 Welcome back. So glad that you found yourself back here for the nonprofit show. Have a little bit of a Southern draw coming out. If you're hearing that recently, I was in Nashville also made my way to South Carolina. So my, my roots are coming out. But again, thrilled to have you here at the nonprofit show. This is a very exciting week, Julia, because it is nonprofit power week and each and every single day this week, we have a fantastic thought leader and rock star from our friends and our partners over at Y PTC, your part-time controller. This is day four of the nonprofit power week. And the days are flying by each and every day. Each and every conversation has truly been back magnificent. So thrilled to jump into today's conversation. We have Alicia Eastbold joining us. Alicia is of course with your part-time controller and she's bringing to us a conversation all about nonprofit success as it relates to automation. So she's got lots of good nuggets to share with us today. Before we jump into conversation though, Alicia, we want to remind all of our viewers and our listeners. If we have not met you yet, we are thrilled you're here. Julia Patrick is of course here. CEO of the American nonprofit Academy. And we have her to thank for this platform. I get to play alongside each and every day. My name is Jared Ransom, CEO of the Raven group, but really known as nonprofit nerd because I can nerd out over this stuff. Until you're blue in the face. I absolutely love it, but I have to tell you the Y PTC team is quite nerdy and that is a huge compliment because each and every one of you truly just have this like excellence within you. But you know, we are so grateful because we have now produced nearly 900 episodes, including these episodes here today for nonprofit Power Week. Could not do this if it weren't for our amazing partners. So a shout out of gratitude to all of our friends. Thank you to fundraising Academy at National University. Also to Blumerang of course to your part-time controller again with this dedicated nonprofit Power Week. Also thank you to nonprofit thought leader, American nonprofit Academy, staffing boutique, nonprofit nerd as well as nonprofit tech talk. These companies day in and day out pour into you and your mission. Of course they're here for our episodes, but they're really here to help you elevate your mission no matter where you are in our country. So please do check them out. And as I mentioned, we have a wealth of information to share with you, even in the green room, Alicia, you are so kind and generous to mention, you know, how much content is out there and it is free to all of you to consume at any time, no matter what time zone you're in. If you're watching, I go ahead and grab your phone scan this QR code on the left of the screen and you can download our app. You can still find us on broadcast and podcast platforms. So pretty much anywhere you like to consume your entertainment. We are also right along there. So please find us. But without further ado, you've waited so patiently Alicia. Even into this week because you were on day four of nonprofit power week and you've seen your colleagues, you know, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday prior, but Alicia Eastbold again is joining us. She is an associate at your part-time controller. Welcome to you. It is so nice to be here. I love this group. I love this podcast. You guys are doing great work. I'm honored to get to share today. So thanks for having me. You know, you said something really magical in the green room chatter. And I'd love to revisit this because you talked about being on a team that allows you a lot of flexibility. And it seems to me that's led you to be a flexible thinker. Can you talk to us a little bit about that? Yeah, I mean, I think what I love about where I work is that I work with people who are very collaborative. We share what we know and we're generous with what we know. And that's a real culture that YPTC has worked to develop. And as a result, we just become better experts at what we know. So whatever I share today, it's a lot of what I've learned both on the job, but a lot of it is just from people who were kind enough to say, here's something I've learned from my experience. And I'm really grateful for that because I think it makes me a better professional in a lot of what I do. And it's really unique, I think, to, to where what YPTC has created as a culture. So. Well, in that culture, as you mentioned, I know we mentioned it earlier this week, 30 years of business, which is a wonderful feat. I mean, really magical in and of itself. So 30 years for the business, but if you add up all of the team members, right, like centuries, it's just so much information. So it's really to have you with us, Alicia, to talk about automation. And as we kick this off right out of the gate, we're going straight to AI, artificial intelligence and automation and how that might be a win-win. Share with us what you're seeing when it comes to AI and automation for success. Sure. Well, I mean, I think there's the easy answer, which you probably already know, which is that we know that this can save time and it can save costs. And that's important when you're managing a nonprofit with limited resources. But I'm going to guess from your experience, that's not been enough to make that jump into automation or AI. Would I be assessing pretty accurately from what you hear? Yeah. I'm