 So glad to have you here if you're returning viewer or listener to the non-profit show and if this is your first time, welcome. We're so glad that you found us. We are thrilled to start this week. It's a short week. We did celebrate Labor Day yesterday, but starting this week with Katie Warnick from Staffing Boutique where she is the CEO. And today she is coming to us to talk to us about non-cash staff perks that have an impact. So she has a lot to share with us on this topic. And Katie has been with us from the very beginning, March of 2020, and has really been around to help share and shape like what's happening in the moment. And so you really brought to us, as Julia mentioned in our green room chatter, you've really brought to the forefront, Katie, like the current events. What is happening now? What are the things we need to have our finger on the pulse? So so grateful to have you here as part of today's episode. Julia and I are both thrilled to have this conversation with you. We also want to acknowledge our sponsors that allow us this opportunity day in and day out. So a shout out of gratitude goes to our friends over at Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy at National University, Nonprofit Thought Leader, your part time controller, Staffing Boutique. Again, that's you, Katie. And so glad to have both you and you and Dana joining us each month. Also, thank you to Nonprofit Nerd as well as Nonprofit Tech Talk. These companies are here for all of you, our viewers and our listeners around the entire globe, because they want to help you do more good to help you elevate your mission. So as I mentioned before, Katie's been on, she's a staple and we love having your voice and your perspective to join us. If you missed any of these episodes, good news. I'm going to tell you where to find them. So the latest and greatest is you can download the app. If you're watching now, you can scan that QR code on the screen. And in just a couple of hours, you'll get a notification that today's conversation has been uploaded. You can also still find us on podcast platforms as well as streaming broadcasts. So pretty much anywhere you choose to binge watch or binge listen, you can have us in your peripheral. So excited, excited for that. And also thrilled to have you back, Katie. So welcome. Thanks. Always a pleasure. Yeah. You know, Katie, Jared and I were talking about this and it's just really fascinating there. There are few people that we've had on the nonprofit show consistently. I would say the other it's you and then your part time controller who I feel like the two of you are at the forefront of what's coming at us because finance money accounting. And then labor and those two magical things. I feel like with you coming to us on the nonprofit show, you've been able to kind of help guide us as to what some of these speed bumps are going to be and they have changed. So today is an interesting conversation because now we're talking about protecting the team protecting the staff, but we don't always have the money to do that. So what are some creative things. And so thank you for, you know, dipping into all of your years of knowledge and expertise and helping us to understand what are some of the things that we could be doing. So first one, and we're going to call this a perk, PTO personal time off. This can be kind of a sticky wicket for a lot of folks. What are your thoughts on this? Well, first of all, I just wanted to say, yeah, I love talking about retention, right. So with the nonprofit sector funds are always really, really tight. So retention is something that I've been preaching for, you know, years at this point. Your recruitment plan means nothing if you don't have a retention plan. So when we're talking about, you know, non cash perks incentives, we have to look at all them and what we could do and how we be created can be creative. So this is certainly a fun topic for us all to talk about, right. PTO personal time off, you know, it seems as though everyone has gone to this, right, like it's been a long time since I've heard the phrase sick time or vacation time within the companies I've worked for, and then just in, you know, making verbal offers and offer letters going out. It seems like everyone has gone to this, you know, I think that it's a great idea. I don't see why we aren't all adopting this at this point from a cost, you know, efficient perspective, I do think that organizations tend to lose money if you will. But at the same time, research does show and anecdotal evidence does show that you're getting less last minute call outs because of PTO, right. So you really have to look at the advantages of it when we're talking about PTO and that's just making sure that your sick time, your vacation time are all paid time off and you use them how you want to use them. And that's one of those things you create rapport with your employees. They trust you, you trust them and they're going to use their time off correctly. And when they need to take time off there, they're going to use it you know you don't want people working when when something's going on right like if they have the day they need to take it. Let them take it show relax. I've also seen a lot of unlimited PTO right like I feel like that's starting to trend, which I feel takes us into perk number two that we're going to talk