, again, you have to feed it. It has to grow. It's going to hurt sometimes. You know, it's going to have some bad days, you know, it's going to have some days where it has its own tears outside of outside of yours. And there are some days where it's going to scream at you, but treat it, you know, like that, and, you know, it gets easier. Somebody mentioned earlier, and I really want to touch on this too, about not having the time because you know you're working full time right. That's where those non board volunteers really come in. We do a lot of things by committee. So we recently partnered with a grant writer, prior to a month ago, we didn't have a grant writer. So we have a committee of people, it's four of us where that is our primary, you know, objectives within the organization where we meet weekly specifically just regarding those fundraising opportunities. And we do it by committee. So kind of like, you know, how to power Rangers all come together or captain planet for us, you know, older people, you know, every I put their rings together and you come in become captain planet right. So a lot of those things you have to do kind of you know by committee. So that way it doesn't overwhelm you, you know, as an individual, because those sleepless nights I promise you will catch up to you, eventually. So, you know, get on, you know, volunteer match Bali. I found volunteers via LinkedIn. There's several different areas and, you know, and those volunteers whether they have in 15 minutes, 20 minutes, five hours, six hours or whatever it is to give a week. All of that adds up, and it'll make your life, you know, a great deal easier. So now to my ask for you guys who are here listening with us. So how, oh, there we go. Blame it on the COVID that I didn't realize on this slide there was other things here so sure and a that's our VP of marketing she's going to kick me later but it's fine. But so yeah so how can you guys help us, you know, one, you know, support the military as always. And I'm going to say this and I move off of it very very quickly, but a lot of people like to kind of politicize, you know, wars and things like that, you can support the military members without supporting the war those are two separate things that's all I'm going to say on that one. You know, but love on those people love on their families, you know, they deserve it. And they're never going to ask for and that's the, the, the most beautiful part about it is that you know they're never going to ask for it but they absolutely deserve it. And so again, you know, biggest point remember take away is you know not all volunteers need to be on your board. Again, most volunteers don't need to be on your board. You have a lot of organizations that are bored heavy and volunteer poor, you want to be volunteer rich and board poor needs to be the other way around. For sure remember that. And then also remember the value of the seat, and that may be for you sitting down and actually writing that down and figure out you know what is the value of the seat. You know what am I giving to the person who's going to be occupying the seat, and also what do I want from them. It's crazy as it sounds I promise you, it's going to help because you're also going to have people. It's not everybody right, but I have a feeling, and we'll revisit this and maybe 20 years from now, or maybe a year from now but I feel like the most valuable people are actually going to ask you to be specific about what you want from them. And that is a hard thing to do. I can tell you it is a hard thing to do. So just think about that. So remember that seat definitely does have that but anyway, I think that's everything that I have here but this is me again. This is our lovely URL to scan our website. Again guys I apologize for not being 100% here today so I'm sure I may have missed all some things but I'm open for questions, and just for general conversation. And thank you. Thank you. Thank you that was a great presentation and right on time because there were a lot of questions about boards and you know board committees and things like that. So I really appreciate that everybody can get his information and then yeah we'll switch over to the view to everybody. So there were some questions in the chat and I appreciate everybody chiming in. This is what executive directors chat we all are here to support each other because Kim said there are her challenges that she need people to help do stuff and seek funding. And I need funding to hire people to help me how do I get that one to get the other. So he mentioned some ways to reach out through LinkedIn and really telling people what you need because that's a lot of times people don't know that your nonprofit exists because we're not talking about it enough. We assume that our website is everybody's gonna find our website but everywhere you go you go to meetings you go to PTA meetings you go in the grocery store you know I get me the stranger I promise you everybody's interested in helping people believe it or not. Patrice said that I'm having a similar problem with getting board members that would actually be the hands on and help out. Good question. Where do we find those people. So board sources. Another one Carol talks to you guys anyone else can throw out some other sources put it in the chat room. Renata said how do I keep your committee process efficient. How do you excuse me. How do you keep your committee process efficient. My experience is that working with committee slows everything way down. But then Lisa answered and said we have we have a critical committee that reviews application for assistant and does very well it takes a piece of off the board which they appreciate. So how many of you have committees because I know I could talk about committees but I'm not going to Lisa sex and you raise your hand right. Did you want to meet yourself. There we go. Yes. We what we do is we raise money to buy wheelchair accessible vans for the disabled. And we get a lot of applications in even though we cover a five county area we get them from all over the country. Because nobody else is doing this so it's it's a tedious task to go through all of those applications. And in initially we were having the board do it so they had to say so is to you know. Who we vetted who we qualified for help and all that and it was it was cumbersome it slowed down board meetings and they the board really wasn't reading all the details that they needed to read to pay attention to. So I put together a list of you know here's the highlights of things you need to look for in an application and made a committee to do. Sorry that's my crazy dog. This is life this is this is us. It's life I'm telling you to do just that and