 it to again thank you for being here. I can advance my slide that would be great. Our goal here at EVChat is to bring executive directors together. It doesn't have to be executive board members. Anybody who makes a decision bring us together to discuss how non-profit and NGOs use technology to advance your mission because it's all about the mission right. Hi again everybody. I'm Aretha Simons with TechSoup. If this is your first time meeting me I've worn many hats as I know many of you do with being a board of director, executive director, fundraiser, you name it the grant writer, the one who does everything just to make everything flow and so I appreciate you all being here. I want you to know for those of you who are new here today if you this is your first time visiting TechSoup we are much more than just a place that you can get some awesome hardware or software. We also have a great online community. I don't know if you've heard of TechSoup Connect. Make sure you go to the event page and check us out. There's so many other free workshops. We have peer learning opportunities, our blogs and webinars but you are really on a webinar. Amazing opportunity for us to connect with each other and then we have lots of courses. Most of them are free and some of them there are you know very little small amount that you need to pay to get all this great advice. One of them I want to talk about today is managing remote teams for your nonprofit managers and that's going to kind of tie in what we're going to talk about today with our strategic planning and the SWAT challenge but this is a six-week course is our 300 level course. We'll put the link in the chat box and this is a great way for you to get your team together, bring everybody together. It's limited to 50 people but what you'll learn in the six weeks is how to designate a digital ties workflow for your nonprofit because we are in digital era and it's going to keep going faster and going forward. Learn how to enhance your communication during this class, during this course, excuse me, you'll learn how to engage with your community or customers or your constituents. You'll learn how to host virtual conferences, fundraisers, events, workshop seminars which I know a lot of you are doing virtual fundraising events, how to budget for remote and manager team and then how to launch your team into action. So this is all a Microsoft Teams event. It's going to be great. It starts on May 26th. I was going to say March, we're past March. It starts May 26th and make sure you click on the link. If you don't get the link today then I'll be sending it through our follow-up. So just a few housekeeping, everybody please remain on mute. You are on mute but those of you don't want to be on video, I understand. Maybe you're eating lunch again, it's noon somewhere. If you would love to raise your hand, use the reaction button and click the raise your hand and then I'll ask you to unmute yourself. Otherwise continue to engage with each other in the chat room. You all shared some great information with each other. You were sharing tips and hey connect with me here on LinkedIn. So continue to do that. Again, this is all about you. ED Chat again is a space for us to connect. We want to learn more about you as you learn more about TechSoup and how technology can advance your mission. We are in this community together and I can't say this enough that this is all about you and we want you to invite other EDs to the conversation. Don't keep this good information to yourself. Invite other executive directors and buy other nonprofits. Become a featured nonprofit. Now I know when you sign up on the events page it says become a featured nonprofit. No, sometimes I want to invite you to be my co-host. So make sure you sign up for every ED Chat. Then I do want to know some of the topics that you would like to discuss. So do me a favor and type in the chat box some of the topics that you would like to discuss and that's also going to be on our survey. Please fill out our survey. This is going to help us help you as we go forward. Now today as I said we're going to be talking about the SWAT analysis. For those of you who've never done it you know in school or college it's just an acronym for your strength, your weakness, your opportunities and threats. So I'm going to break this down a little bit more. If you can, if you're able to get a piece of paper and pen and just write down all the strength of your organization. What do you think are the strength of your organization? You have a great board. Are they active? Is your mission vision strong? And then what are the weaknesses of your organization? You have issues with raising funds. You write down all of your weaknesses. And again I'm going to tell you how this is going to tie in a little later. And then the opportunities. Now that's external. Like what kind of support from donors that kind of you know make your organization grow and how you're reaching out and getting a touch with other constituents to help your organization. There are many opportunities that you may see that you could do but you just haven't done it. And then the threats. What are things that really could really hurt your organization? Again like funding could definitely be one. That could be a weakness, fundraising and then like a funding. But I want you to write down all your threats. So when we do that people say well what do we do this information? Well this is where your strategic plan comes in. This is how you'll then write down your goals and your goals are simply kind of your direction where you want to go. Write down who's going to tackle this goal, assign it to somebody and then the deadline. But look I'm not going to be doing all the talking today. I have some co-hosts with me today. We have some featured executive directors here with us today. We have Ben. Ben if you're here if you unmute