 Welcome, thanks for joining us to the nonprofit show. Julie and I are thrilled that you're here and I am thrilled that Julie is in the hot seat. So Fridays are ask and answer are typically our favorite days but I also have to say, Julia, I really love it when you and I turn the tables on one another and you are here as our guest, Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy talking about something that I have never heard, I've never heard you talk about and so I am just as eager to learn about dog-fooding for your nonprofit. I know, I'm interested to learn about that and before we dive into this conversation, of course, we wanna introduce ourselves or reintroduce ourselves. Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, this, the nonprofit show was her idea so we thought it would be two weeks, she thought it would be two weeks and here we are three years coming up on 600 episodes. I'm Jarrett Ransom, your nonprofit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group and I am so honored to be alongside Julia as the co-host of the nonprofit show each and every day and we are truly able to do this because of our support and ongoing commitment from our presenting sponsors. So thank you, thank you, thank you to Blumerang American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy, nonprofit nerd, your part-time controller, staffing boutique and the nonprofit thought leaders. If you have not checked out these companies, please do because they are here to help you drive your mission forward in the best possible way in and around your community in about 28 minutes is a good time to check them out, not now because we have some broad-fooding and what the heck that might mean. But if you wanna share today's episode or any of our other 600 episodes, you can do that. You can find us on Roku, YouTube, Amazon Fire 2D and Vimeo. If you're a podcaster like I am, hopefully you are too now Julia and you're listening to the nonprofit show wherever you stream your podcast, you can listen to dog-fooding, your nonprofit, on the podcast channel as well. So again, you know, every now and then, Julie and I turn the seat on each other, we put each other in the hot seat and we say, hey, we each have many, many, many years of experience in this sector and we each have topics and skill sets that we consider our zone of genius. So today's topic is brought to you by Julia. So she's not serving as the co-host, she's serving as a guest. Yes, and I will tell you, it's a little nerve-wracking to be the guest and not the co-host, but Julia, I'm thrilled to have you here and I'm really thrilled to learn about dog-fooding. And the first question is, what the heck is it? So this is one of my favorite topics and in my trainings that I do for board members and we call them the board boot camps, we talk about this concept. And so let me take a step back. In the early 1970s, there was a very, very popular and well thought of actor by the name of Lauren Green and he was the father of the series called Bonanza and it was like a very patriarchal, very well-to-do prominent family leader, community leader, leader of the Western United States, rancher. And he had this fabulously popular show and he was contracted by Alpo. And so sometimes you hear this called the Alpo effect. And what he did is he came onto national TV and said, Alpo is the food of choice for my dog and only the finest will go into my family's dog. And before this, Americans and people worldwide, they didn't really spend money on dog food. They gave their dogs their scraps, right? We do this in the nonprofit sector. Okay, so this is gonna like hair on fire and I don't have a lot of hair to get rid of. So this is a big concept. So the concept is this, that when we have a mind shift that we say we're going to eat what we make, we're gonna serve what we make. Now what's happened is that the tech sector, interestingly enough, embraced this Alpo theory or the Alpo effect and said, we're gonna dog food ourselves. So when we create a product, we're gonna use it. So for example, we're a tech company and we've created a new calendar feature. Well, now we're gonna make everyone use this calendar. We see this in retail where merchants or designers say, we design clothes and our employees have to wear all the clothes. So for example, you would not go into the house of Chanel and see their staff wearing Dior, right? No, they're wearing what they make. They're eating their own dog food. And so this is a really big deal in the nonprofit sector because we don't eat our own dog food. Okay, this is nowhere where I thought this was gonna go. I know. Because I thought dog fooding, it was negative but really what I'm hearing, especially with the Chanel Dior, right? Which I hope no one's truly eating a Chanel outfit or Dior outfit, but the reality is to believe so much in the product programs that you create that you yourself, your organization, your staff, your stakeholders are also buying into that dog food, if you will. Yeah, and you're serving yourself. So in the nonprofit sector, a lot of times, and we had a guest on yesterday and we hear this a lot, Jared, you'll agree. Oh, we work with limited resources and we do the best we can and so, you know, we take the bruised apples and bananas and serve them to our clients, right? I mean, we do this. We have to be really honest. We have to look inwards and say, yeah, you know, we don't always give the best in the highest quality. Right, and I would say that's not just for our community, that's for our staff. And I would push that forward, right? That like eating the bruised banana or eating the bruised, you know, apple is also paying our staff an unlivable wage. And that is something I know that has been in conversation in our sector for a really long time. So, okay, so dog fooding. Now that you've told us what this is, I will admit, you know, I was born in the 70s, so I don't know the actor, but I do know bonanza. I do know bonanza. So that helps me