 Welcome everybody to another episode of the nonprofit show. You know, Fridays are our favorite day here on the nonprofit show because it's asked and answered. It's not because it's the end of the week. It's because it's asked and answered. And every Friday, we get a different, I like to call them super brain from Fundraising Academy at National University to come in and chat with us about questions that come to us. And Tony, you know, it's really an interesting thing because these questions come to us in person, people email, they might write in during another broadcast. I was at an event last night where somebody stopped me and said, hey, can you add this question in? You know, it's a very interesting thing. And so questions come to us from all places and it's just a fascinating thing to have these discussions. We don't always agree on the answers. Sometimes our Fundraising Academy folks bring up things that I had never thought of or Jared had never thought of and vice versa. So it's really fun. Today we have Tony Bell, senior director for the Center of Development and Advancement at National University coming to us from his glorious Florida room in Florida. And we are so thrilled you're here, Tony. Thank you, happy new year. Happy new year. And again, always a pleasure to be here. I love these conversations and the questions are always interesting. And I think part of the reason why they're interesting is that you created a really safe place for folks to be able to engage and ask the questions that are top of mind for them. So thank you for that and the contribution that you and this show continue to make to the nonprofit sector. Well, thank you. You made my day. I do take off names sometimes in cities because if their name is really unusual or it's like a question that you could track it back, I think sometimes that's just the better thing to do. So we don't always disclose who people are. And sometimes people don't disclose too, right? I mean, you know, so I mean. Yeah, well, the name withheld are always the most interesting. I know, they're my favorite. I love for the name withheld, I really do. Well, again, I'm with Tony Bell, Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. We have amazing partners and that starts with Blumerang, American Nonprofit Academy, nonprofit thought leader, staffing boutique, your part-time controller, 180 management, fundraising academy at National University where Tony Bell comes to us from, JMT Consulting, Nonprofit Nerd and Nonprofit Tech Talk. Tony, we just passed like our 957th episode, I think this week marching towards 1,000 episodes. So pretty crazy, huh? Pretty crazy. And a lot of those sponsors have been with you throughout this entire journey, which is just wonderful. And their commitment to professional development and the space is just really worth applauding. Yeah, thank you. It really is. And it's very exciting. And sometimes it's like shocking that three years have gone by. I don't know, I know. I'm like, what the heck? And if you wanna see any of our three years of content, you can download the app, find us on streaming and podcasts. We'll come to you any way you need us to get to you, 24-7. So let's start with Lois from Denver, Colorado. I bet it's cold there today. Ooh, I bet. Ooh, Lois- That's probably sunny. Yeah, true, true, true. Lois writes in, it's the new year. And I'm wondering if I should spend more time on developing my board or working, developing my C-suite leadership team. I only have so much time to dedicate to either group. I think this is like a fascinating question. And I'll tell you, I met with an interim CEO who was in Phoenix, my hometown last night. He's from another state. And I asked him, what was his like most shocking part about working as an interim and what does he learn? And he said that not enough American nonprofits work with developing their boards. So it's crazy that this question would be, would like land on our deck today. Yeah. So I'm fascinated by what you think. So all of us, I'm going to make the assumption are dealing with bandwidth issues. So that's the first thing I thought of, right? Is we're all kind of dealing with bandwidth issues. I'm sure that Lois would prefer to have time for both because there's value in developing both, right? Right. So then it's the bandwidth issue. It's the intentionality around being very intentional and where you're putting your time and your effort. The first thing I think about when I look at this is where is going to be the greatest return on effort for the community you serve? So is the greatest return on effort going to be developing your board and working with them? Is that going to have the greatest impact on your mission and again your impact in the communities that you serve? Or is it going to be your C-suite leadership team? Is that going to have the greatest impact on your mission and the communities that you serve? So I would ask myself that question first. Putting in the resources and all of that, where is my effort going to bring me the greatest return? Now, if you do your list and they're even, you're like, oh my gosh, well, the board's going to bring this and then the C-suite's going to bring this. Then I'm going to make the assumption that you are going to see a larger return on your effort with your C-suite leadership team. And the reason why I say that is because they are the ones that are ultimately responsible for the day-to-day deliverables of the organization. And the stronger your C-suite is, the stronger your impact is going to be, again in the communities that you serve. So that's kind of where are you going to get your greatest effort? If it's kind of a tie, then my experience would recommend that you lean into your C-suite leadership team. And if your budget allows, bring someone in to work with the board so that you don't have to spend your time on the board development work. There's all kinds of incredible asynchronous training out there for board. I mean, just lots of great, I mean, for C-suite as well, but particularly for the board, there's a lot of great asynchronous learning out there that you can engage them in. And then at a board meeting, have them talk about their shared learning. Okay, so get up, you know how I love baseball, get up your catcher's mitt or