 Welcome, and thank you for joining us for another amazing episode of the nonprofit show. It is Friday Eve, as I like to call it for Thursday and today we have Al Spector, President and CEO of Strat Dev Tech. I hope I said that right. In fact, we actually use the full name Strategic Development Technologies, our URL at Strat Dev Tech. And sometimes we throw around a little shorty for our name. Oh my gosh. Strategic Development Technologies. Strategic Development Technology talking to us about broadcasting your nonprofit fundraising events. And if you don't know us, Julia Patrick is typically right by my side, but she does have today off. Julia is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I'm Jarrett Ransom, also known as the Nonprofit Nerd and CEO of the Raven Group. We would not be here broadcasting almost 400 episodes now coming up on our 400 soon without the investment and the continued support of our presenting sponsors. So please do check out these companies. I always like to say that they exist for your purpose. They are here to help drive your mission driven goals forward. They're here to help you solve your community's problems, challenges and provide those solutions. So please do, please do check them out. And again, thrilled to have with me today, President and CEO, Mr. Al Spector. Thanks, Jarrett. You're always so gracious. Really appreciate your welcome and it's really fabulous to be here. Good. Well, why don't we start first of all, and Matthew joins you typically, but we want to congratulate him today for a whole new family life with him. But tell us about Strategic Development Technologies. Who are you? When did this start? What do you do? What is the service product that you help to deliver the sector? Sure, we glad to. It's kind of a fun little story. I'll start with Matt, my partner in this. He's a seasoned development director with considerable experience in data systems and technology solutions that have brought him quite a bit of success in fundraising. So he's wearing two hats. He's a fundraiser first and foremost, but he's a technology expert himself. And Matt, he's got a master's from Berkeley in policy, and he's raised some considerable funds in a series of nonprofits. So about me, well, I've got a history that actually goes back to a lot of corporate posts. But in 2007, I formed a nonprofit and to serve the blind and vision-impaired community in some sports acts this year in the Bay Area. And that started my road in the nonprofit and social impact community. So I've been doing a, I did the majority of the fundraising for that organization about 11 years. And I was at the helm. I've sit on the boards of a couple of others. And along the way, I've been advising nonprofits in strategic planning, in structure, in operations, financial control. Well, at one point, Matt and I, who sit together on the board of an organization here in the East Bay, and we saw during the pandemic the need to help nonprofits with their fundraising, and particularly by helping them embrace the latest technologies because there's quite a bit of leverage there, if you can, you know, if you can grab on to it. So that's how it started. We formed strategic development technologies back in April. But Matt's history of producing live broadcast goes back, you know, quite a ways now. I think he's had 15 or 20 productions. And so we've now teamed up and we've had, you know, a few productions lately. They've been they've been really marvelous to be to be part of. What a time to start this business, especially right when COVID shut down the pandemic, you know, it's taking place, events kind of went to a screeching halt, and everyone really needed to learn and understand how maybe to connect with their audience, their constituency base through a new modality. So what you and Matthew have done is fantastic. Which leads me to this first question here, Al, our digital broadcast for our events. Are they here to stay? Are they a fleeting thought? So essentially, are these temporary? Are they permanent? You know, that's a great question. And I'm going to answer it in two ways. The first is, if you look at the question simply is, did the broadcast evaporate once it's over, you know, or and the answer to that one, you know, an easier question answer. Well, no, we record them and, you know, in fact, rebroadcasting, whatever it is your events are, that's a very important fundraising tool. I apologize. There's a little noise here, right? We're on location and it's for real live on set. That's what happened. So the answer to the first part is to the first way to look at the question, no, they don't evaporate. They're recorded. And we've seen considerable funds come in from folks watching the rebroadcast with the ability to donate right there online during the rebroadcast. But I think maybe a more intriguing question is, is this a passing fad? Are we going to have broadcasts only so long as we need them? And then we'll all go back to galas and fun runs and, you know, and anything, you know, and meeting in person to as the focal point of some of our fundraising. Well, I think that the answer in that lies in that the pandemic actually caused quite a bit of change and real structural change, I think, for us relative to who's on the who's on the web, who uses it, the range of activities. So it's no longer sort of young, millennial, but the baby boomers, you know, and then people, you know, beyond older than the baby boomers who are comfortable doing all kinds of things on the web, particularly