 All right, I want to welcome everybody to, you guys are here at night and not only eight o'clock at night. Billy, he is from London, he's up at one o'clock in the morning. So I'm excited for what's going to happen tonight, how you're going to learn. I love TechSoup, I love sharing, I love seeing nonprofits grow. Happy National Women's Month to all the ladies who are here tonight. Yay. I love it. And we even got a man class and I love it. I love it. I love it. So as Eli said, my name is Aretha Simons. I do want to remind you that they I want to say webinar but the Zoom tonight is being recorded and those who register will receive it at least 48 hours after tonight. I want to introduce you to my guest tonight. Her name is Tammy Buckner. Tammy is the founder of TechWidi Digital. I love that name like equity but TechWidi is a technology solution company specializing in software and application development. But she also has a nonprofit herself. She is the executive director and the co founder of WeCodeKC. It's a nonprofit organization that exposes young adults in underserved and urban communities to develop technology concepts, coding, cybersecurity, and they do hand on projects. Now, Tammy is going to talk about a lot of things tonight but the main thing and the main reason you're here is to find out how you can make your nonprofit a sustainable nonprofit. So I'm going to share my screen and Tammy is going to do her presentation for us tonight. So give me a moment while I set that up. I want to remind you to if you have any questions go ahead and type them in the chat room and I'll be able to read the questions and like I said if we don't have a big crowd people are still coming in then I'll just let you ask, you know, bring you live and let let you ask. Tammy can you see my screen everybody can see my screen you can unmute yourself. Yes ma'am I can. All right. Go ahead and turn it over to you. Thank you so much. I appreciate this platform. I appreciate everyone being here this evening on a Tuesday evening. So thank you, Arita. Thank you, Eli. Again, my name is Tammy Buckner. I am the CEO and founder of Tech with a digital which is a technology solutions company. As Arita said, we offer project management customized software development web and mobile development for our clients. I have been a in technology pretty much most of my life, which is what drove me to start a nonprofit organization called we code KC, because of my passion for technology growing up in tech. So it is more a more of a male dominated industry, and I didn't see people that look like me. I didn't see mentors that look like me or anyone that could assist me in my journey in technology. I did not want that to continue or be the norm for other young girls that look like me. I didn't see other young boys or even the urban core of students that was interested in technology. This is why I started my nonprofit and as many of you know that have nonprofits, nonprofits often start with a passion often start with there could be some type of gap that I wanted to feel. This is was the gap that I wanted to feel I wanted to make sure that students in the urban core could get exposed to technology to cybersecurity, as well as ways to create a sustainable career for themselves. I didn't see people that look like them, they wouldn't feel that they could actually do or be a part of technology. So hence we coach KC started two years ago in the community of Kansas City, where we literally started in different communities just doing some sort of pop up sessions that would allow students to gain access to technology. As we were growing. Businesses started contacting us to see how they can help. One of the ways that we figured out how they could help the organization, not only stand up on its own two feet to be sustainable, was to actually pay for the services that the students were actually in which that created a huge model to show that a nonprofit can actually be sustainable and that's why I feel I can help with that process today. I have worked with many, many different nonprofits from small to large, brand new to old nonprofits. So that has given me a clue and an idea of how nonprofits start and how their business model function. Next slide. So by no means any one model works for all models because we are here we know that there is a broad range of people that are here, not only that are here today but also that would look at this webinar at a later point in time. I'm not saying that I am the expert of all experts, but I am giving my opinions in ways that I have learned to work with large nonprofits and small nonprofits and observe their models and how they can actually build out that model. So a little bit of facts about nonprofits. There's over 1 million nonprofits worldwide. And when we look at nonprofits we realize that nonprofits do everything from feeding to healing to shelter, educating, especially it's inspiring and enlightening everyone. So nonprofits normally touch every gender, every age, every race and every social economic status from coast to coast and border to border. So I applied nonprofits because they are truly the it fosters civic engagement and leadership. And the community is the sector that brings all businesses and industries together. We strengthen communities every single day. So kudos to those that have started nonprofit and that are building those nonprofits out. Next slide. So we're here today to talk about what does nonprofit sustainability really means that even as I was talking to my business partner and co founder that definition is it changes, and it's different among so many people. I'm going to list it a few because different definitions