your bat, but I love the bun. Yeah, the bun, it scares the hell out of me, but it's a cool thing. Okay, what do you think about this idea? If you're, and I'm assuming that Lois is the CEO. Yeah, I do too. If you go to both groups and you say, hey kids, I've only got so much gas in the engine and I've identified these two main groups that need support and need help, what do you think is more important? I mean, I think it would be an interesting question because I don't know what your thoughts are, but. No, I think that those types of questions are not only do they educate you, right? On where you're going, right? But they also can help create buy-in. So maybe there are board members that don't really feel like they need it, but then when you ask the questions and others answer, then we're like, you know what? That wouldn't be a bad idea for the board to engage in that type of professional learning. But what I thought you were going to say, Julia, actually, as you were asking that question, is maybe there's an opportunity, depending on what the needs are of the C-suite, maybe there are board members that have those skill sets that can invest some of their time in supporting some of the C-suite in those professional development or individual growth areas. So I guess the main thing is, you know, stay creative in your approach, but really look at where are you going to get the biggest return on effort? Okay, I'm going to warm up and say, I wish I had thought of that. I didn't, but you're right. Hello. That's what we're supposed to be doing with our boards. We're supposed to be looking out and saying, what are your treasures and your talents that you can bring to us with your time and help us build a stronger organization? I mean, yeah, so you're right. I think that should have been something that I thought of, but I didn't. You know, I was just kidding. Okay, well, let's see how, if I do better with this question, because you know, I was thinking when this came through my office, I don't know if we've ever had, maybe we've had like one, but a question from Canada. So this is cool because- But that's very cool. Yeah, we have guests and viewers from Canada. We know this, but yeah. So name withheld, we took their name off. I've been asked to serve on a board of another nonprofit that does similar work to the one I actually work for. I'm a professional and know a lot about the sector with which I work in. Would this be a conflict of interest? Super interesting question. Yeah, so I am all about collaboration, collective impact partnerships. I don't know that I would, well, one, let's congratulate name withheld that they would even consider serving on a board. Yeah, you're right. Considering I'm sure all of the other work that they have, you know, that they're doing great work in the sector. I would consider this a conflict of interest. I think that there are plenty of ways for the organization that wants this individual to serve on the board. There are plenty of ways for them to engage with this professional at their existing organization in terms of collaboration or collective impact initiatives that will help them grow as well. So there was a scenario many years ago here in South Florida where four small nonprofit organizations came together and did a fundraising event that benefited all four of the agencies. And what was really great about that was the shared learning that took place across those agencies. Some were really strong in marketing. Others were really strong in event planning. Others were strong in, you know, so they learned so much from one another, brought their top skills in and had a very successful event, shared, you know, literally shared the wealth, but also shared the wealth of knowledge that each of them brought to the table. So I do think it's a conflict of interest, but I think there are creative ways for these organizations to collaborate to where they really are lifting each other up. I agree. That's exactly my first reaction was like, no, that's just, and even if it isn't, it can lead to the perception of a conflict, which then creates a whole nother level of drama for everyone. But I love your idea of the collaboration. And, you know, maybe you start with joint tours of each other's projects, you know, that tour in a box that Terry Axelrod always promoted where you can go to somebody's board meeting and give a rundown on what you do or bring them to your campus if you have one. I mean, there are ways that we can share knowledge and maybe that's what it's about versus bringing somebody in because there's some proprietary stuff that goes on in our nonprofit sector. And I just think it's not a healthy thing. And then this kind of scenario, you know, a fun activity for a board would be to do like a scavenger hunt on the other organization's website. Oh, love that. You know, so something like that where the board members go to, you know, they're asked to find certain things on the other organization's website. And they go there and they learn about the organization and the similarities. And, you know, and a lot of times that kind of exercise a board member would say, well, they're not doing this, but we're doing, you know, we're serving the same community. They're not doing something that we're doing and we can fill a gap in, you know, in their efforts. So that's a fun activity. I'm gonna completely borrow that. I was gonna say rip off, but I won't say that. I love that idea. I think that's just genius. And it does a lot of things. It gets those board members reengaged in a way that maybe they wouldn't have just automatically done. So name was held in Toronto. I don't know what it is, maybe because it's cold out there for me, but I'm like, oh, it's gonna be cold in Toronto. So I hope this question warmed you up. Toronto is such a great city. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Well, now isn't Toronto gonna be the site of the next AFP icon? That is correct. Yeah. So I mean, yeah, that's a big deal. Okay, let's go to Mario and Mario, we took the city off and it says, we have a board member who's quite elderly and having a challenge with our board portal. This is a digital comfort zone issue. That's gentle. That's gentle and kind. A digital comfort zone issue. I love it. Should we ask this board member to move on and search for a more modern tech savvy person? Where I'm hearing this a lot. I mean. Yeah, this one gave me, this one gives me a lot of different feelings to be honest with you. I think in the spirit of diversity, equity and inclusion, there are some inclusion conversations to be had here around this particular, again, we try to answer these just based on the question and we know that there are variables and that it's deep, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just based on the question, this is how I'm responding is that, I mean, regardless of age, quite elderly, not elderly, what is the value that this board member is bringing to the organization? If this board member is bringing value to the organization, we don't move them on because they have a digital comfort zone or because we've decided that some portal is going to make our life easier. In terms of running the organization. So, you know, so I don't know, I think I am kind of narrowing down some of my feelings about it. So it honestly aggravates me a little bit the thought that a valued contributing board member would be removed from a board because of their digital comfort zone. Yeah, you know, my first reaction to this was I thought that the way this question was posed that this organization doesn't have an emeritus board and emeritus is Latin for old soldier and it is a really important structure, I think, to move people on so that you don't lose their champion behavior, that you keep that institutional knowledge, you have a resource for wisdom that can help, if you need to step back, maybe that voice, those voices can help but just to move somebody off like that and maybe I'm showing my age but, you know, I'm probably, you know, in my 30s I'd be like, hell yeah, get them off, we got things to do and now in my 60s, I'm like, let's have some compassion. Well, you and I, you and I in our 30s would be like they can't use the fax machine, we've got to get rid of them, so it's all different, you know, a whole different pocket now, right? But they're like, they turned the paper around the wrong way when they were faxing, do you remember that? Oh yes, but to your point, I mean, if you're going to move the board member on, then you're moving them on either because of poor performance or because they've reached their term limit for the organization, you're not gonna move someone on because of their age or because of their digital comfort zone. No, I agree. That's my opinion. No, no, I think that also too, you know, I think that it's not just an age thing with the digital world that we're navigating through, I think it's also an educational thing. So how much time have you invested and supported that board member in that portal journey? If you're working in a business environment where you're using a portal system, it might be Slack or Basecamp or even just like the Google environment, you kind of have a built-in ability to understand how some of these structures work, even though you might be in a new portal, but you know, you kind of get it. If you're talking to somebody who never worked in that environment, you've got to give them some grace and some education, I think to- I totally agree with you, absolutely. But that's where we're going. Board tables are, they're not, I mean, they're just picking up speed. They're more- I served on a board not too long ago that had a board portal. And I could easily navigate it and I thought it was great. It cut down on emails, everything was in one place. I mean, I certainly see the benefit and support the use of the technology. It's really, really important. Okay, well, let's go to Kay in Chicago, Illinois. Of course, again, what am I gonna say? I bet it's freezing there. Woo, okay. How important is it to start all staff meetings with a mission moment? We have a large staff of 250 plus team members and they travel in for the all hands meeting. The mission moment takes up valuable time. As you might see, we're trying to cut our meeting time down. Interesting question. Well, I love that they have a mission moment. I think there's value in a mission moment. I think there's value in sharing with our peers, the success stories that are taking place. And I'm gonna assume maybe there's chapters here or something, right, or in our regions. So I think there's a lot of value in that time investment in these mission moments. I think when you're looking at a large audience of 250 plus team members, that you do have to get really creative about the ways in which you do that. So maybe it's, maybe there's one mission moment per region. So maybe that's the way that it's done. Is there, if they're all coming together, is there anything that happens before the actual convening where mission moments can be shared electronically or on a portal or an event platform? You know, maybe there's something on a platform where everybody submits their mission moment and folks go in and vote on their favorite. And then at the national convening, the top three mission moments are shared. Doesn't mean that every mission moment isn't valuable and important. But it's just a way of again, in addressing this question, a way of kind of cutting it down. The other thing that I thought about and a friend of mine recently posted using this was a Slido. So I don't know if you've ever used the Slido platform, but it allows you to create word clouds. So they could do that live at the meeting and have everyone pull up Slido and say, when you think about your mission moment, what is the one word that comes to mind? And see all of the different words that pop up based on everyone's thoughts about their mission moment. Then if there's one that really stands out, let's just say maybe just happy. You know, then whoever's facilitating could say, how many people that happy and everyone could raise their hand and you could choose one and say, what was your mission moment that made you happy? And allow folks to kind of share out that way. So I think there are ways to do it and get really creative and, but I do think it's, I do think there's value in mission moments. If, you know, it tends to really uplift the team when we're sharing these success stories. Well, and I think to your point, it's a good starting point. You know, it's a good way to kind of get