yourself. And then we have Claudia Humphrey and we have Janine Bishop. Make sure you screenshot their information. I'll again share it with you after the chat today. But make sure you screenshot so you can get in touch with them because I promise you you're going to want to connect with them afterwards. So I'm going to start sharing my screen so we can come live and we'll start with Ben. Again I, it's been here today because I told you I'm having technical difficulties so I'm not able to see, now I'm able to see. Okay so Ben is not here yet. Well I'm going to talk about strength then. So I wanted to tap Ben to maybe have him share about the strength of this organization. So I was recently talking to a nonprofit and she said the strength of our organization is really with our board of directors. I mean they are so passionate about our organization and they really give everything. So I was like that is incredible but I wanted to ask Claudia if you would, oh Ben somebody said they see Ben. Ben would you unmute yourself? Oh hi Ben. How are you? Thank you. See that's the community sharing. Okay Ben can you tell me about your organization and what are the strengths of your organization? Sure yeah I'm sorry for being here late. So Disaster Accountability Project is an independent watchdog of disaster relief and humanitarian aid. It started after Hurricane Katrina as a way of improving both government and non-government actors in that space. We have a platform called Smart Response that curates localized how to help lists so that donors can find the organizations that are operating locally when disasters happen. Say three strengths would be one we have an amazing group of volunteers that we recruit mostly using volunteer match. Two we have an amazing board. Also many are recruited via volunteer match but I think largely they're amazing because we have a give get and they come to the organization knowing that they have to give and that's part of their involvement. And three through Smart Response we have an incredible network of local non-profits and NGOs around the world that are part of that and we have over 600 in that network and hopefully some of you that provide human services that you know are involved after disasters or could be involved after disasters we'll join that network. Okay and so what are the strengths of your organization? Yes what would you say the strengths of your organization? Well that we have an amazing network of non-profit partners now around the world that provide services after disasters. Wow incredible group of volunteers that provide most of our hands-on because I'm the only employee so all of our work has been really leveraged by volunteers and we have a strong board that is involved because I think largely in part because of our give get. Of your give get is that what you said? Right so every member of the board has to raise or donate five thousand dollars a year or some combination and when we implemented that it was like you know jumping off a cliff we lost half our board but we ended up recruiting many more members that were much more dedicated to the financial help of the organization. Wow that's powerful and so what I what I just heard you say with your your give get policy you were able to set a goal you were able to reach a fundraising goal you were able to do so many other things so that would that's awesome thank you for sharing that I appreciate that so give me give me in one second how what kind of technology do you use and how has TechSoup helped your organization? So we we use the AWS credits that's like no-brainer all of our web hosting for smart responses on AWS and I've written to them separately and asked them for additional credits every year and they've been very helpful so beyond what AWS provides through TechSoup Amazon web services AWS and you can get that through TechSoup Boost so you need to get Boost first for that we've used QuickBooks which has been very helpful through TechSoup and I'm sure there's more but it's a great I mean I don't know I hope hopefully everyone is utilizing TechSoup services I think Microsoft Word we utilize and I mean if someone from TechSoup look at my account they can correct me that's probably more thank you thank you Vashana we're grateful that you use these products because I'm sure they help you save money in the end yes well thank you and thank you for being my co-host Ben thank you all right so next I would like to invite Claudia Humphrey Claudia Claudia Humphrey she will be my next co-host Claudia would you introduce yourself and Claudia I would love if you would focus on your weaknesses so I'm going to not do strength for you I'm going to focus on your what are the weaknesses of your organization hi first of all thank you Aretha and TechSoup for allowing me to have this opportunity to speak today I really appreciate it I don't take it for granted the name of our organization we actually have two that we're working on that are nonprofits one is lift three support group and lift three is an acronym for leading individuals forward through tough times and it's a domestic violence organization helping victims of domestic violence what I see is our our weaknesses for our organization there several one is the ability to attract and pay for the best talent our budget has a certain limit of how much we can pay for staffing and we would certainly like to be able to pay more in order to be able to attract and retain that staff the second weakness that organization have is for our leadership wearing too many hats and that's a challenge that I'm sure a lot of other nonprofits are experiencing and then the third weakness that we have is our funding fall short of the mission critical task that we have and we are always trying to find funding seek funding that matches our mission but a lot of times with the competition with a lot of other challenges and issues