for what sustainable, number one, what does sustainable mean, but then also a nonprofit sustainable what does that mean. Some people could say that it is being self sufficient that you don't need or be self self sufficient through earned income or sources. As I said we code has been sustainable by using sources or one of the ways that we've been using income that the kids bring in from developing websites, that's one way, or one definition of nonprofit sustainability. Another definition could be the ability to attract multi year unrestricted funds, a lot of nonprofits do get a chance to attract government funds that do year after year without sometimes even applying, but just continue to get these funds year after year. One other definition is funding nonprofits full costs. That's including direct and indirect costs. But those are just some of the ways that you know some of the definition of nonprofits. So, next slide. The definition definitely encompasses all of that. Most importantly, and what it means that nonprofit organization is to accomplish to develop a smart strategy and business model to use that verse funding as a mechanism to actually make that happen. So what that really means is, number one, you have to know what your, what your nonprofit. Oh, sorry, next slide. Sorry about that. You have to know what your next your nonprofit. Why does it exist. And what do you want to accomplish. Next slide. So, importantly, standing up your nonprofit with your core values, your mission, your objective in your strategies. It's, it takes five minutes for a person to set up a nonprofit that in just documentation. When it comes to the strategy of a nonprofit, you have to make sure to be sustainable nonprofit must articulate the long term outcome of what they're ultimately trying to accomplish. When you're talking about your strategy when you're talking about your mission statement, your goals and your values. All those must be articulated so that you can to express why you exist. Again, when I talk about we call Casey, and why it exists, I decided I wanted to feel a void. I wanted to feel a boy that I had personally myself that not only myself but I also saw others see that there are no other people in that sector to fill that gap. So you want to accomplish. You want to ultimately articulate that that value that objective and that business model and strategy so that you can accomplish as a social change agent. Next slide. So who will help you carry out this mission. So think about your leadership team, your board, and you may also have volunteers, and especially mentor, excuse me mentors volunteers, your staff, and likely an advisory board. So it's not to simply plan your future but you must figure out what all of those mean to you and how they can assist you to accomplish your goal, what your staff can do what your board and your volunteers, and as Eli mentioned earlier about your technology, TechSoup is a great resource that would allow you to pull your technology together, not even businesses, let alone a nonprofit have a very difficult time with finding the correct technology to help their businesses run. And later on in our slides I'll also share with you some other resources that you can use for your nonprofit to help you with your technology, your marketing and other resources to bring your entire strategy to success. So articulating your business model you would likely employ, and you will likely correspond with the monies not only to staff, your, your, your staff that will work with you and also your board. But once you realize your long term goals, then you'll start looking at what those funds and what those monies look like to help you achieve that long term goal that you're seeking. So one of my favorite topics to talk about is obviously funding your nonprofit organization. So some of the resources. Some of the resources to diversify your, your, your nonprofit is earn income. Earn income could be when you, when you look at the products and you look at the services that your nonprofit has that the public is interested in purchasing. You can utilize that as a funding resource, obviously grants, which many times this is why people start nonprofits, because there are grants available to assist you to keep that mission and that value going, but it's not. Then of course there's also events events would allow you to set up different funding sources, people can actually pay to come to the events and then of course sponsorship. It's not enough to figure out what it's going to cost to actually run your nonprofit, but you have to figure out the other side of how to bring all of that money into the door. So having a smart financial strategy attracts different monies so that you can fit all of the, the different sources for that will fit for your organization. So most importantly, you're looking at the how the money flows to the organization, whether you are using those government grants or fundraisers or events, and to, and also, you know, private sources as well, having that mixed income or the earn income and utilizing your financial model that align with all of your core competency. Let's see. Next slide. Okay, there we go. You got it. All right. Thank you. So as I talked about a little bit earlier, the different there's multiple resources out for nonprofits that would allow you to not only help with your technology. Again, TechSoup is a huge organization that I have used for many, many years that has allowed me to reduce my costs. I've used them for hardware purchasing computers that will help our students. Obviously, we have students that come from urban cores. Many times, they don't have the technology in their home to to