everybody refocused and say, okay, why are we here? What are we doing? It's like what we said, if you joined us in the green room earlier, you know, what's your word for the year? Maybe not what's your overarching? Like what are your goals and your resolutions? But what's your word? What's your tone that you're going to take? And so I think the mission moment, for me, Tony is pretty holy because I think in board service, most people, you're like Julia Patrick, you're racing to get to the meeting, you know, because you've had a long day and you're trying to do everything you can, but yet be present. And it kind of sometimes for me is always served is that like, okay, put on the crown of leadership, this is a tough topic, right? And it just kind of centers you down. So I don't know, I think it, don't cut it, but I love what you said. Think of it as a different avenue for building a better experience. I think that's that Slido, yateen. Well, and what you said is important, Julia, don't cut it. Yeah. Because it really is time well invested in your agenda. Yeah. Okay, well, let's really go quickly. I could talk to you forever, but we have one more question. Yeah, I'm kind of jelly today. I know it's good, it's a good thing. Okay, name withheld and I'm going to man up and say this came to me at an event. I'm a CEO who has served in my current position for three years. I have not been able to get a job review and I am concerned that the board chair keeps passing on along on this. Who is responsible for this important task and what is the standard practice? I'll witness to you. It wasn't even as much about money. No. It was about performance review. Absolutely. Which broke my heart. I mean, if it was about money, that's one thing. But... And I think in most cases it is more about the review and more about the affirmation that we are performing in our roles and meeting the expectations of our board. And to what degree are we meeting those expectations? Am I doing just exactly what's on the job description? One, do I have a job description? Yeah. Again, a whole different show, right? Yeah. And to what degree am I fulfilling the expectations of the job description? A lot of us in the nonprofit sector are very proud about the work that we do and very proud to serve in the way that we serve. And these reviews for our board, again, are really important affirmations or touch points, if you will, about how our work is being perceived. The responsibility I think falls on the entire board, not just the board chair. Okay. Often the board chair is responsible for delivering. Delivering, okay. The review, but the actual process and assurance that a review takes place is the full board's responsibility, not just the board chair. What name might held might consider doing and there are plenty of templates out there. A name with held can feel free to reach out to me. I have templates as well. Maybe the approach is to do a self-assessment and submit that to the board chair. I love that approach because that's gonna start the conversation. It's gonna start the conversation. It's going to show intention. I love that idea. And the best practice in most organizations now really is a self-assessment before the leader or the board gives their assessment. I was doing self-assessments back with American Express in the 90s. So they were early adapters of the concept. But yeah, so think about the self-review and submitting that to the board chair or the entire board because I do feel like it's an entire board responsibility to ensure that this takes place. Yeah, I think that's very wise. And I think it's also probably just, we get so bogged down with our tasks and what we have to do. And then to have that moment of reflection could really be enlightening for our own self and our own leadership style. So I love that. And thank you. That's a brilliant answer. Well, of course, always brilliant. Tony Bell, Senior Director, Center for Development and Advancement and National University. You know, it is a real pleasure to have you with us. I know that you are an incredibly busy man and I know that you carve out time to do this with us. So I am very, very grateful because your knowledge is just an amazing thing and we are very grateful to have you. So thank you, Tony Bell. You are so kind. No, I'm not, I'm just speaking the truth, my friend. No, thank you so much. It's always an honor. And I love the fundraising academy team and I love being a part of National University and none of us are the architects of this great curriculum, but we're all super ambassadors of it. And to be able to collaborate with you in the nonprofit show really is just a joy for all of us. Well, thank you. I think it is interesting with the team that's so diverse and sprinkled throughout the country and sometimes the world. Everybody has their own approach, or not approach, but maybe temperament to this great structure. And so what you all have taught me is that, you know, you can still be your authentic self and have your own personality and your own viewpoints, but if you have a good structure, then that's where the magic happens, right? And so I think that that's one of the things that we learn with everybody from Fundraising Academy that comes on. So, but we're thrilled obviously to have you. Again, we're also thrilled to have the support of these amazing, amazing sponsors. And again, Friday Ask an Answer comes to us with a partnership from Fundraising Academy at National University. And our partners also include Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, Nonprofit Thought Leader, Staffing Boutique, your part-time controller, 180 Management Group, JMT Consulting, Nonprofit Nerd, and Nonprofit Tech Talk. Hey my friend, I hope that you get to have a restful weekend, and I hope that you come out on the other side on Monday with that magical word for the new year. Well, I'll be sure to share it with you. So, so thank you for the encouragement and wishing you and just everyone that supports and listens to the Nonprofit Show, just the most exceptional new year. Thank you, Tony, I do appreciate that. Hey everybody, as we end every episode of the Nonprofit Show, we like to remind ourselves and you to stay well, so you can do well. We'll see you back here soon. Thank you, my friend. Thank you.