it's difficult to find funding sometimes in order to be able to meet and to reach all of our mission critical tasks wow well you said a lot I'm sure a lot of nonprofits here can relate to what you're saying about your weaknesses I mean staff wearing multiple hats and then the lack of funding so what what what do you do I don't know how often you all get together what do you do to you know tackle when you have a lack of funding during time when you need to manage your project well that's a very good question thank you for asking our organization is actually in a revamp we are looking to take a step back and to look at our spot or our strength weaknesses and opportunities and restructure reorganize and come back stronger using the experience that we've had over the last 15 years or so to rebuild our organization so we're taking a step back right now in order to be able to do that wow you know that's powerful what you said you've been in existence for 15 years and so even those who have been around for a long time still have to stop and revamp and sometimes you know basically get it together and then restart or you know start on something new so I would appreciate you saying that that that's pretty heavy and I'm sure a lot of people can relate to what you're saying so thank you today for being my co-host I appreciate it absolutely thank you thank you so next I would like a Janine Bishop to come on and let us know Janine tell us about your organization and about um I'm going to do opportunities for you share opportunities for your organization great hi everybody thanks for being here thanks for this opportunity Aretha I am the executive director of the Alpine Humane Society in very far west Texas work kind of in that big blank space that's out in the western part of Texas there and I'm I'm actually involved in a lot of different organizations but I'm going to talk a little bit about our humane society this today because we found that opportunities sometimes come out of your weaknesses and your threats and last year kind of really pointed that up for us we work to encourage and ensure the best lives possible for companion animals out here and a part a real core part of our mission is you know promoting adopted adoptable animals and getting them into good homes and over the years we've discovered that because of the very rural nature of where we live there's just not enough adopters here so we've done things like develop a very very robust transport program where we're actually sending animals by ground or by plane to the Pacific Northwest Minnesota Michigan places like that and just you know saving well now it's hundreds of lives of cats and dogs by doing that other kinds of promotions locally that we do try to do we're taking our animals out into the community to the food truck parks things like that we have a category in our thrift store that we operate our thrift store supports our mission financially and we put a category there so you can come and sit down on the bench and play with the cat for an hour or whatever and get them adopted so we're doing a lot of things like that to get our animals out into the community we're also we realize there's a huge opportunity and a need for us to be an actual partner in the community through our thrift store we're able to provide affordable household needs things like that for people clothing housewares things like that we have a pet pantry there where we help people with emergency food if they can't afford their pet food and other opportunities that that help us be a part of the community are paying for spay neuter services either in full or in part vaccines for pets and our initiative this year is called pets and people together and it's all about making sure that people can keep their pets in their homes they don't have to surrender them because they can't afford something like getting them spayed or neutered or getting them the proper vaccinations or if their pet gets injured or whatever that they're able to pay for those things so those are all the opportunities that we saw that can be very important to our community and we know how important pets can be to people's health and well-being and so this is the type of thing that we're focusing on this year absolutely wow thank you for sharing that and one thing I picked up two things I picked up one you're in a rural area so very I know being in rural area can be hard but what I heard you say that you open up a thrift store I think a lot of nonprofits don't you know think about the opportunities they have to make a income from setting up the thrift store so that's great that's a great opportunity for you to you know bring in some income while you know you're having downtime or fundraising is low so that's great so I want to ask you Ben put in that he got his dog from death row in Texas I don't know what that means but I know he got a dog so thank you for sharing that Ben are you gonna say well I was gonna say and I'm happy to talk to anyone on the the call today who's interested in thrift stores because I did a very deep dive into ours when I came on board and really turned it from totally not profitable to extremely profitable except last year was a little bit of a challenge with the shutdowns and that kind of thing but I'm happy to help anybody with that kind of thing so yeah and you know the need out here as I said is so great we really have opportunities in seven counties out here but we really can only afford to work in about four of them please um they're saying share your information everybody share your information Claudia Ben my co-host stereo information engineer so what I want to do I want to I want to shift now and I want to open it up to everybody and and ask you what do you think some of your threats are to your organization because we all have them share with me some of your threats and if you could use the raise your hand option