 Welcome to the nonprofit show. We are so glad that you're starting your week with us here. Today we have Renee Lovecraft joining us, virtual assistant operations strategist. She is bringing to us a conversation that I honestly do not think we have even scratched the surface on and it is the value of virtual assistance. And she's gonna share with us if this is really something that can help our nonprofits. So stay with us because Renee's got some great insight to share, but before we ask her to share about this, we want to remind all of you who we are if we haven't had the chance to meet you yet. Yes, Julia, say hello, that is Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, and I'm Jarrett Ransom, your nonprofit nerd and CEO of the Raven Group. We are so very honored because every single day, every single month, and mostly every single year, we have had the support from these amazing partners. So shout out of gratitude to our friends at the Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, nonprofit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University, 180 management group, your part-time controller, staffing boutique, JMT consulting, nonprofit nerd, as well as nonprofit tech talk. These are the companies, Julia. Again, most of them have been with us from the very beginning. We're adding on a few more and it's just been a wonderful journey. Together, they have helped us to produce nearly 1,000 episodes. We just hit our 500 milestone in podcast platform. So here's where you can listen to all of those previous conversations in case you are just joining us here for the show. So go ahead and download that app. You can scan the QR code right here, right now in front of you, and you can still find us on streaming broadcast as well as podcast platforms. All right, Renee, that is the housekeeping. Thrilled to have you here. We call it the hot seat, but truthfully, we can't really turn it up anymore. So Renee Lovecraft, virtual assistant, operation strategist, welcome, Renee. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. You know, Renee, I love your logo because of the octopus and all the swirling arms. There's a lot going on, but they all work in harmony and they get the job done. Absolutely. That's a great logo. Thank you so much. It really, really is. Talk to us about, before we get into how a virtual assistant works, what's your methodology? And do you work off of Zoom? Do you travel to and from organizations? How does this actually work? Yeah, that's actually a really phenomenal question. So I primarily work off of Zoom, email and text message. I like that kind of personal touch of being able to communicate quickly via text message, also being able to like actually see the people I'm working with via Zoom and then have the organization of being able to refer back to email conversations. I also have just recently in the last couple of years started traveling to clients, whether that be for strategy days, event support, really being able to best support my clients in kind of whatever problem we're pushing up against and we work together to find the best way to work through that. I love it. Yeah, I just think that's fantastic. And I also wanna share, Renee is very special to me because she's also my VA. And so I've leaned into this concept. At first I thought there is no way I can afford a VA. There's no way that I can hand over these projects to a VA or honestly anyone. And I remember when we first started working together and it was probably the summer. So I don't know, June, May, June. After the first conversation, I was like, there is so much weight released, lifted like gone. It just poof overnight literally. And I just sit here to do something with this, right? Interesting. Yeah, it was phenomenal. So Renee, I would love for you to nerd out with us because I asked you to come here honestly so you could share how nonprofits, busy CEOs, leaders can lean into a virtual assistant. So talk to us really about bringing that creative problem solving because I've seen it in the works but how can you bring this creative problem solving truly to an organization that you are just beginning with? Yeah, absolutely. This is one of my favorite things about being a virtual assistant is being able to creatively problem solve because I've worked in so many different businesses. I've gotten the chance to see what works and doesn't work in a ton of different instances. So when I'm meeting with a CEO or a board or an organization for the first time, one of the first things I'm asking them is what's currently stressing you out right now? What are you anxious about? What do you guys hate talking about because you're not moving the needle on? Now I can take all this years of experience from so many different organizations and go, okay, well, let's brainstorm because I've got some ideas right off the top that may be able to solve your problems and let's talk about maybe what those look like and how much time we wanna put into each of those to determine is this going to be the correct solution for the problem or the stressor that your organization or you as a CEO are running into currently? You know, that's fascinating to me because my first thought is I don't have time to bring somebody up. I don't have time to get somebody fortified with the knowledge of how and what we're doing. So I really appreciate you saying, no, you already come to the table with that because of your wide range of experiences. But let's kind of get down and dirty on the next piece of this. And that is what is the cost effectiveness? I mean, just from Jared saying, oh my gosh, the weight of the world's taken off her shoulders, which frees her up, which is a value to how do you navigate this? Is it an hourly rate? Is it a contract? Is it a project? Is it? Yeah. Do y'all be above? This is something that is one of the most common questions that I run into when someone is even considering a virtual assistant. And there's so many different ways to work with virtual assistants. So for example, you could absolutely have an hourly rate. Typically when