 Of course, I want to thank all of you for joining us for another episode of The Nonprofit Show. Just as we start every episode, Julie and I like to extend our sincerest gratitude to all of our presenting sponsors. You see their logos in front of you and we are so grateful for their support. Now, I like to say that not only are they here to support us and the episodes of The Nonprofit Show, which we're coming up on 300 soon. So really excited for that. But most of these presenting sponsors have been with us for the entire year, so during the pandemic, but they are really here for you. They're here for your mission-driven clauses, your goals and how you serve your community. So go ahead and check them out, give them a like and some love, follow them because they're all doing wonderful things for our community and truly are here to support you. Just like Julia Patrick is every single day, so grateful that you had this crazy idea over a year ago. Julia is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I'm Jarrett Ransom, also known as The Nonprofit Nerd, CEO of the Raven Group. But today, our special guest, and I'm really excited to introduce Joshua Warrett, Director of Operations with Dot Solutions. Welcome. Thank you guys so much for having me. I'm really excited. Okay, we gotta start with what are dots? Because we know we love the dots candies. Dot solution, what, tell us what you all do. Yeah, absolutely. I always love to open up by, you know, why dot, you know, what does that mean? So our founding team is really from the nonprofit space. So we're in a software space, right? That's what we do, Dot Drives is a software platform that we built, but the key difference is we come from nonprofit. So one of the founding members, his name is Sal Farlisi, still runs a full-time nonprofit called Sports Outreach. And, you know, he had a career in business before nonprofit, and during that career, he was always called a dot connector, you know? He always, here's all these different problems. Let's connect the different dots to make it all happen, right? So that's where a dot comes from, and then your drives, that's really about driving, motion, forward movement, your progress. So that's where the name Dot Drives spawns from. But I'll give you kind of a two-second background of what it is that we do exactly. So as I mentioned, you know, Sal Farlisi, one of the founding members who runs a nonprofit was really facing the challenge of having all these different relationships that are really critical to the organization being sustainable, right? Major donor relationships, just all the key things that have to, they get to stay on top of. And there wasn't a good tool, especially when you bring it to the team dynamic of, you know, it's not just Sal personally managing situations, his whole team has a lot of different relationships that, you know, as an organization, you have to juggle. So, you know, he didn't see a tool that made sense for keeping all of that stuff in one place, keeping track of it. So that's what Dot Drives does, that's why we exist, that's why it was created. So that's the two-second version of what we are. That's great. I love it. Well, you know, today we're excited because we have you on to talk about the culture of philanthropy. And we have so many questions because this is an overarching conversation for everybody involved in our sector. And we always seem to be struggling with this. Some organizations do it better than others. Some it's like a major concept and something they follow and others are like, what? You know, I mean, it's such an interesting thing, the difference on the whole spectrum of how we look at the culture of philanthropy. So first of all, what is the culture of philanthropy? Yeah, that's a great place to start. And what you said is really accurate. You know, some organizations and leaders might not even know what we're talking about. When we say that and others, it's why they exist is to do that really well. So there is a very wide range, that's for sure. You know, I think it's always good to start by defining what is philanthropy? I mean, what are we even talking about here? You know, if you just Google, what is philanthropy? The result that you're gonna get is basically somebody that is doing things or generally it's thought of us spending money for the betterment of others. And that's what it comes down to is for the betterment of others. I think it's good to kind of get rid of that stereotype that it's just money though, right? I think my definition of what is a philanthropist, it really comes down to anybody who is focused on helping other people and is spending something. It doesn't have to be money, right? Money is definitely a philanthropist if you're donating funds, obviously fit in that category. But if you're spending your time and energy and talents, you're also a philanthropist. So I think that's a really important place to start. So now that the culture of philanthropy, you know, what does that mean? What does that look like in a nonprofit? I think it's also again important to start with what does the nonprofit space look like? We obviously, I'm sure everybody here is very aware there's almost two million nonprofits in the US. You know, the vast majority of them, I believe last time I checked something under around 70%, they're never going to get over a million dollars in annual revenue, most of them are smaller. And that's awesome because a lot of times those are the ones having really great impact in their areas and things like that. But what it shows me is that they probably have limited resources. So they can't hire somebody just to focus on this, right? It comes down to everybody on the team playing a role and a really critical role. So I think that's really important to