and if you want to share you know something other than your threat that's fine but use your raise your hand option and remember as I said a threat is basically you know maybe you have something in the community and the community is not interested in what you're doing and so you're not getting a lot of support it could be anything that you feel is is an external threat to your organization thank you for sharing your information Jeanine okay um let's see so I'm looking for the reaction in the reaction go to the reaction section and raise your hand and um RK how do you get to start with fundraising recently started okay somebody that went over there so I'll I'll reach out back out to the chat room I'll go back in there and swing back around to you all right so I'm going to start with April you can unmute yourself hi April tell us um where you're from and feel free to share yes um I am the director of household hope international and we work in four different countries helping victims of human trafficking girls as young as five years old um in some of the countries and we um our threats that we're having presently have to do with the political upheaval in the countries that we're working in and it's gotten almost impossible to say anything by a video um there's no means of communication where we can talk openly with the staff and the boots on the ground in the countries and um they have new cyber laws out that they can monitor all of your social media any type of communication so we've had to develop code words in order to discuss anything and only when we're seeing each other face to face like at our board meeting we had to you know we there were no minutes to certain parts of the board meeting because it's if they were in writing then the then the government of the one of the countries I work in would would be able to use that against us and so that's a really big threat that we're experiencing right now wow so what do you do about that that's heavy yeah well you know the needs are still there and the women and the girls still need the help and so we're trying to um operate within the law as much as we can in the different countries but the laws are getting wackier and wackier in one country in particular what I'm not going to name but um it's it's um presenting ever more challenges especially for the national director and the people on the ground I mean I I have a hard time saying I have to be real careful what I say and even when I'm in the United States and I'm fundraising I was speaking over the weekend and I can't say out loud on a meeting that might be recorded what's really happening so that's that's tough wow April thank you for what you do I mean sometimes you know um we never know what the nonprofits are doing and what you have to go through the shoulders you have to go through to do what you do so thank you for sharing that anybody else want to share today I saw another hand up um please you use the raise your hand button and you don't have to share your threats um Janie yeah feel free to come back in I was just going to say real quick um you know this may be true of some of the other organizations as well some of our biggest threats come from um misinformation and lack of um education on issues that surround our mission and um you know social media can be very difficult with that kind of thing too um and sometimes we see opportunities like for instance you know pitbulls don't always have the best reputation with people as pets uh and we had a valentine kissing booth with pitbulls and we had some people that came to see them and met them and petted them and it was the first time they'd ever touched a pitbull and they were so amazed and we changed the minds so a lot of times threats are people just not knowing better and you can make an opportunity out of that by um you know responding appropriately with information and education wow I love how you said you can make an opportunity out of your threats so if you don't write anything down write that down that is powerful thank you so much anybody else would like to share and all my co-hosts you can feel free to come back on feel free to come back on and share very powerful remember this is a challenge so this is a challenge for you to write down these things for yourself and then move forward to making a strategic plan write down the goals for your challenges how are you going to tackle your um threats and the opportunities and even your weakness and even your strength how how can you make them better and and who's going to do what and then make a timeline for it as well all right carol hi carol hi um our threat is we have term limits so losing using term limits on positions we're losing legacy to new members that don't understand the legacy we're 114 year old or women's organization and so when you limit a term limit for two years and then you're out of the position and off the board after five it's total volunteer you really are losing legacy to people who don't understand the legacy so trying to keep your legacy well we know we we have a dog lover yay smile it so i want you to come back on because i'm wondering um for your she stepped away but i'm wanting for everyone with the term limits do you or do you ever sit down and try to revise that amend that in your bylaws or you said your organization's like 100 years old but has anybody tried to amend the bylaws to change the term limits and anybody can't answer that because i know that that is a problem you get somebody who's in the groove and then they they're off the board go ahead carol we we did do our our bylaws change our bylaws but it's a very large board of volunteer women at a university and so it's very hard to we want to get people through we have 100 uh thousand members volunteer members of women so we want new ideas but just to maintain legacy is the most important thing to me is because we do scholarships at