buying things, particularly, you know, paying for things. And so it lends itself perfectly to making donations online. So I think that there was quite a bit of an acceleration, you know, during the pandemic. So I don't think it's going away. The, let's see, here's an important point about this as well. The cost of fundraising is really, really brought down in virtual events versus the cost of holding a big gala. And like any, in any businesses, for-profit, non-profit, that cost avoidance is a big driver. So when it's, you know, becomes clear and pop, you know, and well understood that the yield and the net proceeds from digital fundraising are much, much higher. I think that's going to be a big driver that's going to, you know, cause digital broadcasting and using the web in this way to stay. So one of the things I'd asked you previously, Al, is about this hybrid approach, right? So what is your take on the hybrid? Is that something that you're really advocating for? Are you saying, you know, we're not really talking about hybrid. We're calling it this broadcasting. Another thing that we've seen is now many of our constituency base has maybe relocated to another part of the nation. And so they want to stay engaged in our community. But are you still calling this hybrid or how, how do you and Matthew approach that? That's a great question, Jared. We actually don't use the term hybrid very often, but we prefer to use tandem. And the fact then there's a reason for that. And the tandem suggests that, yes, there's a, well, this is when you're going to have a live event and you're also going to have an online audience connected to that event somehow. We just did one of these. It was a bike ride for about 120 cyclists, a lot of them, over half of them, disabled cyclists, and especially adaptive cycles. And what we were, what we did was we wanted the online experience to be equally engaging as if you were there. And so we had about half of the hour of broadcasting being some live tape that we took that morning during the event, but also some historical tape and a real entertaining 30 minute or engaging, entertaining and engaging 30 minutes. And then we cut over live to the event and streamed live. And so that was a tandem in the tandem, again, suggesting that a rich experience for the online participant and a rich experience for those in person. And so that's that's how we're viewing what's going forward is always an opportunity to hook to connect a broadcast to to a live event going on. But not just an iPhone in the corner on a tripod and just let it run. We're we're pretty much dead against that. I think we've all witnessed that, you know, and it's like, oh, this is not a broadcast. This is a, I don't know, just a bare minimum attempt at opening those digital doors, as we call them here at the nonprofit show. But I like your answer and it was really kind of a two part answer out to, you know, yes, you can archive your your digital broadcast so that they can be watched again. And yes, we also believe that they are here to stay. So if they are here to stay, can you share with us? Or will you please share with us? Some best practices for really enhancing our strong broadcasts. One of the things I've noticed, Al, is that so many of the nation has become comfortable with having, you know, some kind of a video conference meeting. And so we've adapted to that level of familiarity. And now we're taking it almost to that next step, right? So we've made some baby steps. We've advanced from crawling to walking. And now we're really looking at, OK, where can we level up even further? So what are some of these best practices that you can provide to us to really make a strong broadcast? Sure. You know, at the outset of this, this particular topic, I think it's important to realize what your goal is. And the goal is not just broadcast for broadcast sake, but it's to create a highly engaging experience and an event that's going to, you know, resonate. And then hopefully you'll have returned the viewers. So you want that you want to have a strategy to make that happen. And what you remember, what you're after, too, is this is a fundraising function. So it's not just to have your broadcast standalone, certainly not to have it evaporate, but it's to connect it with the rest of what you do. So I'm doing some of that. Some of that that strategizing is important. I think it was Brian Greenwald, I think the other day mentioned. He talks about tech discovery and, you know, and doing some, you know, strategic planning, some assessment about what you've got, where you're going and the tools that you'll need to do that and the kind of events that you're going to want to you're going to want to broadcast to do that. So so as a strategic, you know, you know, thought at the beginning. OK, so let's go down into the into the weeds a little bit about broadcasting. And an important point is the meeting applications and webinar applications that are out there, they're fantastic. They, you know, they had tremendous boons for for, you know, the best known of them during the pandemic. But those aren't broadcasting technologies. And so it's and all of this, I hope I make this clear, is shockingly affordable. The the cost of these technologies is extremely low. So even the broadcasting technologies that we use, they're no they're in the same range as, you know, you're these the meeting and webinar platforms. It's just that they have functionality that you want for broadcasting. You want to have things