to really understand, you know, what exactly that is. So now let's move us forward and we have this beautiful Dalmatian for those of you, you know, watching the show, you can see this, but for those of you listening in a podcast form, you know, we do have a dog here in an image eating. It looks like real food. He's not eating dog food. There's some nice figs, some pomegranates, some really good stuff. Okay, so on the slide we're gonna talk about, or you're gonna talk about, testing real world use and honest evaluations. Drive us through this conversation. Tell us what these three bullet points really relate to. So this is a really interesting aspect of this. And I'll give you a real world experience. Early in my career, I was invited by the head of philanthropy for a very large organization. And they said, will you come to our dining? Come have lunch with us. And my assistant was like, yeah, she'll def, you know, got it all situated. And it was at a name of a restaurant that had a very similar name to the service organization. Not exact, but similar. And this restaurant was very ladi, it was quite posh. And so I was like, well, okay. So, you know, it was on my calendar, I showed up. And then to the service organization, right? And I was like, you know, yeah, good for them. They're having me eat their dog food. They're having me eat at their kitchen, right? Thanks. I'm there looking around, look at a place undoubtedly, you know, and I'm standing there with all these homeless people. And my contact doesn't show up. And all of a sudden my assistant calls and says, Julia, you're not at the restaurant. Now I'm like, I'm standing here in the food line looking like an idiot. And everybody's looking at me and I don't see my contact. And they're like, no, it's not at the shelter. It's at the posh posh restaurant. The Ladi Da one. The Ladi Da that shared a common name. So what I'm getting at was that this film, Thropic Director, shame on him. He should have had me at his place of business. Shelter, right. We should have been eating the dog food. We should have been seeing. And he should have been showing me what they do and how they do it and how good the food is. But this is the reality. He didn't do it. He didn't eat at his own place. And so this is where the concept is, we need to be testing what we're serving. We need to be seeing how our clients respond to us. We need to become the clients for a period of time so we can understand what's going on. You know, it's so interesting that you say this and again, full transparency. Julie and I have spent 600 days, you know, mornings together. I've never heard this concept until today. And so I am learning right along with all of our viewers and listeners too. And you're so right, you were so right because I think the community is a culprit of this as well. And, you know, and when it comes to donating in-kind donations, be it furniture, be it clothing, we say this isn't good enough for us. So I'm going to give it to the people that are, you know, less than me, the people that are the most vulnerable, a vulnerable that, you know, oh, someone will like this. Kind of that, you know, someone's junk is someone else's treasure. And I can tell you that I have seen, you know, the detriment of this hit so many of the consignment thrift stores in our sector that serve as like a social enterprise that they are in fact, you know, losing so much money, sifting through essentially our trash to say, this is not what we can give our clients or sell in our community. And so I think, you know, to this point, and again, as I'm learning this in the moment, Julia, is that, you know, our nonprofit leaders as well as our community members are culprits of this. So how do we change the mind frame? Like, how do we get that person that invited you to the restaurant to the shelter? Like, how do we make this shift? Right, so this is like one of my favorite topics went like I said, when we do our training. And this is my call to the community. And that is to start with your board and have them have an on campus with client experience. So one of my favorite things is, is to challenge boards that run shelter services. How many board members do you think in our country have ever spent a night in one of their shelters? Right? I would say very few. I don't want to say, I mean, I did say zero, but I guarantee you there's some people out there that will say, absolutely, I will do it. I want to experience this, but I don't know that that's the truth. It's scarier than hell. I can tell you the first time that I served on the board of the nation's largest domestic violence shelter, I knew nothing about domestic violence. And I was not educated whatsoever. And I would say I'm still not fully educated. And I went down and spent a shift when I was a new board member at one of our shelters. And I came out of that experience waving the flag. I was like, anybody, I became the million dollar asker. I was like, get me in front of donors, get me in front of the people that can write the checks because I can witness to what I saw. And it profoundly changed my life. It profoundly changed the way I viewed service. Now, at the same time to kind of balance the stress and the duress of serving on a board is such an important topic, I served in a cultural institution as a trustee on a cultural institution. And so I was like, well, how could I take the same concept? And so what I did was I went to rehearsals and I went into like where stage craft was and to try and see what they did. And I saw how hard they worked and I saw how unglamorous it was. And I was literally behind the curtain, right? And so that was the same experience. This does not mean that it's only for, you know, the toughest of the tough topics. I mean, this could be, let's say you're in an after-school program. How many of our board members have gone to the after-school program and served as somebody that helps pass out the snacks or plays basketball with the kids or helps