about, which is looking at perhaps a flex schedule and what that might be considered. Um, you know, and I feel like it goes right along with the PTO conversation is the flex of perhaps an early end or a half day starting later, especially so people don't have to hit the, the maniac traffic right like that that we experienced pre COVID and then during COVID so many of us, we didn't have to deal with traffic and so that's a great right. What do you see in this space. Unlimited PTO doesn't seem crazy. I remember when I heard about it a long time ago thinking like oh my goodness, you know that seems crazy but now especially with everyone working from home. You know, if you know I know with my staff they have PTO I got to be honest I don't even track it you know just let me know when you're going away and or when you need a day off and that's it you know they have a certain amount of PTO days but I literally don't track it I hope they're not watching. Okay, so then talk to us about that because what I hear you saying is it's a more of a focus on your output and the work getting done. Do you think that this works better for organize organizations that have a work platform like slack or base camp or something like that. How do you see this being administrated or am I just sharing my age. Oh, I don't know the answer to that question. I just don't know the answer to either of those questions. Well that's good about the age. But I mean do you see what I'm saying is like how do you as a business owner and how does a nonprofit as a as a nonprofit business owner if you will. How do they manage their teams with that unlimited PTO I mean how does that realistically get done I mean you're what are you saying. I think it goes back to really you know coordinating the times off as as Katie was saying you know earlier in the conversation about that personal time off like we have to share it in advance as much as possible to really prevent those last minute call outs of the day of and really coordinating right like making sure because for me I'm still very much flexible as much as I can be and the job has to get done the mission has to get the programs have to go on. So what does that look like and then how do we coordinate that I certainly know a lot of places are using those online platforms Julia like slack and base camp and whatnot to to just communicate you know what's what's going on and it might be that someone's left to pick up their child from school and they'll be right back you know like 45 minutes an hour tops whatever that looks like. That communication and it brings up for me transparency right transparency and trust we have to be honest about our work schedule who we are what we're doing and sharing something like hey I've got school pickup or I've got a personal doctors appointment. I think that's really important. Yeah, and just to piggyback on that I mean in the companies that I've worked for and how I run my team now I think if you implement the correct processes and procedures in your organization and make everybody want to work. And then you're going to get that accountability from everyone on your team now I know that that's an idealist view, but if we're talking about long term strategy and recruitment and retention, it's a great place to sort of pivot if you're not doing that directly. One thing that I do with my team and the last company I worked for as well is you do have to say when you are going to be out of the office or at a doctor's appointment so you know yes vacation basically the procedure is it goes on everybody's appointment so if Dana is taking off. She invites everyone so we know Dana is off if that's how I'm notified. But you know at the same time if Dana has a doctor's appointment. Dana's out of the office doctors appointment so you know she's not going to do that all the time because the entire staff is going to know that she's constantly taking appointments right so she picks and chooses when she is going to do that because she's going to be held accountable with her team if she's not going to be on the line. So that's how we do it and it seems to have worked so unlimited doesn't sound crazy to me. I'm a small shop, but I think that. Yeah, there's accountability within the truth of what you're doing with your day. No, I appreciate it so much and it really does take us to you know the output really looking the output and one thing you've shared with us Katie and I just want to acknowledge is what our staff is looking for and I feel like they start asking even in an interview process how can we be involved in the community how are we as a culture giving back to those that we are also serving so I feel like one of the perks that you're talking about here perk number three for those of you keeping up with the with the with the numbers opportunities at another nonprofit not the one where we're employed but another nonprofit. Are you seeing this is something that's I'm going to say like closing the deal you know. So I'm not seeing it a lot but I did touch on this the last time I was on the show VTO volunteer time off is essentially a thing and it could be a great way to incentivize your step incentivize your staff to work with other organizations to get them out of the office kind of get them away from the mundane work that they're typically doing and it's kind of exciting you know for you know two or