review all those applications in great detail. And then what they do is they present their findings to the board and say as a as a committee here's what we've decided. Are you okay with that. And if anybody has a flag or question that's discussed at the board meeting but that's it. And it takes it off the board and the board is thrilled that they don't have to get into the minutiae of all those details. So it's worked out very well for us to have to have you know committees to do stuff like that. That's awesome. Thanks for sharing that and also some questions in the chat Carol I see your hand raise. I being the executive director, we get about 100 grants annually for arts education youth arts education programs across America, and I have formed a grant team review. And the best thing I did though was put our application in the Google Drive docs so that it's not a paper form and then I can convert it and take out what the stuff we don't need and send to the board, but each application is read and evaluated and scored by three people independently. And then we send those scores and comments to the board. So the board does make the decision with our recommendations. Awesome. Thanks for sharing that grant review committees are priceless. Andrew put in the chat. Can you talk about your board policy regarding board members giving or get you guys know that policy give get or get off. And what have been some of your pluses or minus if you have a policy does anybody have that give get or get off policy would you raise your hand if you do, because I would love to hear. Oh, so you do talk see. Go ahead and unmute yourself. Yes, we do. And so as of right now, we're actually in the process of reevaluating that policy, not to do away with it to actually raise the, the minimum that we ask of our board members. But I mean, I think it's a, it's a good policy just because again, it, you know, you're never going to fund your entire organization from the board necessarily, but it also it's a way to make sure that everybody has skin in the game. So, you know, again, every board member is not going to be created equal in terms of the contribution that they give time wise. But, you know, that little, you know, nudge, you know, again, just, you know, like I said, just give some extra skin in the game so I don't, you know, I like it personally. You know, but I'll let somebody else chime in and kind of give their experience, you know, with that as well. Awesome. I'll see Robert with your hand raised. Hi. Yeah, we do have one and we use it and and we renew it every new fiscal year for us in July. And obviously, for most of us, you know, the gift party isn't just the dollar amount that we do have a minimum amount in there it's really about what, you know, we really ask our board members is that their gift is meaningful meaningful to them within their organizations and that we're not the top at least the top three of the organizations they give to before organization what what really matters is their gets their get right. A lot of our board members say well I don't have that many influential friends but they do they do have folks right because all we're trying to do is is make that net cast further out. And if they can bring five people to the organization who start out with small gifts. You know, by the time they see the good things that we do and get part of our campaigns. You know that that ripple goes farther out so it's for us really as important is who they bring with them. Wow, I love that. I love that that was a lot of nuggets there. Thank you for sharing. Loma Rivera feel free to unmute yourself. I think I pronounced your name right. Are you able to unmute yourself. I saw in the chat room someone asked me to explain about TechSoup because I saw earlier there were a lot of people this is your first time here TechSoup. So what I want to do for about three minutes is just share my screen and just share more about TechSoup because how many of you are not members of TechSoup put a one in the chat room. And if you're not a member of TechSoup, we'll put a link in there and I'll show you as well on the screen put a one in the chat room if you're not a member of TechSoup. So I don't see anyone. This is a good thing. So if there are no members of TechSoup, I'm going to just respond to the person who sent me a direct message to ask me to share more about TechSoup. So give me a second. I'm going to share my screen so that you guys can see what I'm talking about. All right. Are you able to see my screen? Give me a thumbs up. Okay, good. I see some heads nodding. Awesome. So if you're not a member of TechSoup, this is the way you join. You just click the join button. Sometimes people miss it. But it's right here. You have to have your 501C3. Once you click that button, it's just going to ask you your name. Just to create a password and it's going to ask you once to subscribe. Once you go to this page, then it's going to ask you for more details. And basically, once we verify that you do have your 501C3, you'll have access to purchase things from our product catalog. And if you've been a member of TechSoup for any amount of time, you probably don't even know half of the partners that we have here. We have over 200 donors companies from A to Z. As Talkty said, Zoom is a big one. But there's everything like you see. You've got Adobe, ADP, Airbnb. Who knew that Airbnb was a partner with TechSoup? Bevy, it goes on and on and on. I'm not going to go through these because you guys can look at these on your own time. But I just wanted to respond to the person who asked. He mentioned courses. So a lot of people didn't know that TechSoup has courses. Sometimes our courses, they range from $10 to $30, some a little bit more. But you have email marketing, Google Analytics, Excel, rent writing. There's tons of courses in here that you can see. The screen went away, but this is how you would sign up for the courses to look at the courses. And I would definitely take advantage of the courses. This is a summer. If you have a little downtime, take advantage of that. You're on our free webinar. This is where you sign up for our free webinars here. Click here. We have blogs. And if there's a product that you use a lot that TechSoup doesn't have, if you go to our forums here, you can put on the forum that, hey, I would love if TechSoup can make this product available to us. And we'll try to get it in there. We can't guarantee because we reach out to the companies and ask them if they would give a discount to our members. And that's basically how this works. So other resources, there's a blog. There's an archive of our webinars. But I highly recommend that you subscribe to the YouTube channel. That way you'll see all the