define. Okay, so I kind of painted that picture. Now, what is a culture of philanthropy? I think at its most simple form, an organization that has a great culture of philanthropy makes it incredibly rewarding when you're a philanthropist partnered with them. So if you're a donor, if you're a volunteer, if you're somebody spending something with this organization, they make it really rewarding. They have relationship with you. They report back the impact, you're part of the team. That's really what I see as an organization that has it really nailed down and done it really well. Okay, so I am fascinated by this because what I just heard you say is it's all about the donor. It is, and donor and volunteers and everybody else, but yes, it's all about, yeah, absolutely. It's all about that relationship, it really is. It's interesting, because when I hear, and I hear this a lot, a lot of different ways, but when I hear this from a lot of nonprofits, it's all about their structure and their ethos and what they are doing. I don't know, Jared, what do you think about that? Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I've heard it really from both perspectives and I did have a call with Joshua before inviting him to be on the show and I was just in awe of his perspective in addition to that drive's perspective of the culture of philanthropy. And what you said, Joshua, and thankfully you repeated it today is, you know, to be a philanthropist doesn't mean a certain amount of money and sometimes it's not even money, right? It's being of service and other ways. And we talk about in our sector as time, treasure and talent and all of those are ways in being a philanthropist. So I love that and I love the shift on the donor because it really is about what's important to them, what's important in how they choose to spend their money because when there's choices like two million nonprofits in the US, that's a competitive space. Yeah, yeah, it does crazy. Okay, so then we understand each organization might have their own tenants and they figured out this direction that they wanna, you know, take and pose. How in the heck do you communicate that? Because that's a heavy lift. It is, it's really difficult because you can start with all those ideas, right? And that's really important is here's how we should be doing things. Here's the way that we're gonna communicate. And all of that is you have to start there, of course, right, you have to really define that stuff out. I think the way that you really communicate it, you know, what I jotted down is it starts with the leader and then it goes down to the team and then pass that as tool, which I'll get into in a second, but I think the leader that frankly, if I could say it in one word, how do you communicate that comes onto action, right? If you're not taking action on it, it's just an idea and ideas are great. There's lots of great ideas out there but it doesn't really mean anything until there's action behind it. And that starts at the leadership level. So defining what is it exactly that we stand for, right? Exactly what you're talking about. Here's what we do, here's why we do it. This is what we're all about. And then you have to actually act that out. And then, you know, that's when it becomes a culture is when your team starts seeing that and then they're really bought into it. And that's the important part as well. And I think it's totally critical that once the leader has defined that well and is actually taking action on those things, the team has to understand exactly why it's so important that we operate this way. They have to know we have to do it this way. And then they also have to understand that they are totally critical to it being successful. They play a big role in the organization's success. Because now they're bought in, they understand why it's important. They understand that they have to be involved in really doing it. They have the example of a leader who has defined it and is also acting it out. And then I think that is really the best way to do it is through action and through, you know, doing it. I think that's the best way to do it. Okay, now, what I hear you saying sounds a lot like the structure of mission, vision and values. So how do you marry or divorce yourself from those pieces? Or because this is not really, this should be supporting that, right? Absolutely. Yeah, so I mean, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think, so the mission vision values is totally critical to your organization, right? It's the core of everything you do. I think that when you're building this culture of philanthropy, it really comes down to relationship. That's, I will always go back to that relationship. It's about being focused on those external relationships with those major donors, with those philanthropists that are partnering with your team, defining the way that you're gonna interact with them, that you're going to reward them, right? They might be a weird sounding word, but at the end of the day, I mean, they should be rewarded for what they're doing, for what they're putting out. And that doesn't mean like you like them a check, obviously. It means that they care a lot about what your mission is and they believe that you are in a position to better all their lives. That's why they're doing what they're doing. So showing them the specific impact of here's how we have actually better for lives that you care so much about. That's rewarding as a philanthropist. That's why they're doing what they do. So I think building in those specifics of here's what we're going to do, right? We're going to report that. We're going to, whatever that looks like, defining that as a team definitely filters through your mission, mission values. But I think it's kind of an