a university and so it's very but we're out we're our own 501c3 connected to the university so just legacy to me is everything or we wouldn't be alive today wow that's that's powerful that's that's something to write down so i somebody i'm going to go in the chat room i see a lot of great um joe says biggest threats are cyber security features to start with a single click that can be prevented with free or low-cost tool from syspo called umbrella um used to be called open dns the cloud checks the links that anyone clicks on to make sure it's not malicious and blocks a click if it's bad i love that thank you for sharing that we have lots of cloud services here um i mean excuse me antivirus uh software here so thank you for sharing that joe that is definitely um jay long starting an organization to help people aging out of foster care in the foster care to become expert in the industry they choose let me read let me read that again starting i don't know if this is a statement you're starting an organization to help people aging out of foster care of currently in foster care to become experts in the industry launching this week you go based in sacramento now planning on expanding soon so you definitely need to connect with all the eddies here um anybody is in that industry or in that area in that community i'll say with foster care make sure you reach out um james put his information up there get your brand up com and he's on ig as well so thank you for sharing that congratulations um you definitely need to continue to come back to eddy chat to connect with the executive directors you will learn a lot and then make the executive director emeritus to get around terms that's what jurid said so i don't know um if some some organizations can do that like if you're the founder sometimes you can say you're the president emeritus or something like that but for carol for organization you know it's 100 years old so i'm sure they have lots of history um jenny said we have the freedom under our bylaws to waive term limits when needed very good um ben says question for textu is the constant contact discount for renewing existence of members of constant contact or only for new first time customers so we'll have to find that out for you ben if somebody is here from textu that's in the back of the house you can answer that for ben i know we have constant contact too you guys there's so many like i said you have software or any you do use can you check with a textu before hi nicole hi yeah i see this question from ben and i'm not a hundred percent sure i'm actually i'm asking someone on our customer service team to get an answer but i don't believe it's just for renewing members i i don't think it's those restrictions whether you're renewing or new as long as you're a non-profit and those eligibility requirements um you should be good to go and i'll include those details in the chat box now thank you nicole appreciate that and natalie said what are the requirements and pros and cons in being a fiscal sponsor for a new organization i have my comments but i want to know if is anybody here a fiscal sponsor for other nonprofits if you are use the raise your hand button so you can share what natalie and i don't see any hands raised i'm gonna wait a few a few more seconds so a lot of times when you see those large grants um for for everybody in here let's use a government grant and they have to have um different programs underneath them and say that large organization i'm gonna say i'm gonna make up a name say aretha simons international aretha simons international does not do everything so i might pull ben's organization in i might pull claudia's organization i might pull janine's organization in but i'm the fiscal sponsor i handle all the money i might give ben ten thousand claudia uh ten thousand all janine ten thousand so i'm the fiscal sponsor for the organization or for all the organization so i manage all the money i do all the reporting but you all still report to me what you did with the money so so there there are other pros and cons there are other requirements um but i don't know is anybody here working under a fiscal sponsor so again that's something if you plan to do that you definitely need to know all the requirements of the funder who's giving the money what are their requirements because that's what's most important because that's the one who you have to report to because everybody who's an investor wants to return on their investment that's the one i definitely would find out who you're reporting to okay i'm gonna go in the chat room if i missed some chats earlier um i will we'll definitely reach out to you and answer and grace said our threat is being a virtual organization with me as the only cool time staff trying to create volunteer opportunities in the u.s when we work when our work is focused in south korea wow that is heavy that is heavy um there are several organizations well i'm gonna reach out to you grace type your information in the chat room and then we'll i'll circle back around because i there's an organization that i'll be talking to tonight that hosts in that deal with a lot of people in south korea so maybe that could be a connection for you thank you for sharing that elie the constant contact email if anybody have any questions comments feel free to raise your hand james see the harvest says i have 20 years of working with your population and currently work with college students connecting them with career mentors some are aged out i'm sure he's talking about the foster care system so thank you for sharing that james good thank you for sharing that um comment with natalie some of our robin says some of our auxiliary council for board members continue to support organizations thank you look i want you guys to come you don't need to hear me talk remember this edie chat is about you i don't want to be talking you guys