webinars. Kevin was here. Is Kevin still here? Because we have a lot of digital resources that people don't realize that we are TechSoup. But we have Managed IT. If you need help with Managed IT. Or if you just need to talk with someone, you can call our customer service. We have website service, digital marketing services, a boost. You can click on that. I see some hands raised. We have a consultation connection. So there's a lot of services that TechSoup offers. So I hope that little five minute can help you because someone asked. That's why I want to do that. Kevin, are you still here? Oh, yeah, good. You want to unmute yourself? Before you do that Rivera, are you able to, your hand is still raised. Did you have a question or comment? There you go. No, I'm all set. I was just going to comment on the board given. Okay. We don't have a give or get all policy. However, we do have a board number of expectations that we distribute to everyone that when they first get on board, as well as during the development reporting out during each board meeting, we always emphasize that we want, we need board members given to be at 100% within their means, because in our region and a lot of the grants that we apply for, that is the question that is on the grant application. What is the percentage of your board given? Not the dollar amount, but the percentage and that tickles down to or relates to the sense. If your board doesn't care about your organization in terms of giving out 100%, why should we have the foundation care? Yeah, very good. Thanks for sharing that. So Kevin, would you unmute yourself and tell us about customer success and Kevin put in there. We are global. We're in over 400 different countries. And if you want to join any other webinars in the other countries, if you speak other languages, you can go to TechSoup Connect. All right, there you go, Kevin. I see you. Hi, Kevin. Thanks for joining us. I want to hold off coming on camera because I'm definitely not camera ready. I appreciate this is great. Yeah, so my name is Kevin Mahal. I'm a technical customer success manager here at TechSoup. I just jumped in to be a little nosy to hear what executive directors are concerned about their thoughts, challenges that they're dealing with. As I posted into the chat, we have I think 142 US based catalog offers, either direct offers or we provide validation services for and then over 400 global vendor partners. If you have any questions, the customer success team and what we do is we are here to do the last part to ensure your success and to help enhance the customer experience. I've pinged my contact in there. If you have any questions, a couple of people have actually already emailed me, which has been great because there are some things that maybe are a little challenging to navigate and you have a resource for it. So thank you so much, Aretha. This has been a great presentation. Oh, thank you, Kevin. Thank you for joining. I love when other TechSoup members are here and because TechSoup is a nonprofit as well. A lot of people don't realize that we are 501c3. So there are a lot of Wizard of Oz people behind the scenes making things happen to make sure that you get the best. So thank you all for being here and Toxi. Thank you. Pushing through COVID and showing up. We really appreciate you. You all thank you all for being here. Earlier today, is she still here? I was speaking to Miss Nicole. Is she still here? Yay, that's Nicole. I asked Nicole if she would be a featured speaker at our next ED chat, so you'll get to hear from her. But Nicole, you want to introduce yourself to everybody. Hi, everyone. My name is Nicole. I am the executive director for Hope and Equity Without Borders. We are nonprofit NGO. We just got our 501c3 status in May and we received our first unrestricted grant a few weeks ago. So we're really excited to get up and running. What we do is we open inclusion centers for young people. So these will be like kind of like YMCA or like recreational center youth development center, but these will be inclusive for typical and special needs kids. This way, my family is from Panama and in Panama we don't have any recreational centers or anywhere for young people to go, and even more so if you have a special need or developmental disability. So really, we hope to be a resource not only for the community, but also just to provide hope to families who otherwise would have no resources or anywhere to go to take their children. And that they could be included in the community. So thank you. Awesome, thank you. And you're going to be surprised some of the other things you're going to learn from Nicole because my wheels are already turning. So when you guys heard the word unrestricted grant, everybody wants those. So we'll talk about that a little bit more. Any questions or comments and any questions or comments for Toxi or comments that you want to make about ED chat today. Okay, before I go, I want to thank our webinar intern Kevin Wong. He did such a great job introducing the ED chat today. Kevin, thank you Kevin. And would you do me a favor everyone put in the chat room. One thing that you learn today is important for all the speakers to know that you heard what they said. I appreciate you guys being here, but I want to know one thing one one takeaway that you got today. And people are still talking about that give and get policy right here. I love it. They're putting comments in here. Good sources for board members. Yes, resources for board members. I love it. Thank you so much. You guys continue to put your one takeaway in here. There is a link for a survey. If you click on that link, it'll open up a new window. We would love to learn about more topics that you want to hear about because that's what executive directors chat is all about. Choose board wisely, more volunteers and less board members. Yeah, yeah, that works for a lot of organs and more board structures. So we got to have a webinar on board board structure. Is there an expert on board structure here that would like to be our feature speaker? Genesis, my takeaway is that volunteers need not to serve on the board. We need to have a greater expectations for the board members. Yes, that's a good one, John. Kim says that I'm the only one dealing with certain issues. I'm not the only one. Excuse me. See, a mind is a terrible thing to waste. I'm not the only one dealing with certain issues. And that is why we do this executive directors chat. So you can come and share your experiences because there's a lot of people who are going through the same thing. Again, thank you so much as you're going around taking care of everybody else. Please, please make time to take care of yourself. And we'll see you next time. Bye bye.