three staff members to go to volunteer at one organization. It could be really fun and you know a team building sort of thing as well so again I'm not seeing it but I love this idea. You know I think it's just such a great way to train as well you know so often in the nonprofit sector we refer out to other nonprofits and a lot of times we do that without really knowing what they do maybe it's just anecdotal oh yeah they serve this population but when you can go to a site or a campus and you can see this work I think it's really smart I really really do and I mean we don't see it enough and I think when we were starting to see it then COVID happened all volunteerism basically in person you know came to a halt so yeah I think it's just such an interesting way to kind of also blend in personal development. Yeah I love that I love the idea of people doing events for other organizations because they can take their ideas back to their events team I feel like this season for me was so busy with events you know I think I went to like nine events between April and August or July which was crazy because I got to see how many of my clients were running events and how they were doing different auctions and golf outings and I felt like it was a super busy summer for me with that but I mean I got so many ideas from it so actually doing that and implementing that into your organization can be great for events for programs whatever it may be. I did want to just jump on you know I am in the New York New Jersey area so here we do have two really awesome organizations Jersey Cares as well as New York Cares and essentially what they do is they are a nonprofit themselves but they manage nonprofit organizations about volunteer calendars so essentially me as someone who wants to volunteer and I really want to volunteer kind of how my schedule allows I can pick and choose based on the weekends based on the borough where I want to volunteer and I pick what I want to do so that's a great way to kind of organize that and have someone put that you know put someone in your organization in charge of that and say hey you know whatever organization needs volunteers this Friday y'all can go it's not a big deal you know you can have an HR person or office manager manage that and that's really cool. I love that idea because events are still evolving because of COVID but one of the things that we're seeing is that sometimes they're not evolving enough folks are just going back to what they did pre pre COVID. And so which I think is a big mistake I think if we got it you know step it up here and do some different things. Yeah. So that's a really cool idea I love love love that you know you always see so many different things because of your work and this is one of the things that we started talking about which makes me want to immediately pack my bags and move to New York because tell us how you use this these free ticket concepts because you're a season ticket holder to two of the premier sports. Yeah, yeah so I love going to events and I love taking my clients to events I'm a big concert person I'm a big sporting events person I love fights so I actually have a partial package to Yankees the free Yankees tickets and I have a full package for Mets tickets. So I give them out to clients or I take my clients with me to the game so it's super cool. But it's a great way to you know motivate staff, you know, immediately right like someone did something really cool, you can't really give them a raise you can't really, you know, even talk about a performance review at that point so how can you on the spot reward them maybe giving them concert tickets or maybe there's like a wine festival or a food festival something like that. Let them choose what they want to do if someone really did something above and beyond. And if you are an nonprofit I understand obviously there's not room in the budget for things like this, but then tapping into your corporate partners and asking them for some sort of support or relationship and I'm sure that they would love to give you tickets they donate them for events. So checking that resource out is always a good idea. And I have to say, often the board members have access to these tickets right and so often they're you know, good point have corporate tickets I've seen this before and just reminding the board members hey, excuse me hey if you have any access to anything or are you yourself have an event coming up that we could invite, you know, some or extend the invitation. I think all of those are great perks and I really every time I've seen it implemented. The staff themselves have been so grateful because otherwise they wouldn't have access to this event or they wouldn't have access to attend whatever meeting or networking luncheon or what have you. And I just think that's fantastic. Most recently we did this at, it was a veterans luncheon, and the board member reached out and said do you have any veterans staff members. And we said, absolutely. And those were the individuals that got to go to the luncheon and it was just, it was really enjoyable, you know, hearing back from the staff themselves that they were so grateful. You know, I think the thing of it is, I hadn't thought of that Katie the the line between the board, because sometimes I think the board members just feel like all they get asked for is to open their