can read in this chat room so raise your hand use the raise your hand some of my co-hosts come back on and co-host with me then claudia janine unmute yourself jump in here in this chat because everybody can read all of you guys are managing nonprofits you're you're wearing multiple hats so i know you can read jump back in here and share like you know for claudia you shared your weaknesses i i believe exactly what yeah so going forward when you start setting your strategic plan and by the way you guys you can do strategic plans you don't have to wait till the end of the year you can do in the middle of the year what what is your goal for moving forward claudia well one of the things that we did was to start with a SWAT analysis which was a real good strategic tool that we used to help us identify what task we need to focus on first and we started primarily with our weaknesses to identify what needs to be done who needs who do we have available that can do those tasks and then move forward based on a timeline that focuses primarily on the weaknesses and when we meet with our board that's how we identify the tasks by month that we were going to tackle the list actually was a pretty extensive list and we broke it out into different months of the different things that we were going to take a look at and it all again started with our SWAT analysis and trying to figure out what we needed to do moving forward and i think one of the the best things about the SWAT analysis is that it allowed us to go really deep into our organization and to really identify what our weaknesses were giving our board and our advisory council time and opportunity to just really explore without any inhibitions or anything of that nature we just dived really deeply into what we saw as a weakness and i think one of the the the good things about having a group or a team working on a SWAT analysis is that one person can feed off of another person off of another person's ideas thoughts concepts and ideas and that has been extremely beneficial for us to be able to to do it that way. I think also without having a SWAT analysis we would not have had the courage to do some of the things that we're doing right now like taking a full step back and the SWAT analysis helped us to make that decision that that was one of the best things that we could do for our organization at this particular time. Eli shared what analysis Lincoln I don't want to say you said something really powerful for everybody who's listening I know you're here representing your organization but Clota kept saying we we we so when you sit down with your organization let everybody else tell you what they think the weakness of your organization you may be surprised that they were even thinking that way or that they were even thinking this is the strength of your organization so it's good to do that. Janine and Ben feel free to come on and anybody else who has their hand up I know people have convened to talk in the chat room. Go ahead Janine. I was just going to back up just a little bit to the fiscal sponsorship issue as I said I'm involved with a couple of organizations and we did have an emergency emerging organization contact us about that and I found that really our CPA was a really best source of advice for us on that because there are tangles you can get yourself in not only with funders but with the IRS and your status and all of those things so I think it's not something to be taken lightly with the humane society our accountant actually recommended with some smaller organizations that wanted our help with that sort of thing so that their donors were getting the benefit of potential tax benefits from donations. He suggested that we look at it more as they are projects of our organization and then we're we're basically funding certain things that they do but we're not giving them money but when their donors donate to us we're able to earmark those donations give them a tax receipt and then help fund certain programs in in most cases like spay neuter and that kind of thing through our organization and that it's just it's a little cleaner it's a simple bookkeeping procedure and it doesn't get all tangled up into who's non-profit and who's 501c3 and all that. Wow that was a good one consider them as projects instead of partners especially if it's not going to be ongoing so that was good that was good yeah that was good and Ben did you want to add anything? Yeah um so both Lex Mundy and Thompson Reuters have really good pro bono law resources for non-profits they'll match you up with a big a big law firm that that is looking to to assist a non-profit so if you're interested in a fiscal sponsorship relationship you might have the 501c3 partner asked for a pro bono attorney to help draw up your relationship and any agreements or contracts so that everything is set straight and you know everything is in writing and and done proper. Nice nice nice I'm going to scroll back up because I missed some of the other topics that you all want to talk about. I see somebody in here from Orlando Florida why don't you come live with me I'm here in Orlando Florida executive directors coming in or exiting this topic is critical for organization success yes that's called a succession plan so that's definitely something we should talk about thank you for putting that in there Debbie difficult conversations with staff and collaborators that's something that we all have to deal with and that's something that we should definitely talk about maybe we'll do have somebody in here to talk about that again I said on our first ED chat if there's an area that you focus on or that you're an expert in let me know send me email send me email at webinar at TechSoup.org you can contact me on the events page I would love for you to co-host with me I don't want to be the one standing up here I'm talking all the time so become a co-host with