like multiple camera angles, you know, and so you don't want the, you know, to have that that that iPhone in the corner, you know, kind of staleness to it, you know, and have that set in quickly. The next thing is I'll just write off a couple of things that that we've that we practice that that seem to enhance the quality of the broadcast. Don't neglect the quality of your audio. And case in point, I'm using a some wireless mic technology right now. And, you know, we think that that in our experience has been that bringing up the quality of the audio is extremely important. We're in the discussion about streaming a small symphony and putting that online and the audio is central to that. So, you know, and it's really cheap to up the audio with the dedicated mics and and like. So there's something to to to remember. We're striding about accessibility. This is strong broadcast now. OK, so it's creativity, multiple camera angles, good audio. Accessibility is very important to us, particularly with some of the nonprofits that we support. Close captioning, a telephone dial-in option for the vision impaired. So those things are really, really important. You want to make it easy for people to, first of all, find the link, you know, make that really, you know, really available, be able to register easily, be able to click in and be able to join. Make that as easily as you can and then be as creative as you can in the actual broadcast. Biggest tip. The broadcast doesn't stand alone. It's got to be connected to your strategy. And then the data that you're able to collect by broadcasting by having people register and there's registration systems that will give you really robust data and drive it right into your donor database. You want to think about a strategy like that, a data strategy, because what you're, you know, what you're after is you're building your database, you're building your constituents, your followers. You want to be able to reach back to them in that 72 hours after the broadcast is the most important time to actually go and reconnect with those people that just saw the show. So are you also advocating for maybe a professional MC or is this something that the organization, you know, can have the executive director, a board chair, the development person? Is this an internal person that can really do what you're doing right now, Al, and be live on set, right? Or are you thinking to one of the best practice for this broadcast is really to have someone who's comfortable in front of a camera, knowledgeable with holding the microphone. What are some of your best practices when it comes to that key person or persons? You know, that great, great question. Let's let's consider a very simple broadcast and engagement, in fact, an event. And, you know, we don't have to think of the events being as, you know, giant parties, you know, and in, you know, at the Symphony Hall or, you know, in big black taigaalas. Think of the events very simply where we're for, you know, for having a cadence of events so that you can have a bit of a donor database engine going. So anytime you have an event, there's an opportunity for people to join you. I call it establishing your corner of the digital village green. You know, so, you know, think about it about your place on the Internet, you know, in the cloud, and it's a place where people know where you are. They know what you're going to get. And so it's to establish that. Now, as far as a very simple event, let's say it's a it's an interview of an author on the topic, you know, that's close, that that's relevant to the cause of your nonprofit to its mission, just the executive director live, you know, in interviewing that author, you know, maybe with some readings from the book or, you know, a very simple thing. That executive director just has to do what executive directors do. And I suggest we're going to I hope we have time for another topic that's, you know, a segue into the next one that has to do with the nature of the skill sets that you need to embrace these technologies. But there's no they're sure, you know, having professional emcee and hosts and all that fantastic. But for small events and, you know, the nonprofits, you know, always watching out for their budget, the the the it's these are things that that the staff can do without very with without, you know, the learn curve is short and, you know, it's in and it's easy. So having the ability to put an event online at any time and not make a big production out of it, but do it off and do it simply. That that that I think is the way to go so that you got that engine for, you know, to attract new new constituents all the time. I have seen some organizations of all different sizes out really become. And I think one of the words of the last 18 months has been nimble. Organizations have become extremely nimble, very adept to trying something new, doing this pivot, seeing what works. And I think the more we practice and the more we build our practice muscles of doing something often, it really does help us to, you know, implement some new best practices and go from from one step to the next and to continue to kind of level up in our knowledge and expertise. So what this is kind of that crystal ball question that I always like to ask, but what is the digital road for these development professionals? Where are we going? You know, so your first question that I had asked you is, are these here to stay? Yes, we believe that they are here to stay. So really including this in part of