someone has an hourly rate, they're going to share what that hourly rate is and they're going to give you a retainer pricing. So let's say for example, your VA's hourly rate is $50 an hour and they want to bill at least five hours at a time and then they track their time against that retainer. That way, one, you get a good idea of how long specific tasks are taking your assistant. But also, you're able to have a really strict budget of, hey, this is what we can afford once a month. Maybe this is what we can afford once a quarter. You really can work with your board and kind of work backwards with what your budget is. Some virtual assistants will do more of a like subscription monthly pricing saying, hey, I am available to you either this many hours a week or for these specific tasks for a specific amount per month, per quarter, so on and so forth. What I really like to do is one, get an idea of what range my client is interested in or what is available for them and then work backwards for either, hey, this is the amount of time that I feel comfortable exchanging for this rate or let's take care of maybe these tasks that reoccur regularly. So let's say your client runs a podcast for their nonprofit, maybe that goes, oh, for this much per month, we can do the editing and be on and available should something happen during the show, things like that. So it's really a great conversation to have and you can have a huge range of budget from $100 a month to a couple of thousand dollars a month and really build what you need with the person you're working with. Yeah, and Renee, talk to us about, because I know you've done this to me, like we've said, I want this many hours and it's a big bundle and then I'm scaling back and I really just wanna take my foot off the gas and I wanna go back down to a smaller package. Talk to us about how a virtual assistant in particular you have worked with, again, I'm thinking all busy professionals but as we think about the nonprofit space, there's busier seasons, there's slower seasons. So how can we flex and scale? This is wonderful. So what I find is the more flexible I'm able to be, the more it's going to really, really help my clients that are, like you said, in a season of their lives where they need to slow down or there's other things going on for them. And because in our agreements, we already write in what type of lead up we need to be able to be flexible with hours, costs, any type of scalability really, I'm able to go, okay, well communicate with me because if we're going from, hey, we're working together for 20 hours a week to, I don't really know if I'm gonna need any support for the next three months, I'm able to go, okay, fantastic. I now can really think through what I need to do for my business to make that work without everyone stressing about money, right? Cause I know that's a big thing for not only, you know, nonprofits and organizations, but for the businesses that they're working with. And I can go, okay, fantastic. So we're ramping down, this is what you can expect from me as we ramp down. I'm going to work to either fill that hole in my own business or hopefully your virtual assistant is seasoned enough that they already have that cushion. So they're not having to go fill a spot that maybe has been left. And so then when you're ready, whether it's your busy season has picked up again, you're in a space to be ready to, you know, either take on more projects to share more projects, your virtual assistant already has that flexibility built in to go, well, great, I loved working with you. So I was waiting for you to be ready to jump back in. So let me follow up on that. And this is somewhat, maybe a curve ball, but how much of your business is like crisis oriented where somebody gets to the point where they're just like, you know, they can't deal with it. And it's like, hurry up, help me solve these, these emergency problems versus more strategic. I mean, I know what is better, but I'm wondering what's more real. Yeah. Well, we run into, I want to say maybe 20% of our business is I need help with something right this moment because it's urgent. And that could be anything from my scheduling software is freaking out. I know Jared and I are working through that right now. It could be my, you know, the client of my client needs a proposal right then and there or they need something right this moment. And because, you know, as you're running your business, you're really used to, okay, there's going to be, you know, 20% at any given time that needs me to drop what I'm doing to pick up something that's really urgent. That's kind of built into at least my schedule, right? Where I'm going, okay, maybe 70% of my day is planned, but that's really flexible because I know there's a good chance something is gonna pop up, especially cause we know tech doesn't always do what we need it to or what we're expecting of it. We know that people run into crises all the time. And a lot of times when you're working with a virtual assistant, they have this huge background and knowing how to do a lot of bit of everything that they're a good resource when something's not working the way it's supposed to. Interesting. I want to talk about the elephant in the room or at least I think it's the elephant in the room because I have multiple times suggested virtual assistants to busy CEOs. You know, I even step in as interim work, you know, in certain scenarios where I see there's so much administrative work that needs to get done and hardly any, you know, some C-suite person at the time to do it. So do you need to be in the office with them? Like, do you kind of like, you know, back in the day we used to call this an executive assistant. Is that the role you're filling Renee? And if so, do you really need to be on campus or could you, you know, do work for someone in Washington or someone in Florida? Yeah, so I find that I can work with people all over the country, not having to be in the office, not having to be, you know, where you can throw your head out of the office and go, hey, Renee, can you come