extension. It's almost that next step. How are we going to externally communicate and operate through those values with a focus on our philanthropist to make it all possible? Interesting, interesting. Okay, now this is a topic that Jared and I've been working with a lot. I mean, 300 shows, the big dun-dun-dun-dun. How do you navigate this and this new structure of work from home? Because I can see rolling out this concept 18 months ago and when you're walking past people on your campus or the water cooler, you're reinforcing it. You got posters up, you got signs up, you got whatever. All that's been changed. So then how do you do this in this current work environment that's going to keep going on a virtual side? Yeah, and I think work from home, it definitely brings a lot of difficulties, right? There's a lot of pros. I think a lot of people are seeing some pros and I think we're also seeing a lot of cons. And I think culture is one of the places that it can really be a con is just like you said, when you're around your team all the time, you can reinforce that stuff every day with what you're doing and what you're saying. So I think when we shift to work from home, how do we continue to do that? I think it comes down to rhythms. The first thing that came to mind for me is rhythms. So by that, I mean, every week, we're gonna have a meeting and here's the goal of the meeting. It's gonna be all about philanthropy. It's gonna be about our culture. It's gonna be about how are we doing with this? This is a goal. We've all bought into it. I'm doing it. We've all agreed it's really important. Okay, how are we actually doing? Let's talk about it. And I think something that's really critical, I'll shift really quickly to that drives and what we do. Because I think we have a great solution for exactly that. We call it the weekly development meeting and we actually recommend it as a best practice for all of our clients. Basically what that looks like is when you're in that drives, you have a really clear view of all those different relationships as a team, all that stuff. I don't want to get too much into the weeds and call that honestly. But really the core of what that ends up doing for a team is it brings focus to that, right? It brings focus to development, to focusing on those relationships. Here's where we are with this relationship. Who's responsible for that? Where, what's the next step? All of that stuff, when you meet about that on a weekly basis, your team is focused on it. Your team is being held, we call it subtly being held accountable for where they are in the process. Tracking the goals. How do you actually track what those goals are? How do you tell if you're doing a good job or a bad job when it comes to this? So whether it's through that drives or other means, and there's plenty of other ways to do it, right? But it's really important to have that rhythm of, every week we're gonna talk about it. We're gonna talk about it. Next week we're gonna talk about it again. So if you're not thinking about it, well now you are, right? Now it's staying on top of everybody's mind. We're on the same page. We know where we are. So when it comes to working home, I think those rhythms are really important. Set up like the weekly meetings, maybe twice a week for certain topics when it comes to really everything, but specifically the culture, you have to keep it in front of everybody all the time so you're on the same page. So I wanna add to that, and I agree and I love this. And I think my statement slash question might go back to the previous conversation of communicating culture philanthropy, but I wanna tag it into now the work from home culture, which is really global, but how do we, and again I told you, Joshua, like this is not scripted. I'm looking down, I have nothing in front of me. So your curiosity, how do we, now I've noticed, and this is trending, right? Across our nation, that nonprofits were able now to attract donors in different geographic locations. So how does that play a role? Because we've now casted our nets so far and wide that it isn't so much of a local community. Yes, we have that. And truly this global community because we've used the ability to engage technology with things like, not things, platforms like dot drive, but really using that as an opportunity to engage when it comes to other supporters working from home, but living in other parts of the world. Yeah, I think it's given us a great opportunity in a lot of ways. So just like you said, it's kind of broadened out the net. And I think it depends for sure on the organization, like there's some organizations that are focused on the area. And I think that's awesome. Maybe it makes sense for them to go a little bit outside of their area to try to get support, but for the most part, they're gonna stay local. In other cases, the geography might not matter really at all what they're doing. It doesn't matter where the support's coming from and they support all over the globe, many organizations. So I think that now the reliance on the internet to do most of the work that we're doing, it's really opened a lot of eyes to the opportunity that's out there. And I think that leveraging platforms to manage all of that stuff is great. I think it can really broaden your reach. And again, it really just increases the opportunity in a lot of ways. But I'll also mention as kind of like the counterpart to that is I think that it also can introduce some risk of losing some focus. I think it's always important to stay focused. So if you're like, hey, we got this cool new system, let's just shoot an email out to every person that we can think of. Hey, that's probably not a great solution. Like I always say, it always goes back to relationship and shooting out, mass