me definitely let me know. Jared said that he would like board member training accountability and recruiting definitely something all nonprofits need to do make sure you all put this on your survey event management as in-person events come back we'd love some guidance on new trends and live events and auctions live events are definitely coming back people are saying they want to do a kind of a hybrid kind of a live and you know a zoom event as well some topics that Natalie said she'd like to discuss how to effectively find and assess the right managed IT service providers very good that's something you probably would want to find in your area but as you know TechSoup has a service department if you need guidance with installing some of your software we'll walk you through that whether requirements for okay we got the fiscal sponsor okay good lots of more comments come in the chat okay great you guys are we will definitely send the replay out of this video because I know there are lots of tips lots of things you may want to take back to your board we will also send the chat and you so you'll have everybody's information and if you want to make sure that you're great thank you Eli for putting that in there make sure you sign up for the next ED chat so I'm going to let my co-host give us some closing words I will start with Ben then we'll go to Janine and then we'll go to Claudia okay I'll put another pitch out for smart response I'm sure some of your organizations are involved in providing critical services after disasters and we've all seen that after events oftentimes the wrong organizations raise the most money you can think about what what those organizations might be but you know think about large events and which organizations raise the most and whether or not those funds actually reach the local nonprofits on the ground that are doing the work and so our goal is to curate localized lists in order to do that we need to know who is actually present and doing the work before disasters in communities around the country and around the world so so far about 600 organizations have self-registered on this platform from 58 countries and 26 US states and territories and we'd like to have as many organizations we're talking at least a couple thousand register and they share information it's almost like a common grant application worth of information so the moment something happens if you lose your power we can still do PR and try to get more people to know that your organization exists and support your organization directly not even through us or we don't even handle these funds the goal is to is to have accurate how to help lists for media and for donors so I'm sure some of these nonprofits on the call are in in you know do provide services in your communities after events large and small and we hope you will consider registering on smartresponse.org it's free and happy to answer questions at a later time thank you awesome that is great and much needed because the hurricanes hit here in Florida whoa so thank you Ben and thank you for being co-host with me today Janine you're welcome Janine just built a little bit on what Ben was saying there is a real trend some of you might not be aware of in animal rescue right now in actually partnering very actively with social services organizations which I'm sure many of you are because of that connection of animals pets and their value to people's mental health keeping people from feeling so isolated and that kind of thing and and so in disaster planning and in social services and all those things I think you'll find a lot of willing partners in humane organizations because we understand and you've seen that probably with the hurricanes you know there's a lot more emphasis now on shelters that will take in pets as well as you know families so people aren't leaving their pets behind things like that so you know if you're in social services give some thought to reaching out to some of your humane societies and rescue organizations and partnering with them on disaster planning and on you know sharing resources and referrals for people that may need help need help with their pets that sort of thing because we can be good partners thank you thank you I think for being a co-host today Janine Claudia hello hello I just thought I saw Ben's hand up again that's why I was hesitating a little bit okay no okay getting back to what I was saying a little bit ago about the spot analysis and how that particular process has really helped our organization just want to encourage people as they do their SWAT analysis to think differently when you're working on your SWAT analysis and then as you're thinking differently really be honest about what your strengths your weaknesses opportunities and threats are and then as you go through the process don't rush just take your time I believe that the SWAT analysis is not only going to save the work that we do in our community but it's going to help better position us to be able to help more victims of domestic violence as we move forward and as we begin to strategically figure out our next steps so I'm again grateful for Aretha and Tech Sue for hosting this room and this space and I believe that it's going to be extremely powerful for organizations as we take the opportunity to work on our strengths weaknesses and opportunities thank you thank you thank you Carol you have your hand up yeah I just I wear another hat also in the ED for a foundation that gives out grants and I would just like to remind people when you apply for grant make sure you fulfill that you really meet that requirement I got 90 grants as last applications this last cycle and 30 of them did not meet the requirements of our grant program their mission was didn't fit into our mission and it's very sad to me that people are wasting their time filling out a grant request and they're not fulfilling they're