here for a second? And the reason that we can really do this is because we've got the processes set and in place. So something that I really like to do that I encourage to any virtual assistant I meet is regular Zoom check-in calls. Okay, what's working, what's not working? What are you stressed about? Let's see each other's faces because now we're real and we're not just like a name that you see over text message or email. And that helps to keep that connection really strong. And then like I was saying at the beginning, making sure that there are ways that are already built in for the executive, the team, the nonprofit, to be able to easily and quickly communicate. Cause that's what a lot of executives are missing when they don't have someone in the office is how do I quickly communicate and have someone acknowledge that I have communicated with them and what I need is a top priority. And so for me, that's text message that can also be email for a lot of people that might be Slack, that might be Microsoft Teams. A lot of times we're trying to make sure that we're setting ourselves up for success so that our executives aren't feeling stressed that there isn't someone that they can physically see in the office. Interesting. Well, when I think of the nonprofit space and we've talked about this, you know for a long time, Julia, is we really pride ourselves on being a skeleton staff, right, a skeleton crew. We do so much with so very little. So bringing in a VA, whether it's, you know truly for that kind of like executive assistant responsibility or to really be the main support to the CEO, there's so many ways a VA can take projects off of plates. Talk to us about, you know, research and data analytics cause that is not something that I would think, you know what, I'm hire a VA because I want them to do this research and data analysis. Well, this is where I'm absolutely gonna nerd out with you. Yeah, please do, you gotta push up the glasses. Yes, well, cause this is a space where not only has a lot of virtual assistants been in positions inside and outside of nonprofits where they're actively gathering data and they're going to give you a, hey, this would be the best way to gather this information. These are the, you know, how I typically research or these are the tools that I've found that really make for great research. So we're actually using like top tier information, but then I don't think I've ever met a virtual assistant that doesn't love a spreadsheet, just period. And so there's a lot of times where when I'm coming into a situation and I'm going, okay, great, well either you already have really amazing data or we need a plan to gather data and maybe that's from your donors, maybe that's from the people that you're supporting in your nonprofit, maybe that's we're researching and that could be going down to the library, that could be using different online platforms. And now we're gonna have a conversation and it could be a very in-depth conversation about what's the end goal of the analytics that we're performing, because that's really gonna change how I'm looking at this data and how I am organizing it for you to best understand what we're looking at and to manipulate how you're looking at it so you're getting all the information you need. And maybe then that's something that rolls into great, well now we're creating a report because the board needs to be able to see this in different ways. Maybe that's okay, well now we're gonna roll this into a slide deck because this is gonna be really important for us to show at a conference. And so there's a lot of different ways that one, this cost-effective research and analytics can then also roll into being really supportive in other areas of the organization. Right, I think that's one of the things that is oftentimes the missing link. And Jared and I talk about this a lot with a wide variety of guests. And that is, you can have a lot of data but if you don't know how to manage it and communicate it and share it out then it's just gobbledygook and it can, it doesn't help you with whatever strategic needs you have. Sometimes you don't even know what you don't know and until you get that data presented in a way that allows you to have these conversations. And so I would have never really gone there with the virtual assistant. Jared, have you started to see this in your own practice? I have, yeah, 100% and what I love to in particular working with Renee is she does bring the outside perspective of so many different organizations, right? And it's really saying, here's my problem. I have no idea what to do but I know that this is the end goal that I'm looking for. And an experienced VA like Renee and others they'll say, let's consider X, Y and Z. They really learn like your tone, your style and everything in that space. I know we don't have too much time, Renee but I wanna ask you about event coordination support because as we look to get back to events, IRL, Julia, in real life, this is a heavy weight on so many organizations. Often we lean on volunteers that may or may not show up. So what kind of event coordination support might we consider with a VA? And I'd love to know like, what is it that you offer? Yeah, absolutely. So when I consider event coordination and support I think of things from the very beginning like marketing, organizing volunteers, getting people RSVP'd, making sure that that end user experience is really high level so that we're already thinking about what questions might someone attending this event ask? What needs might they run into? Even if it's something that might seem really simple to us it may not seem really simple to the end user. And so we wanna make that as easy and seamless as possible. And so because a lot of times as a virtual assistant we're outside the organization we're really able to put ourselves in the mindset of who that end user is and get really deep into what information do they need? How might they want to be talked to when we're marketing? How, what kind of experience are we wanting them to have? But then when we're getting