get exposed or to work on the project. So we're purchasing even hardware from TechSoup that would assist as well as getting donations to help the students, and then also the software that's on TechSoup that is a discounted, very discounted rate. So imagine picking up a Microsoft or an Adobe program that is slash that like less than half percent for your, for your nonprofit. And if you've ever used Canva, Canva is amazing marketing tool that would allow you to create everything from business cards to flyers to posters to social media posts. There is a Canva for nonprofit and a lot of people didn't know that you must be registered as a 501C3 to utilize this platform, and it is discounted and most of them, most of the services are free as well. LinkedIn for nonprofits is a platform we know LinkedIn is utilized for businesses. Whereas now if you go to nonprofit.linkedin.com, this is a platform that would allow you to share out many not only if you're looking for funding but also sending out articles and talking about your nonprofit and sharing that other nonprofits basically to be a collaboration. One thing I know about one thing that's interesting about collaboration because you may have another nonprofit pretty much doing the exact same thing that you're doing. And one of my challenges that I challenge out to other people and myself that when there's another nonprofit not looking at that as a competitor, but as a collaborator. And this is where you can find a lot of collaborations on LinkedIn for nonprofits so that, you know, there's, they may have one resource and you have another resource and coming together to collaborate figures out, you know, another advocate to, to help with the community. And one of the last resources that I really like personally is questions pro that is a platform that allows nonprofits to pick up different surveys from your platform or from your network. And sometimes we need to hear from our network what they're needing what their desires are what they're looking for and one way to do that is going to questions pro question pro.com, allow nonprofits to set up surveys. That's pretty much free so that you can reach out to your network and utilize that. Let's see. Next slide. Okay, that was pretty fast. You were great. You were great. You were great. So that was that was really good and I haven't heard of questions pro so that's a new one for me. And you mentioned LinkedIn, I got an email from somebody from LinkedIn wanted to collaborate and I was like, I don't know you, but people are finding people to collaborate and then when I read their emails, oh, okay. Sure, we can collaborate so. So let me go in here and see questions I saw a lot of things coming in. I really said what sort of market niches do you see nonprofits using as a way of developing a sustainable business. Wow, that's a really good question because there's so many different niches out there that can create that and what I've normally seen definitely technology but any platform or any nonprofit that offers services, what the community is looking at, that's the most important, because if you have services that can that the community wants to purchase, that would be very important. A niche that can build that sustainable model. And like you said, there's so many different types of nonprofit so yours you have a, you have a great one, you deal with computers so they can, you know, build websites but if you have a feeding program. They may not be able to sell food but they may have a thrift store that they can sell clothes to bring in more money to buy more food. There's another question on from Billy what do you see as the differences between nonprofits and social enterprises. He says it may be that it's just a difference in terminology between the UK and USA. So social enterprises is more so feeding into nonprofits or helping build up nonprofits. That's the way I see because it's, and I think it can be intertwined but it's actually feeding and building into nonprofits to build those nonprofits up. Oh, great Billy dropped a couple of links in here for people to see founders code calm and a couple of the links you guys can copy those be bealer says I love your programming but sadly I need to sign off okay she had to do. But thank you so much. She will get this as I'm going to mention this again everybody will get this recording within 48 hours. Billy just try looking at TechSoup website. Sorry, my mouse TechSoup.org. It doesn't seem to be active. Oh yeah TechSoup.org or you found it by now that's definitely active. And they've been around for so, so many years. Okay, good people know that. Okay, anybody else have any questions, comments, feedback. Did you get a lot put number one in the chat room you got a lot you learned something put some ones in there. Awesome. Stephanie tell me how do you feel about leveraging the TechSoup account with Google at grants and Google my business to drive traffic. Very good question I am just just this week I have been working with one of my clients on setting them up with Google. The entire Google business suite and because they are a nonprofit we were able to get them set up through TechSoup and then utilize the platform, and I believe it was. I'm not going to quote the what the cost was from Google, but it can definitely work to drive that traffic because once you set up the ads through Google, and then utilize your social media platform. That would allow you to pick up those analytics you can use the tag manager to set those up on all of your social media is your website and to drive that traffic and continuing to keep that up. I normally suggest people to renew that or make those changes quarterly. It's