checkbook. But you're right, Jared. I mean, the amount of personal, you know, subscriptions to cultural events to sporting events. Oh my gosh, all the way to corporate boxes. It's a box sweet. Yeah, and I mean I know from working with the Yankees I've had a relationship with them for a number of years now they do so much philanthropic work. So they, they're so great with the local schools up in the Bronx, they love to partner with organizations. I'm, I don't work for the Yankees, but you hit them up, they'll give you tickets. Well, we were talking about this in the green room, you know, major sports, they all have really gotten into this path of having foundations. And so this is a big thing for them and they are given blocks of tickets that they have to. What is it 80 to 90 home games in MLB alone? Can you imagine having to get out? It's 80 games. Yeah, they love to get them out. That's a lot. That's a lot to give out, right? Yeah. If you can kind of navigate that, I know that we're coming to the end of MLB, you know, of Major League Baseball, but we have NFL starting, we have NHL and then of course, you know, NBA starting. So yeah, especially weekday day games with baseball, you know, there's always seats there. It's really cool for staff to go. Yeah, it's a wonderful, wonderful thing. Well, I love this approach and I think that I liked what you said, Katie, about sometimes it's not the overall trajectory of somebody's career, but it's something really cool that they did that you want to quickly, you know, acknowledge and support and encourage. And so I love kind of linking this. Yeah, do it. It's it's immediate motivation or immediate reinforcement, I think is a really huge deal. One thing that I will say is, you know, when you look back at your career, you never really remember how much money you made from each year, right? But you do remember the cool experiences you had throughout. And you know, I always say, Dana and I have had a professional relationship since oh five at this point. And whenever we're together and we're with other people, we always talk about our first team party. That wasn't for the company. It was because we had hit a goal with the amount of temps that we had a time. This is literally in 2006. And our manager at the time was able to take everyone and their significant others to this really fancy restaurant. And we had the best time. It was super duper fun. We stayed out so late. The bill was ridiculous. Astronomical. Yeah, but we didn't we don't know because we weren't managers at the time. So it doesn't matter, but we still talk about it to this day that it was just such a great time. I have no idea how much money I made that year. You know, but Dana and I will forever remember that. And that experience, it means so very much. Thank you for sharing that I know that's always a really great opportunity. I want to sadly we're moving, you know, into our final time with you but I want us to talk about the fifth perk that you've brought up to us today Katie which is personal development shadowing of other leaders. And I have to say the only time I've had the option to do this is because I was going through a leadership program. And that was a requirement. Right. And so I've not seen this as a perk within the confines if you will of an employment situation only for a leadership track outside of the job. So, are you seeing this more and more this the shadowing of other leaders. I've seen it. I don't see it often. I think that we did speak about this the last time I was on as well about, you know, having employees in your organization and keeping them engaged with the organization and letting them try out different roles within the same organization. And doing that, I think that's a really cool experience, especially if you're talking about like recent college grads, doing that shadowing that's super fun, because you know you talked to recent college grads and you're they're like, I don't know I like finance I don't know I like fundraising like I don't know, you know, I really just like to put my head down and do that base work. So allowing them to figure out that way I think that that's really cool for PD. Yeah, I think it's a really good idea and I think it kind of fits into the concept of cross training, keeping people in. I think there's a lot of frustration when you are young and you're like, what is the projected track. And if you look around and you're like, there's no way I can move up in this organization. It's easier to start looking somewhere else and you started off with, you know, having a retention policy. Man, if we ever needed to be looking at that, how do we retain young talent, so that they'll grow with us and for us right. Yeah. And that's really this is really important. And I think having a mentorship program is something that could be really cool to for an organization, just having you know, more seasoned staff members are the certain ones on whatever sort of group or however you want to phrase it for the organization and then they can work with anyone that's, you know, within hired within the past six months and just sit down with them take them to lunch whatever it may be quarterly. Let them ask questions why do we do it that way and what are our fundraising goals etc I think that that's a really cool. Kind of like when you're going to high school and you have like a