email. Sure, that's great. There's lots of automated strategies that are awesome, but it always goes back to relationship, especially when we're talking about this culture. It's about the relationships that you build with those individuals, right? Not automated, transactional type stuff, which is again, great, saves time to develop stuff, but it's not where the ball stops rolling when it comes to this stuff. You have to take the next step to bring it to that relational level so that you understand your donors, you know, why they're doing what they're doing, what makes them, why they're so passionate, all that stuff. So hopefully that answered your question. Well, if I didn't know any better, Joshua, I would have thought that you have been on every single one of our episodes because we have talked so much about that return on relationship and how critical having those, you know, the depth and breadth of the relationship to really help us sustain our missions through trying time. So you are preaching to the choir, my friend, and I love it. Talk to us about, you know, sharing the culture of philanthropy with donors, and I know that's something that we're talking about, but I loved because I typically come from this Pollyanna mindset of, oh, everything's positive, but I love that you brought up, there are some potential risks. When it comes to sharing this culture, you know, of philanthropy with our donors, you talked a little bit about, you know, there's a lot of good in it and there's a lot of risk. What else are you seeing in the landscape during this time? Yeah, I think when it comes to sharing that culture, I always kind of go back to a couple, you know, fundamentals, right? The relationship piece is really fundamental, and I think the action piece is really fundamental. And I think the action piece is really where this shines. When this is your culture, that your organization, your team, and you as a leader really operate through, this is how you operate. It shows, it just shows, your donors know it. I don't think you have to tell them. I think that's the thing about culture is it kind of just permeates through everything that you do. It permeates through the way that you communicate with donors, permeates through the way that you need to communicate with your team. So definitely putting it out there of, hey, this is what we're focused on, and kind of telling them that is helpful. I think the most important thing is, again, that action piece, let's show them, and they're gonna know that they're important to us because of the way we communicate, because we take the time to build up those relationships. We know them, right? We know what's going on in their life. When I saw this slide, one thing I thought of is like it can look an infinite different number of ways, right? Every organization's different, the way they want to interact and build this culture and do all this stuff is gonna be totally different, the specifics of it. But I wrote down the AB test, as I say, right? A is his organization that doesn't focus on this culture. And B is an organization that does focus on it. So in A, if they're not thinking about this culture of philanthropy, they probably don't know that much about their donor base. They probably don't know the individuals. They might not know why they're getting what they're passionate about. Most of the communications are probably automated, or mass, right? Mass appeals in your mailbox or into your email. That's kind of what it looks like when you're not focused on it. When you're focused on it, it's really the opposite, right? You know exactly what your donor base is all about. You know, what are they passionate about? What's going on in their lives, right? Why do they give to your organization? That's really important stuff. And I think that that's the type of stuff that comes when this is what you focus on as a team. Obviously you can't know everything about everybody. So I'm not saying that. But it's your goal and it really becomes part of your mission to focus on that relationship piece of, you know, yes, the automated stuff is great and it's super helpful, but it should be where your process ends when we're thinking about this type of culture, right? It has to get to that next level. Okay, I'm kind of speechless about this because I gotta be telling you, you know, from all of the, and I'm gonna use the word bedraggled, bedraggle, nonprofit leaders, they're all looking to, if you will, the mecca of automated communications because they're so overwhelmed. And so what I hear you saying is kind of antithetical to what we're hearing. And I'm really curious about it because there's that struggle of we gotta get it out, we gotta get it out, we gotta get it out. And then wait a minute, step back. And as Jared was always saying, focus on the ROR, return on relationship. It's such an interesting, almost conflict. It is, and it is very difficult, right? There's no silver bullet, there's no, here's the right answer, now they'll do it, there's not, it would be great if there was. Here's the way I see it. I see automations as totally critical to the modern era of running a nonprofit. You don't wanna have to type out a thank you email to every online donation that comes in. That's how good it is to your time. You shouldn't be doing that, right? So I think that the technology out there can be a great launching point and time saver to that relationship step. The way you build those systems is incredibly important, I think, of understanding through some automations so you don't have to sit there and look at everything. Where do these different donors fit in your system, right? And you have a system for each of them. Hey, if they fit here, here's our process. If they fit here, here's our process. And putting them