Development is a team sport

Speaker 1 0:01
You okay. When I disappear, you get started.

Speaker 2 0:18
Hello, everybody. Welcome to I’m not going to say the end or the close of days two, I’m going to say of day one. Good, see, I’m even ahead of myself, right? I’m going to say Read More

Speaker 1 0:01
You okay. When I disappear, you get started.

Speaker 2 0:18
Hello, everybody. Welcome to I’m not going to say the end or the close of days two, I’m going to say of day one. Good, see, I’m even ahead of myself, right? I’m going to say what a day. I don’t know about you all, but my brain is full, my heart is full. It’s just been an incredible day. And I started this morning with thanking you all for being here, and I want to thank you all again for being so engaged and so involved and so chatty and fantastic about everything going on today. I hope you’ve had a terrific day, learned a lot, but settle in, because the best is yet to come. It is my deep honor and privilege to introduce our keynote speaker and closing keynote for today, if you will, Joan Gary. A number of you, I know, are already familiar with Joan. I am having a personal fanboy moment right here, right now. Joan’s an internationally recognized champion for the nonprofit sector, highly sought after executive coach for CEOs, some of our nation’s largest organizations, an author, blogger, founder of the Nonprofit Leadership Lab, Joan, I know, has helped hundreds of 1000s of nonprofit board and staff leaders become five-star managers, communicators, and inspiring ambassadors for their organizations and the type of people their organizations need and deserve. I can see all the cheering going on for Joan, and the great work that she’s done and brought to the sector, I will just say personally, if I may, that I have known of Joan for many years and supported, uh, glad when she was the executive director there, and I’m very, very pleased to be here with you today. Joan, thank you so much for being here. Everyone, join me in welcoming Joan Gary.

Speaker 3 1:59
Um,

Speaker 4 2:00
thank you very much, Clay. You hearing me? Okay.

Speaker 2 2:04
Absolutely terrific.

Speaker 4 2:06
Okay. Excellent. Hey, I just want to say thank you. I would very much like if you’d be kind enough to toss into the chat whether you are an Ed, a board member development, however, you kind of categorize yourselves, and then it’s useful for me to know what, like, I like to think about is what part of the world you’re looking to repair. So I saw disability services, so you know, just to give me a sense, so that I can bring the room to me, and I can bring you to the room. So, Jasper LGBTQ youth, right, financial literacy, climate museum. One of the things I really want you to feel during this next 50 minutes or so is that you are part of something bigger, right? That this is the nonprofit sector is in many ways a movement all its own, and I love that, Annie. I love that the chat is going way too fast for me to grab, so I want to get started by saying, first of all, that I am coming to you from the Garden State, that’s New Jersey, just in case you were wondering. I am recovering from a Jersey baby, says Alyssa, from a respiratory infection, so if you hear me coughing, that’s why, but I’m actually on the mend, and I’m super glad to be here, so I am going to. sorry about that. I’m just getting my slides organized here, so I’m gonna get myself rolling here. And first of all, I just want to say thank you to the folks at Donor Perfect. For us, they’re more than folks, they are friends, and I don’t use that word lightly. I think DonorPerfect is a partner with the Nonprofit Leadership Lab, and we are values aligned. We’re kindred spirits, because I think I can say this without hesitation that this is more than work for both DonorPerfect and for me and my team at the Nonprofit Leadership Lab. I also want to say thanks to all of you. You actually made a decision to ignore your emails for a bunch of time today, and that is no easy feat. Yay, you, there is some email waiting for you from somebody who has a great idea for some crazy event that you should. Do that’s going to cost way too much money and take way too much time, and that email can wait. I also want to say thanks, because you, you get something that a lot of people don’t get, which is that continuous learning is non-negotiable if you want to be a five-star sustainable adaptive leader, and there’s a big word for me these days. Adaptive leader, we’re not leading the same way every day. We are with the same values, but we know all of us know full well that new things get thrown at us every day, and not all of them are so good, so you may know about my blog, you may know about my podcast, about my online membership site, the Nonprofit Leadership Lab. Those are what I do, but I want to talk for just a second about why I do what I do, I consider myself to be a fierce advocate for nonprofit leaders. I don’t think there are a sufficient number of them. I consider myself to be a champion for the sector, because it is my fundamental belief that the nonprofit sector is a catalyst for making the world more fair, more equitable, more compassionate, and more beautiful, and in this regard, I feel like the world is really, really counting on us. These are ways you can connect with me, but Joan gary.com is where you’ll find anything you want to know about the services we provide, whether it’s coaching or the podcast or our membership site as well. So I said I’m an advocate, right, and here I am looking pretty joyful in my, you know, rocking my bow tie, but I have to tell you, what I’m actually an angry advocate. I’ve gotten progressively more angry in the last couple of years, and here’s why I’m angry. I think our sector is ridiculously undervalued, ridiculous.