get kids off the bus or on the bus, right? I mean, there are a lot of ways that we can get ourselves ingrained or, and maybe not even ingrained, but introduced, introduced to what we're doing. You formed and educated. And, you know, when I sit around a board table with many board members, I love the mission moment. And I love when it comes from the board members and these examples, these real life examples that you Julia have just shared with us, these are mission moments. And there's so many opportunities to do this. I mean, you've given us, you know, a shelter experience. You've given us an arts and culture experience. There's so many ways to engage. Sadly, I've also been at board tables where the board, many board members will say, I had no idea we did that. Or I had no idea we had multiple offices, right? And so they're very sheltered in what they know and what they're, you know, what they're able to say because then they're not able to be the advocate in the community and speak, you know, to the depth and breadth of the services. So you're asking really, and I know we're gonna talk next, you know, a little bit deeper in the boards and the stakeholders. So what about the honest evaluations? Like, are we able to then see where there might be hangups in this? Yeah, I think what happens is that in my experience and doing board training for so many years and talking to folks, that the expectation of what it looks like to be engaged with our nonprofit isn't always the same, right? And I think a lot of times we as board members, even community members, let's take it into the bigger landscape, we have opinions about who we think our clients are, who we're giving service to. So if it's cultural, oh, well only well to do white old ladies go to the opera, right? No, not really true, nor should it be true. You know, only women of color that are not educated go into domestic violence sheltered. They're the only victims of domestic violence. Well hello, we know that's not true. One in four women in our country, in our country will experience domestic violence in their life, okay? So I mean, we have to retool what we think about. And if we can go into our own nonprofit as not as oh hail the board member, right? No, you kind of go in incognito. You know, you work that overnight shift or you serve the food or you fold clothes or you sort through the garbage that comes through to our thrift shops. Then I think you can be much more profoundly engaged and come back to what the real mission is. I think it's like undercover boss, because I love that show. Love it, yeah, yeah. You know, that's a great comment, Jared, because it is kind of like that. You know, it's showing up to volunteer but not as a board member or being identified. Interesting. Now that is a concept that I would love to see. I know that we have so many nonprofit leaders, you know, watching and listening to us live right now. And we also know our viewership of these recorded. So I challenge right along with Julia for many of you, all of you to take on this challenge, you know, are you dog-fooding your nonprofit? Are you eating what your clients are eating? You know, when you brought up that restaurant, I have to say, I was working for an organization, you know, that is very well known as a food bank and they had a social enterprise have, still do, a social enterprise that's a restaurant. And the purpose of that is to teach the clients how to do front-end, back-end, you know, restaurant service. And it was fantastic. And so that was always an opportunity where staff went and ate because it gave the clients the opportunity to serve, to experience that real life. I love that you brought this up and I had no idea that I was dog-fooding before I knew what dog-fooding was. Well, you know, I think it's one of those kind of like sexy, crazy words that you, you know, we know what I'm talking about. We're experiencing the mission, basically. You know, we are being clients. We're putting ourselves in our client's shoes as opposed to thinking about what we have. I'll give you one more aspect of how we can engage and make this real. I remember early in my board service, I went to one of my first board meetings and it was one of the most expensive commercial office districts of our city. And it was, it was, talk about La Di Da. I mean, it was a boardroom, very prestigious company, overlooking the city. It was literally rarified air. And I remember saying, okay, this is my first meeting and you might ask me to leave, but why the F aren't we down at the shelter meeting? Right. I mean, What are you saying? Well, the board chair was shocked and was, I'm sure was like, well, who voted you in? And the CEO said to me, well, if we don't do this, no one will come to the meetings. And I said, well, then you have the wrong, you have the wrong board. Right. Because I think if you have to drive past people living on the streets, you're going to have a different perspective as to wheeling up in your Mercedes and tossing the keys to the valet to then go make decisions, right? And this is what's happening in our country. People don't want to see what's going on. It's so nitty gritty. It's really hard. And so we get like a compassion distortion when we are not dogfooding. And yet our staff and our leadership, our C-suite all the way down to the grounds crews are just getting dragged every day, every day. It's just brutal. So here's the million dollar question, Julia. How do we get board members to do this? Because I will tell you, right? Like it's a volunteer position. You are probably, you know, a dime a dozen and I love that you're bringing this up. In fact, a couple of days ago, you and I talked about there's so much going on in our country, so much going on in our sector. We really need to start talking about these in brass tux issues. Like let's bring up the things that aren't beautiful. Let's bring up the things that are really somewhat controversy. And so looking at this as dogfooding, I have been