free. Okay. Thank you, Stephanie. Yeah, but definitely make those changes with those algorithms on quarterly because Google changes consistently and you want to make sure that you're updated with those. What about open source software. What is the question is there another part of that question using open soft. What do you mean by that. I think using open source software is great because you can customize it to your needs. There's always code that's already there obviously and then once you take that code and implemented to the requirements that you use specifically for your processing. I think it works great. We use open source software all the time because that platform is already there. We work with our clients to find out what their requirements are and their processes are on a daily basis, and then we form that software to their needs. It cuts out costs because now we're not finding a customized software. We can start with the base and then utilize their process and customize that software to their needs so it definitely save costs and time. Nice. Nice. Anybody else have any questions for Tammy or anything about tech soup or any of the other platforms that she mentioned. Can I ask a question. Yeah, absolutely. So what. Thank you for sharing thank you so much Stephanie so what industries of nonprofits do we have with us today. Are you type your nonprofit in the chat room and let us know if you're an executive director. Yes. I'm going to go to some of this is foreign. That's okay. Oh, Tammy. Do you operate. Do you operate a nonprofit though. Tanja, excuse me not Tammy. Do you have a nonprofit. Yes, you do. Okay. Well, I understand that a lot of non, you know, non oh good good good your founder vote for for profit and nonprofit. To me, I see that a lot of nonprofits or individuals say they're not tech savvy, as we know, we are going to be using technology to the end of days. So this is a great opportunity for you to you know, log on. Good. You are executive director tech soup. And look at some of the there are a lot of free classes, there are a lot of free seminars and webinars on tech soup a lot of free classes a lot of grant writing classes a lot of free things as well so it's not all due to deal with the hardware and software but there's a lot of training that goes on with it and it's, it's, it really would help you with you would, you know, get familiar with it because we are not getting away from technology. And finally, you said tech soup has large partners large corporations providing yet proprietary software. That is true, because tech soup itself is a nonprofit 501 C3 and so there are a lot of large organizations, as they do and everything where you have a foundation or family foundation or community foundation. They have something called social responsibility and so they don't have time to come and find you and you and you and you and all of us so they'll give it to one large organization or corporation that can can that has the capacity to disseminate the information and the software to you know individuals or two corporations. And this is, this is, you know, a great platform that I think tech soup has and again, a lot of large corporations they do find us. And, you know, we can get the word out. Faster than I can or you can to thousands of nonprofits. I don't know if they work with partners with open source software companies. I don't know what open source. Can you tell me what open source software companies are. Let me unmute you give me one second. And let me let me go. Okay, Michael you are an assistant technologies for people with disabilities. Yes, wow. You're working on setting up one fantastic. Okay. She has a website she's trying to utilize also use a Facebook as an open another source good you definitely want to come to the social media. One that we have. And then good, good, great people are putting in a lot of great links in here. We am I'm working on I'm working with three one is a church and one are two other workforce oriented organization I love to talk to someone about strategy to help them create events classes and help them become more self sufficient. Awesome. Also plan to start my own soon fantastic. Okay, awesome. Let me see if I can unmute Billy so we can find out what he means by open so Billy you are unmuted open source software companies. Oh, have a look for a company called red hat. Yep. Yeah, red hat software. What was it about to for example, canonical. Yes. Those are both providers operating systems along with a whole. A large amount of whole range of software tool chains that can be used for running any large organization. Right. So the basic idea behind so behind open source soft. Well, what's it liveries leave this off software Libra, as a book as a will as for free as more than one meaning. Three years in beer, as in cash value, but also three years in liberty, as in you get to do what you want with it. The original the the liberty was the originally more emphasized back in the back in the mid 80s when this when this software movement started. Before that point, if you bought a machine, you got given a copy of the source code. And make up so that you could pay a programmer that was looking after maintaining your systems to sit and write the software that you need. Then what happens is, as, as, as a matter of computers and desktop computers became more common, more common. And then people start saying, well, okay, we're going to produce software, but we're not going to get the source source. Okay, I get it. I get it. I get it. What I do is a sorry, the thing with open source software is that it's returned to the original way that computers use the computer markets used to