big sister or big brother when you're a freshman and, you know, and everyone else is a senior. Yeah, no, I love that and I think that's I think that's healthy for the organization. Okay, now we've got one last thing. And this is probably really one of those things that happens more towards the end of the year Q for when we start looking at gift cards. I know I've been on boards where the board members were asked to bring, you know, five gift cards from Target or another big box store to the next board meeting and then they were putting envelopes, you know, to staff and stuff like that. What do you see with this and is that something that's passé or is it still something that can move forward. I love this idea I love this idea, especially for organizations that have really big, you know, retail partners as we were talking about earlier, you know, like the Starbucks partners the target partners, you know, Duncan donuts all the things that you would potentially, you know, not even think of they can give $5 gift cards $10 gift cards, something so little goes goes a big, big way. No, I remember Julia. In fact, I mean, it was a while ago that I was, you know, working for this organization, but we had a great sponsorship with a local grocery store. And every single staff member, based off of where you were essentially in the org chart, got a certain denomination gift card for the grocery store. It was given to us in December. And it was wonderful because you know it really did help with those extra grocery purchases that happen usually along that time as well. And I just remember thinking that was such a great, you know, gift because it's certainly going to get used and it never sat in a drawer. And you generally when you go into that, you know, supermarket or whatever, you're spending more money, you're not generally spending to that amount. So it does cultivate another form of business I think for those partners, but I think that's a really important thing. And I think, you know, to go and solicit that or to navigate that is a really, really good thing. You need to start doing it now. Yeah. But I think, you know, to Katie's point, how do you have something that you can actually communicate gratitude and encouragement that can happen with that type of a gift card. It's really. Have a bunch of them on your desk. You can recognize someone right away that goes a huge, you know, a long way I should say the other thing that I wanted to say is ask your staff, you know, what, what, what do they want you know what works for what Sally doesn't always work for DOSA, you know, or whatever. So, you know, I don't think we touched upon it on the second slide but, you know, staggering your work day, you know, for my team, Dana starts later and she works later. Dana starts earlier she her day short and that her and day ends at four o'clock Dana works till about six so we kind of work within each other's schedule so doing that for the person who has four kids that are on four different baseball teams like how do we accommodate that person, you know, as opposed to the person that sings opera at night, or is the musician at night and would prefer to start her day at 11 or his day at 11 right. So, how can you accommodate within that is a big is a big way to so just asking. That's so needed but again like Katie you've come to us over the last four years with so much insight as to how the workforce is ever evolving. And we continue having these conversations retain it you know retaining our staff is so key and having these perks that you shared with us six perks. And if you joined us late that's okay you can go back and listen to the previous ones, but really great perks that you shared with us that shouldn't break the bank right they shouldn't cost an arm and a leg for this. But again, those of you that have joined us either by video or audio only, we have had the luxury of Miss Katie Warnock joining us today Katie is the CEO and the founder of staffing boutique. So grateful each and every month to have you are Dana joining us Katie to really continue this conversation as we continue to evolve day in and day out. Thanks for having you know it's a lot of fun and Katie like I said I feel like you're part of that crystal ball. We've got us information before maybe a lot of other things that we start sensing a change or things that we need to change. And in the nonprofit sector we are our people I mean that's that's where we have to really focus is who we bring to the table so that we can achieve our mission vision and values. I'm Julia Patrick CEO of the American nonprofit Academy been joined today by Jared Ransom the nonprofit nerd herself. She's my nonprofit nerd but she can be yours too. Hey, again we have amazing presenting sponsors they include Bloomerang American nonprofit Academy your part time controller nonprofit thought leader fundraising Academy at National University. Staffing boutique yay one of the very first sponsors that we had nonprofit nerd and nonprofit tech talk. These are the folks that join us day in and day out. And as Katie brings us these messages of where we need to be with our teams and our staff. It's really an amazing thing to see how it's changed and how it's evolved. But one thing that hasn't changed is our sign off and it goes like this. Remember to stay well so you can do well. All right ladies thanks so much.