your strategy. So what does this digital road ahead look like for you? That's, you know, that's that's a question and a topic that that Matt and I spend quite a bit of time discussing. Here's I'll give you this our own setting. And you may I think this may shed some light on it that Matt and I are really fundraisers and we're, you know, he's got a head for the technology, but really started to dig in on it when he in the in the midst of a series of development director positions and just started to embrace it and learn it and understand it. And so he's he's not a he's not a technology professional. He's a fundraising professional, but he's had, you know, and a smart admittedly a really smart guy, but is able to grasp those. My background in, you know, in business business, you know, in in management, in nonprofit leadership, in really in the mechanics of nonprofits and in in fundraising and, you know, and financial control and fundraising. And so my focus wasn't on the technology, but by being in nonprofits, we're in and around it. And, you know, and everybody's talking about the database and how it works and, you know, and all the problems that we're having and whether we need a new one. And, you know, so these skills are not, you know, magical. They're just ones that are, you know, that you've got to, you know, spend some time, invest in. And it's it's not it's not all that hard in the productions that we do. Matt is he's our CTO, but he's also our executive producer up in the up in the studio in Petaluma. He's off site. I'm on the ground in on location. And at one point one day he started calling me director. And so I've become our on site director. And and I cable up all the all the all the equipment and the audio. And I've got a bag with me, you know, our camera bag. So it this is not hard to transition. It's not hard to make. All right. Having said all that, there's a few skills and a few focus areas that we think are are important. Actually, they're arriving as development professionals, you know, arrive, particularly the millennials and start to to come into to the positions that, you know, that that we've held. Well, here are some some focused skills that we think that that that are are are going to be really advantageous. It's being really involved in your donor database and donor database management and particularly skilled in the new databases and the ones that whose inception was in cloud base and web design. So it's the new sort of the new generation of databases. And really dig in and understand how those work. They're going to be the key to everything because the game's about data. So there's there's one chunk of it there. The other one is an awareness of video platforms and video tools. Really, you know, fantastic communication phenomenon, you know, that is that is really, you know, blossoming blossoming. We have a tool. We call it our board activation tool. And what we do is we do a short video of the of each of the board of directors of each board member and they can do that right from their their home and then we put a piece of can piece of film on it. And that's their solicitation that that's where they can easily go out to their, you know, to their circles and and raise that is fantastic. Al, because I know there's so many. How do I say this? There's often leaders that will say, I wish my board would do more. I really want my board to help with fundraising and solicitations. And so knowing that this is something that can engage the board, use some some small, you know, implementation, but critical. And as you said, you know, put this together and they could do it from home. I know many, many people are still social distanced across the nation. So whatever level of comfort that is. And again, looking at how many of our residents have perhaps relocated. So your board may not be local board anymore. They may also have relocated, but stayed engaged with your community. I also wanted to touch on unbriefly what you just said with, you know, using the younger generations being millennials or younger. I'm going to admit to my 11 year old knowing how to do way more on YouTube than I know how. And, you know, he is this close to being put on my own payroll because he is really good at that digital platform and a little bit more advanced than I am when it comes to this broadcasting. So I'm curious if you could talk to us in, you know, a little, little short amount of time that we unfortunately have left. This digital road ahead. I'm curious, Al, how we might be able to embrace perhaps other people's skill sets and talents. And I'm thinking volunteers, you know, this may not be staff, but this is volunteers or corporate partnership, other individuals to really engage them as we look at this digital road ahead. Yeah, you know, that that's a fantastic suggestion because, you know, the the most effective nonprofits that I've seen, you know, with a with an effective staff and empowering board, as well as a cadre of volunteers with us with a fantastic skills. And I've seen some that are very, very technology savvy. And if you can make it fun, too. But I think the video makes it fun. The multimedia, the the tools are fun and they're really not that hard to grasp. I think sort of the volunteers, if you have them, you know, at your disposal or, you know, have them available to you. But this, you know, the staff watching some very, you know, very small staffs take on some of these tools. And it's really fun to watch. And and it's it's fun to see them grasp and and