using it quite, quite a bit. I say it's my best assistant right now, but it is simply that it's an assistant. Yeah. And I know there's so much more to AI and I have, I'm barely scratching the surface. Yeah. And I mean, today I'd love to talk about not just AI, but also automation because both have some different options for what you can use it to do and maybe even clarifying what the difference between those are. But the truth is, like, if you were trying to automate a task a few years ago, it may not have been as easy or as affordable as it is now. And that's something that's changed. Like we're seeing things even changing in the last 12, 24 months of integrations and things. They're more affordable. They're a little bit easier to learn and use, I say a little bit because sometimes depending on what you're trying to do. And they play nicely with other tools. So that's another feature that we didn't have before. You can see it like if, if you're an accountant and you're using QuickBooks online, you can go in their app store and you can try to bloom ring, which I see in your background, Jared, or to our payroll providers. And it can sync up your data and tasks that you used to spend days doing sometimes you can now do in an hour or half a day with automation. But there's also AI. That's another thing that might be a little different than automation too. I think the automation is so great. I've seen win-wins across the board. You know, I play a lot in the development space. And so how does our donor database like bloom ring connect with a QuickBooks online or a Sage accounting system, you know, the accounting system so that the finance and the fundraising departments, which we've had your colleague, Deanna Peterson, join us to talk about, you know, how do we remove these silos and how do we bring in efficiencies and, you know, effective best practices to create these, I'm going to say bridges, you know, but it really is a lot of times that automation piece. Yeah. And I think one of the things that's worth considering when we talk about automation. And so we talk a lot about time and costs. Those are very measurable. But another thing is just the mental load that you no longer have to carry. Like we underestimate the amount of stress it takes to make sure something's accurate to prepare for it, to recover from it. And we all know those tasks. It's the ones that are the most painful to do. And we tell ourselves, there's got to be a better way. Those are the tasks that it's great to automate. And once you do it, when you lighten that load, you get to now use the information better, like you're saying, Jared, like you can use it to make decisions and actually help inform your business rather than we spend more time just trying to get the task done. We don't have any time left. We don't have any brain capacity left. Yeah. I think we, a lot of times we do these tasks. We don't really understand why we do them to accomplish the task. And then we don't have enough time or understanding to review the work that we've done, to really understand the implications and move it throughout, you know, move it through the organization. There's so much fear involved with this. Yeah. And, you know, the digital nature, especially as Jared mentioned, you know, fundraising, people, you know, making donations, taking that leap of faith, that their financial information is going to be held safe and secure by this nonprofit. If you could address this a little bit more for us as we navigate into this digital space with, with more intention from our nonprofit side. Is this wise? Is it safe? Is it secure? I mean, the truth is the technology is changing so fast. We're going through a really big shift and like the best thing I could think of is that the shift of when the combustible engine came online and the Model T Ford was now propelling people. And then pretty soon after we've got a lot faster cars and the horses in the buggies that we were using before, they worked and they, they stuck around for a while. But at some point you have to start making a shift because this is where the world's going. And when you look at things like AI and what it's doing, it is like a hyperspeed compared to the way that we are thinking now we have more computing power. We have more data and we have more algorithms to bring all this together. I mean, think of like, I was just giving that example of automation of how I could maybe have it do my record keeping in my accounting software. AI takes it up a next notch and says, analyze all that data. You know, for trends, give me five recommendations for how I can, how I can use that information. And at YPTC, we're working on building our own AI for that purpose because we know it's going to help us do our job more effectively. And there's more and more tools like this coming out all the time. I mean, even ones that will go and generate the email to your donors in the tone of you. It's just amazing. So when you go back to the safety, I think it's like trying to compare saying is, is riding a horse more safe than driving in a car? And answering depends. It really depends. Like I, I, I like to think of when I was a child of the 70s and 80s, my mom had me in like those unlatched car skits in the front, front row. I mean, I could have flown out the windshield. Yeah. We were lucky if we had a lap belt, right? Like that. Exactly. So I mean, we're, we're driving fast. Yeah. And so you