much closer to the event when we're talking things like, okay, well we need caterers. We need to rent tables and chairs. We need to make sure that there is either volunteers or someone that's part of the organization that is on hand when it comes to decorating because there's always gonna be questions and we need someone at a high level that can answer those and make decisions and make sure that things are in, staying the way that they're supposed to stay. But then I'm in a part of my business where I love getting to travel and go, okay, well now I'm here to make sure that, if a volunteer doesn't show up, well guess what, I know how to do all of the things because we've been working together to put this together. And so I can step into any role that might need to be filled because volunteers are super, super important in the nonprofit world, but we wanna make sure that there's someone who also knows what's going on at a very high level to step in at any point, especially when there's a good chance that the board, the C suite of nonprofits are busy in a lot of other areas preparing for this event. And so we wanna make sure that there's really someone that can make sure that we're putting the love and energy into this event at the same level of the C suite and the board. It's interesting because I agree, I think as Jarrett mentioned, we're coming back now into the season of Gallas and fundraising. We've lost a lot of that leadership and those volunteers. And the experience of what the donor patrons or even new acquisitions to a nonprofit, it's all different, right? They're not doing the same old, same old. So I think that that's an opportunity to do new and different things and not just dust off what we've always done. And I kinda like the idea of having that outside voice come in with fresh eyes and maybe even a fresh community perspective. We all tend to know what every resort serves. Oh, get the chicken at this hotel, but not at that hotel, kind of, it's awful. And so then we just, we don't have these really interesting events. We just kind of have the call of donors. And so that's not good, nor is it really ultimately sustainable. Renee, this is great. I never dreamt in a million years that the conversation of virtual assistant would cover so many avenues. And that's really cool. I really appreciate you educating me and I love that Jarrett would be so bold to communicate that she's in this process with you. I think that's super, super cool. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. This was such an interesting conversation. I really appreciate it. Yeah, one of the things I wanna add, and I'll be quick, is I love really that Jack of all trades, Jane of all trades, because there's been so many things as we advance in technology, we advance in integrations and systems and building in AI, right? It's like, I myself don't know all the intricacies of all the systems and the platforms, nor do I really wanna take the time to dive deep into it. And so when I can say, look, this isn't working and I can't even tell you why it's not working, but I know that I need to improve it and then have someone like Renee say, great, I'll get back to you next week with some solutions and then boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Here's what I suggest and it's like, sure, here's the keys to the castle, do it. Yeah, it's very interesting. And I think it's a smart way to go because we can't always hire a new body or a full-time employee out of a problem, out of our own problems, right? So I think this has been amazing. Renee Lovecraft, virtual assistant operations strategist, check out Lovecraftva.com and you can learn more about Renee and her team and how Lovecraft virtual assistants actually works. It's super interesting and I think it's just part and parcel to all of these external ways we can be successful. That we've kind of, for a profit or nonprofit, we haven't really looked at before, right? And so this has been really a cool conversation and probably the best way to start a Monday. Right, it is. I think there's so many opportunities to engage a VA and yeah, why not start talking about it today? I love it. Well, everybody, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, been joined today by the nonprofit nerder, self-jared R. Ransom and an intrepid and enthused VA client, I must say. So that's cool. That's cool to have you in on this conversation today, Jarrett, to kind of voice what the real experience looks like. Scary, Julia, because she might get too busy that she doesn't have time for me. Never. Nope. Wow. I was like, oh my gosh, she's gonna be so booked up that she's gonna. Oh my God. That's when you know you sold your soul to the devil, Jarrett. I'm just saying. Right, I know. I was saying, oh Lord, well, hey, you know, who hasn't sold their souls to the devil yet are our presenting sponsors. Although sometimes we look like the devil incarnate after doing almost a thousand shows, but our amazing presenting sponsors are Blumerain, American Nonprofit Academy, nonprofit thought leader, staffing boutique, your part-time controller, 180 management group, fundraising academy at National University, JMT consulting, nonprofit nerd and nonprofit tech talk. These folks join us day in and day out from around the country and they really help our nonprofit sector flourish and really embrace this new time in fundraising and client stewardship. Hey, Jarrett, sign us off today. Why don't you? Well, hey, thanks for joining us today for this money, as I like to call it, because Friday gets all the fun, Friday. But thank you for being here. Thanks for joining us, Renee. I personally wanna say thank you because I know you said yes without like any questions and you're exuberant about it in a little bit of a last minute. So I appreciate your commitment to this. And for all of you that joined us today, come back and join us back, come back and join us tomorrow. But before that, we wanna sign off with these same words and these words are to please stay well so you can do well. Thanks everyone. Thank you, Renee.