involved with conversations where board members, I mean, we're lucky to get them at the table. We're lucky to get them on Zoom. So how the heck do we get them to, you know, our programs when they are already crying, they don't have enough time? So how do we get them to see the value of this and take that step forward? You know, I've thought about this a lot. And I know that earlier in my years, I mean, I believe it or not, I've toned down. At 61 years old, I've toned down because I was a lot more aggressive as a younger woman. And so I didn't make a lot of friends. And over the trajectory of 30 years of being on board service, I've had those conversations in my head that said, you know, why was I the only one thinking this? And I wasn't. The difference is I was the only one saying it. And I think there's no shame in authentic leadership to explain this. And to say, hey, everybody, you know, we're embracing this concept of dogfooding and we would really like it to become a requirement of our boards. You know, you have your give or get, you gotta sign the COI policy, you gotta do whatever. How do we get you engaged? So one of the things is a tangential opportunity to figure out who the other services or organizations are. I had the opportunity to sit on a 911 board once with operators to see what the calls were coming in, not because our organization was working with the police department or was the police department, our organization worked with the police department. And so that was one of the experiences that we could take as a board member to learn how our organization filtered in to the larger community. Okay, here on fire, those board members that took that opportunity, it transformed us. Not just for our organization, by the way, for our community. So I think you can do some of these things. It's really a board effect. You know, how is this board impacting the community, affecting the community personally as a body of governance? And so you have to think about this. This leads me to the board liaison, one of my favorite topics. You know, if you have a board liaison and you have this mentality, then you can't administrate this. If you're just sitting around the table saying, come on, you guys, you need to show up. No, it doesn't work that way. You gotta say it on this date at this time, this is the opportunity who wants to show up. It's tough love, but I think it's administrative. And to hold them accountable, because we really do need that buy-in from our board. We need that buy-in from the stakeholders and to see that. And you know, Julia, you have mentioned those dress rehearsals for the arts and cultures before. And I just think that is a fantastic opportunity to engage the board and funders into, you know, those dress rehearsal opportunities. So you had shared, Julia, that you provide this, you know, training, if you will, during your board boot camp. And I'm, I just love this concept. I love that you allowed me, are yourself, to turn the tables on you today to share one of these concepts and discussions that you're just so passionate about. Who knew that Bonanza would come up in the nonprofit show? For Alpo, Dark Food, come on now. It's a nonprofit show, man. We got it, we got it snapping. We got it going on. I just, I love it. I love these conversations. If this is something you want to hear more from Julia, please reach out to Julia at the American Nonprofit Academy. Of course, you can share this episode with your team thanks to our presenting sponsors. So thank you so very much to Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy, Nonprofit Nerd, your part-time controller, staffing boutique and the nonprofit thought leaders. These companies allow us to have unscripted conversations. None of this truly is led or curated, I should say, by our sponsors. They believe so much in the sector and so much in the communities that they serve. And I guarantee you they're in your community because so many are virtual now. But really, Julia, this is a fantastic topic that I'm just so grateful that you were able to share with us because it's really important that we do see the value in the product, in the program, in the services that we're providing. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's a, there's a famous, famous situation that's recently occurred with a change of leadership in Microsoft. And it used to be that Microsoft employees were not allowed to have Apple cell phones. Right. Because, or smartphones, because it was like, hello, the competitor. And the new CEO came on and was like, hey, guess what I'm carrying? I use an Apple, I use an iPhone because their product is great. And I want to be that product. So, you know. That's interesting. It's the same concept. It's eating what you make and what you serve. And that competitive benchmarking, which I loved learning that when I went through my master's of business administration program was really competitive benchmarking, generic benchmarking. So I could see the value of, if we're carrying an Android because that's who we are and that's what we do, great. But we can also carry the competitors and learn what are our competitive advantages. Absolutely. I'll heart and parcel. Well, this is fantastic, Julia. Again, thank you for bringing a topic to light that I have never heard of and I will never now forget it because this is a topic that you cannot forget. You cannot unhear. And again, for those of you that are interested in sharing this, I know I am, find us on so many of our streaming platforms as well as the podcast. And if you have any questions of where these are, go to the AmericanUnprofitAcademy.com and that will steer you towards these various channels. So thank you so much, Julia. Thank you. I so appreciate you, Jared Ransome. Absolutely. And tomorrow we will be back. I'm excited for tomorrow's conversation. Until then, as we sign off each and every day, we ask you to please stay well so you can do well. Thanks everyone and have a great day.