got to slow, there is such a need. If you want to, we want to go that speed, you better first slow down and think about the safety sides of it because there are some real vulnerabilities that you can protect yourself from. And there's some best practices in how you do it. Well, Alicia, I feel like that takes us to, you know, really where you are going to dive deep is, you know, how do we find and choose the right tools for us? And you were sharing with us before we even open the digital doors today. There, there needs to be, you know, some due diligence in this space. Tell us about what do we need to do when it comes to choosing the right tools? Yeah. And first let's just talk safety. And then I can talk about just design and thinking, but when you get to the point when you're looking at it until you need to vet it, you need to make sure that it's a reputable organization. I mean, we've already seen like just because it's in an app store doesn't mean it's going to securely care for your data. And just because it's got five stars, you don't know who's giving those five stars. So checking, checking with other people in the industry, experts in the industry who are using these tools, that's, that's why I love to collaborate with my colleagues and talk about what they're using and what's working well. It really gives me a good track towards what I want to use. And then they should be having security certifications like the SOC2 and others to make sure that they are protecting your data. And if you're not sure, you might want to get somebody to come in and do like a cybersecurity evaluation, and they can look at your organization and help you think through if you are thinking about those things carefully, they can help you through that. But when it's time, I mean, so that's a security side, but I've got a few more things to say about like picking a tool. So I don't know if you want to, if you had to bring it on, we're ready for it. Yeah. We want to hear. So biggest thing, spend the time up front. You're going to spend it either way. This was a great thought from my colleague, Edwin Harvey, who's done so many tech implementations, which is you're going to spend this time either up front or at the end. If you choose to pick quick, you're going to spend a lot of time learning the tool as you go. And you may get to the end and have that same circumstance you talked about where you get to the end and you go, oh, man, this doesn't do what I wanted to do. This is so hard. It doesn't work. And that has to do with the questions that you probably didn't ask in the beginning. So we always ask when somebody comes to us for like a tech advice or tech implementation, we say, what do you need the tool to do? And then right on the heels of that, we say, do you even need to be doing this task? Because there's so many times we see people are automated. I got to automate it, but like, okay, but is this the kind of task we need? And because sometimes the best automation task. As Bill Schwab said, is to just not do it. So I think that's a great thing is, but if you start with what you need it to do, it'll steer you towards what kind of tool you want to build. And then comes that task of, all right. So now when you choose, you got to customize, you got to figure out how custom you want to get. So Alicia, how often should we be assessing, reassessing automation, you know, like integrations, all of our technology, that in and of itself, I realize is a load of question, but with the changes, cause I feel like even during our 30 minute broadcast, something's happening, something's changing, right? That we're unaware of. What are you like, how often should we put our finger on the pulse when it comes to all of these moving pieces? Yeah. I mean, you nailed it, that we can, you can find software tools that come out of the box and they can do a job for you right out of the gate, the Toyota Corollas, right? Like they're ready to go. They do the job. They're not going to be able to pass them, but you might look at them a year ago and it didn't do what you need it to do. And all of a sudden the new model comes out and it does everything you need it to do. And we've been finding this with QuickBooks advanced users. They are rolling out all of these spreadsheet sync features that are just blowing our mind as accountants with what you can do. And that didn't exist. It didn't, it didn't exist the way it's used now. So, so you have to kind of keep a pulse on it. And I think having a thought partner who is, is aware of those changes or having somebody on your staff who knows the technology and what's going is really helpful because it could change on a dime. And if that could change your automation task. Yeah, it's nice to know sooner than later because you might go build out something really expensive and customized. And then you find out six months later that a software does it. And the truth is when you build a custom product, which we do that too. That's specific to your organization. It works great, but software developers are constantly looking for ways that they can solve problems. Right. Right. Yeah. I think one of the things that's so fascinating with this discussion is you don't know what you don't know. And so a lot of times I think it's so easy to just fall back on, okay, this is the way we've always done it. Yeah. We have to work really hard and we have a lot to do and we're under pressure. And sometimes just