Speaker 4 7:22
ridiculously under attack, and I’m really sick and tired of people talking about the lack of real leadership in our society, because I see it every day, and I’m seeing it right here in this chat, right here, right, put a Y in the chat that says yes, I am a leader. Own it, own it. Right, you’re not just a helper, you’re a leader. And I’m here today doing what I do because I admire you, I respect you, because so many of you are working in sectors, repro health, food insecurity, immigration, homelessness, working to see these as issues we are all responsible for, and not issues where somehow or another, somehow or another, blame is assigned that makes me angry, and my goal today is to do what I can to ensure that you have the resources to leave a real mark on the world through the work that you do. Okay, now the name of this keynote speech is development is a team sport. Now I’m futzing around with my screen a little bit here. Yes, there’s a lot of whys in here. We are great leaders, excellent. If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention. Now that GIF I’ll take all day, every day. Jasper, toss in the chat for me if you would. Do you think that your organization believes that development is a team sport? Yes or no. Go, go, go, go, go. Some yeses. Good. That’s excellent. Excellent. Sorta, is that a word, Rachel? To be honest, no, says Vivian. Yes, I work closely with my president, says Katie. It looks like I think it’s a bigger team than just that.

Speaker 3 9:31
Okay,

Speaker 4 9:35
now one more thing in the chat. What gets in the way? Do you think what gets in the way of development being a team sport in your organization? What gets in the way? I’m going to read a couple of them: lack of a shared vision, fear, money, time, communication, ego. Yeah, control, lack of interest, yeah, lack of time resources. Okay, so it’s these are very scarcity mindset. I talk a lot about that interesting point, lack of growth. Okay, so

Speaker 3 10:24
let me

Speaker 4 10:32
lost my view there. Thank you. So I want to talk a little bit about what I think is in the way those and you know, I find, as I do keynote speeches, and I coach people I’m old enough to remember there’s a show that’s called Kids Say the Darnedest Things, and so I’m going to play a little version of that game, and I’m going to call it Board Members Say the darndest things, so a couple of examples, and on these are actually true. Actually, I’ve really heard these things said to me with a straight face from board members. I’m so excited. We’re about to hire our first development staff member, so now fundraising can go to staff where it belongs. Here’s another one. How many weeks or months do you think it will take for our development director to pay for their own salary? Or this one, when I was recruited to the board, I was told I would not have to fundraise, otherwise I would have said no, or this one, which actually total straight face was said to me. Where is it? Here it is, Joan. We don’t need a strategic plan. Can you please just find us a billionaire? I don’t know what you do when you know it’s just hard to keep a straight face when you hear these things right now. Executive directors also say the darnest things, and again, I know you’re all here, and the people that are here are probably more or less likely to be the people to say things like this, but it gets said, and it thwarts the team sport mentality. Ah, okay. Here’s one: we need to balance the budget. Can you just go find another $100,000.02 Oh, I was supposed to actually ask for a specific amount at lunch. Ah, here’s another one. You know, two weeks feels like, like too soon for a follow-up call. Why don’t we just wait for them to call back and let us let them tell us how much they’re going to give us? Or this one. I did hear this one. Okay? You want me to call a lapsed donor? Oh, I don’t think I should. I think they’re mad at us about something, or one of my all-time favorites. I really don’t like rich people. Wondering if any of this is resonating for people. Yeah, Kat Clark, the number of times I’ve teed up a meeting for my ED, only for them to not make the ask infuriating. Okay, right. So, a lot of yeses, a lot. Okay, I like these emojis, they’re really good, actually. So, this is these are the kinds of things that get in our way, right. And okay, so that’s why I talked about the executive directors. So here is a picture of an empty wallet, and I get that this is how life might feel for you right now. Nonprofits are in the crosshairs. Federal funding has been pulled. Lord, I coached an executive director who was crushing it prior to January of last year, acquired a program initiative from another organization was on a roll, federal funding gets pulled, and today that organization is closed. We see missions that are seen to be too hot to handle, corporate funding walking away. Maybe you did a strategic plan, and said in three years’ time we have to have revenue diversification when you actually needed it yesterday, right? But you know what happens is it is that development folks are so good at their jobs they always seem to be pulling rabbits out of. Hats, well, I’m here to say it’s a growing kind of a feeling that there isn’t a rabbit, there’s not a hat, there’s no magic tricks at the ready, and that billionaire remains elusive. The other piece of the puzzle here is that oftentimes development feels like it rests on the shoulders of the development director. The executive director is pulled in a bunch of different directions, working to navigate relationships with boards, you know, all kinds of things, and so you feel like I got to do this by myself, and that in this environment can make you feel a little panicky.