operate. And if you didn't have the software, you couldn't do the job. Because that's one thing that's one, what, um, sorry, sorry, I did forget to say, I have really, really bad ADHD. So if I do get ramble off on tangents, please feel free to grab to grab the studio. I got it now when you when you start explaining that I wanted to know what open source software is now I get it. I will say that any company that wants to have their software hardware or whatever technology on text platform, they go through a process to apply so imagine anybody, you know, could apply. But red hat and in bond to that you mentioned those are you can go directly to their website and download their framework. So that's a framework that's free, and then you utilize that actually to build out content management systems. So that is free that you don't have to go through tech soup to actually get that that framework. Yes, you knew that. Thank you to me. That's why you're the expert in this area. And I also want to mention, like what you see on that main page you see a lot of the big companies but if you look further there, there are over 100 companies. So it's, it's, it's much bigger than what you see on the surface. Good people are posting links in here great. Awesome Michael you developed. This is current tech you develop a first responders awesome. Wow, you guys guys click on that YouTube link and check that out, especially we're going to get his views up. There you go. Awesome. Awesome. I love that Claudine you're a CEO and founder of beyond Congress ministry I love that we have women and women shelter fantastic. We have women in Africa. Wow, find jobs beyond conqueror.org. Yeah, everybody put in your links in here. This is fantastic. Well, we have a lot of tech soup have a lot of NGOs in Africa so it, it'd be great if you can connect with some of those and maybe get on some of their meet up groups, because they have webinars and zoom just like we did tonight. That's good. Awesome. Wow. Great comments great comments and everybody said they love your presentation I think you did a fantastic job as well Tammy. Everybody says thank you for the resource. Awesome. Yeah, this is fantastic. Thank you. I don't know how to pronounce your name I might mess it up. Constantino. Hello everyone. What is the first step I should take when I am the only probably only one in the thought process of starting a nonprofit I don't know exactly where to start. So, that's a great question I will tell you off I'm experienced as I've helped thousands of people start their nonprofits. You should definitely find the people who you want to be on your board. Because you cannot do this by yourself. No, find people who you want to be on your board of directors, you have to have a minimum free people so odd number where the street five seven. Find people who are passionate about what you are doing as well because you don't want to grab people just to have the names on the board. So you can go ahead and get the paperwork signed and you know get it done. Tammy said you can get your nonprofit set up in five minutes. It's more like three hours, but as she said, it's still very important that you have a solid foundation right your mission statement down right your vision statement right your strategy once you start the nonprofit how will you sustain and write the who what where when and how all those things so before you jump out because it only take a short time to do the paperwork. But make sure you have all those things in place and Williams on here to he's a nonprofit consultant as well. Great. Todd just said she learned so much and she's still relative new to nonprofit startup. She's really signed up for TechSoups web web, their newsletters. Again, they, there's a seminar or a webinar, there's something and there's some a lot of things already pre recorded that you can go in. This is, this is, I'm telling you a wealth of knowledge and a lot of free information. You're welcome. You're welcome. And in the one that was starting your nonprofit. As Aretha said you know making sure that you find the people that are passionate just as passionate as you are so important, especially your board because when you're starting to your build out your board, you're looking for people that want to fundraise for you that has been successful in the past of fundraising, and making sure that you are still the CEO or the executive director of that board, and they are going alongside you, and not trying to change your mission or change your passion of what you're doing so that's so important that you're finding the right people for your board. Are there any other questions. I want to thank you guys for coming on at night. This is a great. So, because I'm always, you know, trying to play around with the time whether we want to do morning midday. This is the first one we had this late at night so thank you, Billy what work is done in the USA on the co op and the multi mutual mutual businesses. I don't know what that means. I'm not sure that sure. Cooperative business. Yeah, I'm not sure. Thank you Stephanie thank you for joining us thank you everybody for joining us. Billy, you can email me in the, in the meetup again everybody's going to get this thank you so much for joining from London thank you Honduras, Maryland, Orlando. Oklahoma, Canada, Orlando, we've all over the place thank you until next time yes thank you thank you thank you everybody saying good night. I appreciate you all. I know you learned what I learned a lot tonight and again, sign up for the next one we have April 10 social media tune up and I will see you soon. Have a good night everybody. Thank you will you make global forest trainers.