all where they're supposed to go. And the automations in the systems were really good at that piece. But then there's no substitution for reaching out person-to-person and building the relationship. That's where I see it as a launching point, right? That's how I always see it. Automations get you here and that's great. If you just rely on them, what I've seen from a couple hundred conversations with lots of different nonprofits over the last couple of years, automations awesome, probably gonna see flat donations and probably gonna drop off at some point because they're not getting that next level of engagement. They're not part of a team. They, there's no real buy-in at that point. It's not progressing. So totally critical. I never bashed that. It's obviously totally critical. But I am always parking back to relationship because that's what it all comes back to at the end of the day. That's what it's about. Yeah. For real estate, it's location, location, location. And for the culture philanthropy, right? It's relationship, relationship, relationship. Absolutely. Yeah. And I would say, Jared, I don't know if we've had anybody phrase it or frame it up this way about using the technology piece to get to a certain level and then focusing on the relationship is like, do I duck or blow or puff my hands? You know, that next level, I really like that because I think for me, it kind of puts the pieces together. And I think, you know, the way I consult my clients or just the sector at large is, you know, and I think for what Joshua was saying, and correct me if I'm misinterpreting your words, Joshua, is there's so much you can do at that automation. You know, we also have Stephen Shattuck with Bloomerang who authored a book called Robots Make Bad Fundraisers. So that's interesting, but we can go so far with automation. But then when we take to that next level, maybe it's a certain segmentation. So what I talk about is donor segmentation. How many individuals between, you know, first I do $0 segmentation because we wanna turn them into donors and then $1 to maybe $99, $100 to $249. And we do that segmentation. So once you do that, maybe you can still integrate a lot more of the AI or artificial intelligence and then you're able to truly see, I'm gonna say the cream of the crop, but you're able to see those individuals that have the ability, perhaps higher net worth or the ability to give multiple gifts throughout the year and develop the relationship further to Joshua's point into really getting to know the donor, acting on our culture of philanthropy and demonstrating that with them. Yeah. Tell me if I skewed that. I mean, was that what I could do? I was sweating bullets, sister. Joshua, we could talk forever. I mean, when I had one other conversation one-on-one, I have a feeling we're going to ask you to come back on. There is no doubt that Dot Drives was built through a philanthropist point of view and truly bringing in that culture of stewardship into the platform. So kudos to the entire team there. It's been phenomenal. When this slide pops up, it unfortunately means our time is almost coming close, but we wanna make sure that everyone watching live and of course our many, many viewers that will I'm sure be addressing this show in our archive will want to reach out to you. So you can find Joshua Warrett, Director of Operations for Dot Solutions right here at Dot Drives.com. So it's really easy to get on his calendar. He, like most people have that link and you can connect time with Joshua and maybe some other individuals from the team. I truly could nerd out with you for hours, if not days, but it's been such a pleasure having one, having your voice of philanthropy on. It's so important to our sector right now. So thank you. Yeah, I've really enjoyed it. And I think you've framed some things just a little bit differently than a lot of our guests. And so this has been really cool. I really, really appreciated it. I wanna remind everyone, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy and I've been joined today by my interpret co-host, the non-profit nerd herself, Jared Ransom. We're delighted that you would spend another day with us another morning, another afternoon, depending on where you are. Again, our presenting sponsors, thank you for being a part of this amazing conversation and allowing us to bring guests like Joshua Ward in. I mean, just really cool information and I'm gonna be thinking about this all day and into the week because the framework of where we are in this non-profit business cycle is so interesting. And I really feel, Joshua, that some of the things that you said are gonna help those that get it really amp up and move forward during all this change or if you wanna use the word pandemic recovery. And so it's really cool to hear this approach. Wow, Jared, amazing conversation. I'm so delighted that you brought Joshua to the non-profit show. Oh, it's phenomenal. You know what you just said, Julia, and to take it further from what Joshua said, I just envisioned putting our car into overdrive and it's like, it's time to go. We have come so far and now it's time to really accelerate, push the gas, do that return on relationship focus, really show action with your culture of philanthropy. So I think it's all time that in our recovery phase, which we're all moving into now, hopefully, hopefully, let's take it into overdrive, right? Like let's accelerate. I love it, I love it. Well, hey, everyone, it's been another great day. Join us tomorrow as we have another episode of Ask and Answer. Lots of great questions coming in tomorrow and as we'd like to remind everyone every day at the conclusion of the non-profit show, we wanna remind you to stay well so you can do well. Thanks, everybody. Thank you, Joshua.