Speaker 4 15:49
So, in coaching CEOs, along with their leadership teams, which is something that I do, I had this aha moment a couple of months ago when I was talking to why I called it the case of the deflated fundraiser and when I actually dug deep about why that fundraiser, why that development director was so defeated, it came down to something one thing I That she defined success as hitting her budgeted revenue, that’s it. She didn’t hit it, she didn’t win, she failed, right? That was her success metric, and far too often this is how nonprofits define development director success with a single number. Even if the federal federal funding has been ripped away from you through no fault of your own, you still have Type A personalities, EDs, and development directors who are hellbent on hitting the number, and when you are panicked, defeated, deflated, anxious, or even guilty, I dare you to be innovative or creative. I dare you to think outside the box, this is a huge problem in our sector, right? Is that we leave development – development is thought to be this finite, siloed thing that lives over here, and success is measured by whether or not you hit the number, and I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to be that way, and in fact it should not be that way, and so I want to talk about a couple of antidotes today. Excuse me, and if you’re trying to get my attention in the chat, I haven’t been kind of going back and forth between the chat and my slides, but maybe I could just go over to the chat for a second, and is this res.. if it’s resonating for you, can you give me an emoji that tells me so, right, that you feel obligated, you feel a responsibility to hit this number, right, that that’s how your success is measured. In fact, some organizations give you a bonus, some if you hit your number as if that is all that matters. Okay, excellent. This is helpful to me. I’m going back to my slides. 100% 100% Thank you. It does not have to be that way, and it should not be that way. And I have some suggestions about how to shift this, and how to move to a team sport mindset where success is defined more broadly. All right, back to Joan’s slides. All right, so so the antidotes for me, it is about it is time for leaders to build to really do a complete fundraising reboot to talk to their board in real terms in a different kind of way, and I’m actually going to give you some talking points. The second antidote is to introduce a culture of philanthropy. What, what is that? You say, Joan, I’m going to tell you, and then to set broader goals. Okay, so if I could wave a magic wand, and I actually do have a magic wand over there, I forgot to bring it over here. Um, a client gave me a magic wand for, for the holidays, but that was really nice. I would love every executive director to have a real talk with the board. What kind of talk, Joan? I’ll tell you to say, you know, I’ve been really thinking about this, and I think it’s time for us to really be looking at development differently. I feel like I spend a lot of time nagging you to introduce to go out and ask for money to sell tickets, right? Nagging your bosses is not a winning strategy. I want to educate you about what development work is really about. I’d like to work in partnership with the board development committee and make it something new and something different, and I’d like to start to build a culture of philanthropy. Now, some of this may sound a little like I don’t know foreign language to your board, but I’m going to tease these out as we go. So, if I had more time, I’d ask you, what you think a culture of philanthropy is, but I’m just going to tell you what I think it is. It’s my keynote, anyway. I want you to read this, maybe even take a screenshot of it.