opening your mind and going back to that flexible thinking and saying, okay, I'm going to invest and change in this digital format. And ultimately it might be a little hard up front, but ultimately it's going to be a better investment. How would you guide us to this? Because this is really an implementation, almost like theory and practice for people that oftentimes don't like change. Derek. Yeah, not liking change. It's, you, there has to be some level of openness to it because that beginning process, you have to be enough of a technical mindset and interest that you can see the value of automation. And I find if you have staff that aren't on board with that and you aren't steering your organization that way. Yes, you can keep limping along. You can keep doing your tasks the way you do. And you may not in the short run see the difference, probably the way people drive in the horse and buggy down the streets while the Model T Ford's going. At some point it will come to an inflection point. You can wait for that. And I think it depends on your organization and what you're trying to accomplish when you have a better sense of what technology can do, you're going to have a better sense of what you're missing out on and ways it could be helping you better. And if you can't do that, find somebody who can. Find a consultant or hire somebody in your staff to get up to speed on those things because. Yeah, not everybody needs to be a tech expert on every tool. But when you do know, when you embrace that sort of a mindset, it opens it up. And I think when you get some things in place, when you find out what experts are using, it makes it feel a little more like an on ramp to a freeway instead of, you know, we're going 60 miles an hour right away. That's not a great model. So, um, yeah, having people help you as a. It's whoever they are having someone kind of guide you as a really helpful way because they're going to know what questions to ask. They're going to be thinking about what your needs are. They're going to kind of see the whole playing field for your nonprofit organization of ways you can automate it. And they may be able to say, yeah, that tool exists or no, we need to build that till maybe we use something like power automate or something to do it for you. So, you know, go ahead. I was going to say, I can't help but think, you know, 1.8 million nonprofits registered only the registered ones. No one, I believe, starts a nonprofit that says, you know, I really want to start this nonprofit because I can't wait to automate or I can't wait to create these systems, you know, like, I feel like that's an afterthought, you know, and really looking at even accounting. We talked about this with, you know, other YPTC colleagues this week is accounting for nonprofits is different. Different. Perhaps automation for nonprofits has a little uniqueness as well. And so looking at this from, you know, again, no one starts a nonprofit with the excitement to get to that automation stage because that's not their, probably not their passion, you know, and so looking at this, I just love YPTC as a dedicated nonprofit accounting, you know, company has so much knowledge when it comes to automation comes to the NICRA comes to so many different opportunities. I'm just blown away, Julia, because, you know, as we're having this conversation with Alicia, I'm really just seeing why PTC is almost the answer to everything. That's kind of what I'm. Wow, that's a heavy lift. But you know, I think the thing of it is we have said, and you and I have said this privately, we've said this on the nonprofit show, but that whole no money, no mission really is is a central theme to how successful you can be. No matter what your mission vision and values are. And so you can get this component in place, automation, AI, understanding how you can be more efficient. I think it's really that magical key that unlocks potential. I mean, just to hear Alicia that Blumerang has an interface with QuickBooks is stunning, because Blumerang is a really forward thinking company in the digital space. And so it's fascinating. And I think if you could look for those types of alignments as you're going on this journey, that in itself is going to paint a picture, I would think would be a big help because it's such a new way for us, especially in the nonprofit sector to be thinking about. I mean, when we started the nonprofit show, people didn't have zoom accounts. Yeah, they were freaked out about zoom. I mean, really, right, Jared? Oh yeah. And now, you know, board meetings are pretty much predominantly zoom or a hybrid of that. Yeah. The technology advancements in our sector has been exponential since 2020. You know, I've seen it at conferences. I've really seen this tech forward, but really like just a huge advancement when it comes to technology in our sector. Yeah. And you know, it's so tied to people. It affects people. It affects our mission. And I keep thinking when, when you keep it connected to people, it'll help you make better decisions. Like if the technology can help you serve your constituents better, it's always helpful. And I think we jump into technology. Like if you're not a technology person, I see people jump in, their organization starts growing. They realize there's data everywhere. And now we need to think through, oh, I could be doing something with this. I need to be tracking my donors. I need to be tracking my