not even eligible and so I just would make that recommendation just really read the details yeah I say that all the time I used to be a grant right and so I know your pain I used to be a grant reviewer I know your pain yes thank you for sharing that sharing that hi April hi I just wanted to say that um in our organization we do the SWAT by country and we've done it in several of the countries two of two of the four countries I work in so far and in both cases it was an encouragement to the staff um you know the staff in the countries are from that country and they always see the lack of resources and they see the the lack of you know what they think they need to do their job and it's easy to get discouraged but in in the in both cases they were amazed at what strengths and what um you know what they could how they could pair an opportunity with a with a with you know it's just very interesting for them to find out how they could come around with for example in Honduras they the women had asked to take classes on cooking plates of food to learn how to make different types of plates of food that they could sell and the the staff said well we don't have the money to buy the ingredients we might could find I said well you know one of your strengths is that you're good communicators can you communicate with someone in the country who knows how to do that and they said oh yeah we could find somebody but we don't have the money to buy the ingredients and I said well you know we have these big events once a month you have the budget to buy food for those events so let's have the cooking class on the morning of the event so that you have the money to buy those ingredients and let's all eat something different everybody just helping them learn how to think globally or think in the way that's what makes you think you know is very very very encouraging to them because they thought well they would never be able to do it but with the resources they already had on hand they could and they've already started doing that and they've been encouraged by that so I think you can you can convince people to do the SWAT if they think it's going to help them be more productive with the same amount of resources they already have and I encourage you to do it in your organization if you haven't it takes a lot of work and many of our constituents are illiterate and so they can't fill out a survey independently we had to have people that would write very interesting answers so not not related to the question but it was awesome and I think you'll enjoy it thank you so much I appreciate you saying that Angela this is so sweet this was my first engagement with texting chat it's been very helpful she's looking forward to becoming more engaged in the future thank you and we want all of you to come back type in the chat room before you leave one thing what was one of your takeaways today one thing that you enjoyed about this conversation today and make sure that you do fill out the survey we definitely would love for you to go out and survey and tell us other things that you're interested in have been one thing what was your takeaway today type it in the chat room thank you if you can provide an event on grant writing it will be a great help we're struggling in that area thank you we definitely do that in fact there is a go to the events page events dot text dot org there's a grant session coming up and there are many grant sessions coming up and there's one actually uh June 8th and June 15 um Linda felt courage and it's going by so fast now you guys this is great courage and commitment everybody um for their organization of work yes yes one takeaway we're all in it together so true Lorna says it's reassuring to hear other solo staff members or eddies have the same issues I do we are not alone that is so true Lorna rose angela says more opportunity make an opportunity of a threat I love that make an opportunity of a threat that is powerful our case says one thing I took away for all the resources and networking yes this is all about you this is a place you've come in network it was interesting to hear jeannie says from organizations who work globally who face very different challenges so true jeannie I learn a lot every time they come on um carole says how important that every board member participate in the swap so true make sure you don't do this alone I appreciate the sharing and attitude of openness that's what edie chat is all about remember this is all about you I love your comments um grant writer grant writer are you really a grant writer you need to come on here and talk about grants well where have you been um grant writers successful professional grant writer for the last 20 years they put their contact information and their phone number so it's somebody you can reach out what I need you to come live okay I need you to come live next time on edie chat okay inbox me um I think this is leanie I love the way you spell your name love the encouragement on using our weakness and breath into our strength and opportunities would appreciate more grant tips that is a big one that is a big one encourage board to not work against executive directors powerful um claudia swats are great strategic management tools so true awesome uh dad says uh she's also a pro grant writer next time what I I told you guys you all wear different hats I need you to come on board thank you for putting that together um Eli thank you for dropping that in the chat room you put how to do a strategic plan or how to do a strategic non-profit swat analysis in the chat room but I want to thank everybody again for being here with us today we can't do this without you and it's really about you so make sure you continue to come back make sure you while you're taking care of the community make sure you take care of yourselves please and drink your water I'll see you next time on edie chat bye everybody