Speaker 4 21:56
An organization, which all staff and boards see themselves as champions and ambassadors for the mission and embrace this role with enthusiasm, proactively inviting people to know more and do more to increase the scope and impact of your work. What does that actually say? What that’s saying is, if I’m on your board or if I’m on your staff, I should be dripping with enthusiasm for the mission of this organization, and that I just kind of can’t wait to tell people about this incredible organization that I’m a part of, and I can’t wait to invite them to have the opportunity to be a part of it with me now. What that invitation is will shift, right? It could be I’d like you to invite you to come closer, learn more, maybe you’ll be our next board member, maybe you’ll be our next volunteer, maybe you’ll be our next donor, right? If we keep the joy that we have, if we keep the passion we have for our mission all to ourselves, we don’t build a big enough legion of people who know about our work, and want to support it. Now, the word fundraising doesn’t appear in a culture of philanthropy. In my culture of philanthropy, because it’s.. and I think you talked about this this morning, because you’re in the invitation business when you build a culture of philanthropy in your organization, you’re in the invitation business. You are inviting people to know more, to come closer, and to be part of something that means meaningful to you. You are inviting them for the opportunity to do something that’s meaningful and purposeful in a world that sometimes feels like it’s a little short on both. Okay, so this is what we’re looking for when we talk about a culture of philanthropy. Now, just going to grab my notes here, just for a second. Right, you have to build a legion of stakeholders. Right, I often say that an organization that’s a hidden gem is not a gem if it’s hidden. Right story, executive director is at a supermarket talking about a. Organization to a cashier, he can’t not talk about it. He’s actually dripping with passion for his organization. He’s there with his wife. His wife is like, “Do you have to talk to everyone about the work of the organization? He said, “Yes, I do. And every single time he had a story at the ready, and this is what I want to just take a minute and talk about, as it relates to a culture of philanthropy. You cannot build a culture of philanthropy unless you build a culture of storytelling in your organization, credible messenger, you’ve all identified yourselves as leaders, plus kick-ass story equals new stakeholder, right? Right, and you’re right, invite some, be in the invitation business, be in the storytelling business. This is how you grow your legion, right. And then you can actually, if you have a development department, you can then begin to nurture those folks, right, nurture those folks, identify prospects, enter them in your CRM and go from there, right. So that’s what this is about, and I’m going to come back to storytelling in just a couple of minutes. So the other thing that’s important here is to set goals. Notice it’s a plural for an array of metrics that introduce accountability to all members of the team, board and staff. We have to move away from this. Oh, the development director didn’t hit their number, dang, right. We have to move away from this, so we need teams need goals. So I’m going to give you an example. I want to talk about the development committee for a minute. I believe that if you can transform the charge of your development committee and you can partner with that committee, that is like kindling for building a culture of philanthropy for setting broader goals, because I think today if you asked most development committee chairs what their, what the charge of their committee is, I don’t know what you’d actually get. You’d probably get something like, well, we provide oversight to make sure that development goals are hit, and I respond back and say actually that’s the executive director’s job, that’s not your job. How many times I have seen board committees ask for reports to show at board meetings, and they think that’s development committee work. It’s not.