account. I need to track my grant of success. And I need to have metrics for things, all of that. And you just naturally see, I could do this manually. And I'll probably have errors, the quality of my work. I'm seeing it. One of my forecast sheets, I just looked at it yesterday, had 900 formulas on it. 900. If this is a very basic monthly forecast, 900 formulas so much can go wrong. And you spend all your time checking it, right? So you see the time that we spend doing that. And you could see automation could change that. And yeah, we're seeing it white BTC. We're as much focused on tech as accounting. It just flows right together because it touches so much of what we do in the nonprofit world. And it intersects a lot with our finances. So in our storytelling, how we visualize this data that's coming at lightning speed. Yeah. One of my favorite departments is the data vis team. Truly, I'm just a group. I really do a mesmerized by, because finding it's like counting, it's not my jam. Like that plays eyes over quicker than anything. And so really having, I'm very visual. So seeing the visual element, you know, like the, the data vis team can help to provide. It tells the story and it tells the story in particular to me, that the numbers, like just the numbers. I don't read numbers very well. Well, context now. And I think it's, I need to see it simply. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that, you know, to go back to your point, the 900 formulas, you know, which one of those is the most important? And how are we going to use that to make our decisions that impact so many people and impacts trajectory of our service. To our communities, to our teams, to our clients. It's really a daunting thing. So this has been a fabulous conversation. Alicia, I think that you've taken a lot of fear out of it. You've given us a lot of really tangible paths that we can take when looking at this, you know, the intersection of AI and how we really need to be automating the processes that we are required by law to do. In many cases that we have to do in order to run our businesses. And so this has really been fun. Check out Alicia associate at your part time controller. You can go to yptc.com. Alicia on the website. There's a fabulous story about you and your family and work in Africa. Yeah. Really an amazing story. And if you have the opportunity to find out more about some of the members at YPTC, make sure you stop and what read that piece or some really cool images. And it's it humanizes your work and your commitment to our sector. And so check that out. Alicia, you've been a wonder to have on again. We mentioned YPTC.com. They're uploading all of these episodes. You know, you can find them on our portals as well, but you can also find them on YPTC.com. This is all free. You don't have to be one of their clients. And there's just tons and tons of information. They produced many of their own, much of their own content. And so you can learn even more about what they do and what they think and how they are approaching this new dawn with nonprofit financial management. And so that's it. Thank you. Thank you. This has been a really super cool week because we have all these different voices talking about different things. And yet they all relate to get together. It's been fun. They're all women. Look at this. Fierce team. I've just really enjoyed it yesterday with Susan was a wonderful conversation as we dove deep into foundations. And so as we wrap up this week, you know, Alicia, wonderful conversation about automation. We're going to be our dedicated ask and answer each and every week. We do that. And so nonprofit power weeks, they're unique. They're special because we don't do them often. We save, you know, just a select few weeks throughout the year to provide this deep dive. It's essentially our shark week, if you will, but it's so much fun. And again, just thrilled to have YPTC with us this week, each and every day. And yes, the YPTC.com. It already has this week's conversations with these leaders that you see here on the screen uploaded. So fantastic week. I'm kind of sad for tomorrow to be Friday and wrapping up the week. It's gone by fast. Hey, I want to give a quick shout out to Geraldine Dressler, whose picture is not on here, but she's the person that I work with in order, in order to put these episodes together. We have spent a lot of time together talking about what we think are good topics, what we think everybody is, is chomping at the bit to discuss or to learn about. And she has the pulse on the finger of all of the YPTC family across the nation. And so I would be remiss if I didn't, you know, thank her as well as thanking our sponsors. And they include Fundraising Academy at National University, Bloomerang, Your Part Time Controller, American Nonprofit Academy, Nonprofit Thought Leader, Staffing Boutique, Nonprofit Nerd, and Nonprofit Tech Talk. These are the folks that join us day in and day out. Hey, Jarrett, do you want to sign us off, sister? Absolutely. It's been wonderful. Again, thanks for all of you that have joined us. If you are a repeat listener and joiner, we are so glad that you keep coming back. This is your first time with us. We are so glad that you're here and we hope to see you back here again. We sign off every episode with this mantra and it hasn't changed for nearly 900 episodes, but we want to remind all of you to please stay well so you can do well.