and light up to what these tools do. We had an interesting conversation with the customer that we that we produced a broadcast for. And it had to do with they wanted to just have us film the event, just film the event, you know, and we'll replant. OK. And the executive director told us as, you know, as advisors and, you know, as outsiders, drive us and the staff to making this live. And it was and the staff, I think, I hope, learned quite a bit in and transformed into saying, oh, look at life, you know, and, you know, in life, you know, they were they're just timid. And they, you know, thought, wow, what a hassle that's going to be. And so anyway, it was it's it's getting the staff to just, you know, pivot a bit or, you know, sort of twist the kaleidoscope just a little to adding some some skills to their own to their jobs. You know, and, you know, it's it's oftentimes an exact development director alone, but it's like I said, these these are these tools and they get everybody excited and even the board getting excited. And it's not all that hard to make this transformation. You just got to grab on. Well, I think it's fearful, right? It's the fear of the unknown. What if technology doesn't work as you were saying in your best practices? You know, what if the audio doesn't work? What if the right cable doesn't go in or something happens that really just messes up that live segment? I remember, you know, when many of these events did go hybrid, although that was before you coined a tandem, you know, really having that having this opportunity to say, I feel like the more we can record and put on a streaming platform live makes us feel a little bit more in control because this live, as we've witnessed today, you are live out, you know, in this remote location. And there are elements to deal with, whether it's, you know, noises or people walking behind you or, you know, wildlife. There's so many different things out of our control when it comes to this live element that I think does evoke a bit of fear. But I think that what you've provided, Al, helps us take it a little bit further to understand, you know, that this is the road ahead. This is where we're going and it shouldn't be as scary. No, not at all. And in fact, you know, briefly mentioned a couple of other things. The technologies, the design is really fantastic. So, well, first of all, before all that is rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. You know, there's no it's an, you know, it's, you know, always the best. Make sure you've really rehearsed. You get your make sure you know how to use this stuff. But the design of these technologies is, you know, is almost fail safe. The, you know, the ability to dial down the background noise of that truck that's actually parked really close to me right now. Things like that. And so, you know, all of it is really designed and it's really easily, you know, easy for the user, even to the point where there's some challenging environments that we really like where we're excited. Sometimes when we're, you know, out on the water or in an office building with three foot wall, you know, thick walls with a Wi-Fi is real, you know, Clujie, well, that's extremely affordable that aggregates all of the cell phone signals for you and stabilizes your ability to stream. Things like that. And the stuff is not expensive. It's just come a long way and it's available. So there's ways to eliminate or let's call it, you know, alleviate most of the risk of going live. And we're big proponents because we've seen the popularity of live really, you know, really go with online fundraising right there during the live event. It's actually kind of magical. Well, this has been magical. What you and Matt are doing with strategic development technologies is magical. It is here to stay. It's not to evaporate. So if you are interested in learning about this tandem approach and doing a little bit more into this digital broadcast, I hope that you will reach out to our friends Al and Matt with strategic development technologies. Their information is right here, stratdevtech.org. It has been fantastic to have you with me today out live on location. Again, I love that. And so grateful that you would share your expertise and all of your information so that we can take this road ahead in a little bit more confident manner. So Julia missed a great episode, but I know that she's working on something big tomorrow. Julia Patrick is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I get to join Julia each and every morning as the non-profit nerd, Jarrett Ransom, CEO of the Raven Group, and again, so grateful to have our presenting sponsors. Many of these, just like our guests today, have this technology base and are really helping our nonprofit sector across the nation continue to drive your mission driven goals forward. Please do check them out. We are extremely grateful and appreciative to have their investment and commitment to the show and to the sector at large and Al, thank you. It has been fantastic to learn more about the digital broadcast from you. I appreciate your time. Sure, Jarrett. Thanks very much. And please relay my thanks to Julia as well. And, you know, we'll all congratulate Matt on having a baby boy this morning. Absolutely. And for him and everyone watching, we end every episode now almost 400 by saying, please stay well so you can do well. Thanks so much, Al. I wish you and Matt the best and thanks for all that you're doing in our sector. Sure. Thanks, Jarrett. Appreciate it.