Speaker 4 28:19
I’m going to tell you what development committee work is, and it’s actually another great way for you to begin to actually syndicate this idea that boards have their own work. This is my charge for development committee, that a development committee is the peer fundraising engine for the board, ensuring that board members have what they need to be five five star champions, bringing new resources to the organization, and that this committee holds the board accountable to this role. Okay, so we’re thinking about something really different here, aren’t we? Right, a peer fundraising engine. What do I mean by that? So I I think I mean exactly what I mean, right? Is I this dynamic of a development director nagging board members to do things is a no-win proposition, I So, I’m going to give you some examples. So, if that’s my charge as a development committee, let’s say I’m the development committee chair, right? So, first of all, you don’t believe me, you’re having a hard time imagining that. A board would hold itself accountable, that there would be a peer accountability, but if, if we start with goals, we get there. So, let me give you some examples. Let’s say the board development committee this year is going to establish a stewardship program. Every board member is going to be given two names, three names, whatever it is, of people who have given this past year, so that there are touch points in between the time they first gave and the time you want to ask them for renewal. This is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful way to level the playing field for those people who, if you have a give-get, you can give people the opportunity to steward and ask for renewals or upgrades. Storytelling workshop, if I’m going to be a great ambassador. I need current stories, I need good stories, and I need to be able to tell them. I have boards now that I have worked with that do storytelling practice at every single board meeting. When I ran a nonprofit every other week, I put out something called cocktail party sound bites, because I knew my board members were out and about, and I wanted them to be able to say, “Wow, you know? When they say, “Are you still on the Gladboard? Yes, I am. If the, if the statement stops there, but if the statement continues and says yes, and I got an email from the executive director on Friday, and the most amazing thing happened. Story, story, story, brief. Blank. Would you like to know more fundraising plans? The development director is supposed to hound board members to do that. How about plans for board member engagement at events? Working the room, what a concept. You have your annual gala, your board members assigned three tables to visit to thank people for coming, thank people for donating. Lots of board members are come from corporate America. How about taking a stab at a corporate pitch deck or working with the staff to brainstorm how to solve the nonprofit leaky bucket problem? Leaky bucket problem, we’re very good at bringing in new money, but we don’t pay enough attention to the retention of those donors, a very, very important metric. So, these are the kinds of things I’m talking about when I talk about what should the work of a board development committee do. Now, there are three key partnerships that you’ve got to invest in the ED and the board chair, the ED and the development director, and the development director and the development committee chair. Right, I, as a development director, should be my success should be measured at how well I have nurtured and grown those partnerships that should be one of my success metrics, right. And then I’ve got to invest and I’ve got to appreciate, so I have to tell you that if you are going to institute a culture of philanthropy in your organization. It is absolutely essential that you, as staff, give folks what they need. Give folks what they need. So, if I’m going to be an ambassador, maybe you should be sending me a social media post where I can just add water, and all I do is I put it on my Instagram feed, and it’s a little story, and it says, ‘Proud to be a board member of XYZ. Learn more at right.

Speaker 4 34:16
Not everything is about asking, everything is about being an ambassador, that’s what this is fundamentally about, right? I want to just go.. I’m going to go over to the chat for a minute, right. And, like, I see Catherine Green here says, “Worn out from arming the board members, and what I’ve assumed, what you mean is you’re giving them things and they’re not doing things with them, right? So there’s two things I’ll be a truth teller here. What are you giving them? Are you giving it to them in a form that they can easily use, or were they recruited badly? Adjacent, I literally had a conversation with a woman who said, you know, I would, I would love to join a board, but I’m not wealthy, and I don’t know anyone who is. We have actually done a very poor job of branding what board service is, right? But what I’m going to say to you, is this kind of a shift, this kind of a shift will demand an investment of your time. It will demand different board meetings. Your gatherings are going to need to be more meaningful, right? When you say my board members don’t read what I send, my board members don’t show up for my meetings, right? They’re not on my team. Diagnose, ask them, survey them. What would make this meeting interesting? What would make this meeting engaging? What would make you run from the room after a board meeting and want to go tell 10 people about the great work of your organization? Ask them, right? Ask them and appreciate them. I want to say this one last thing about appreciation, I am probably get it, a type A personality. I’m used to getting A’s on my book reports, and being a volunteer is not easy for me. If you have a full-time job and you’re a volunteer, it’s hard to get an A on both of both sets of book reports. Right? I had a board member who was a rockstar, my opinion, a rockstar. He came to me one day and he said, Joan, I just don’t feel like I’m doing enough, and I’m going to have to resign from the board, and I almost fell over, and when we actually dissected it, he was one of the highest contributing board members, and I’m not talking about money, I’m talking about influence, and networks, and introductions, and all those things I’ve just been talking about, right, I Right, but for him he felt he was scoring like a B B plus, and he was accustomed to getting an A, and so it’s very important, it’s very important that as you are building this team, your own internal team, right, the partnership with your ED and with your board, that you are appreciating the fact, not letting them off the hook, that they’re volunteers, and therefore they should be somehow or another held to less standard, but rather acknowledge that they’re volunteers and love them up when they do the things you need them to do, when they, when they do something valuable, ask them when they first start, when you leave the board, what do you want to be able to say, what that was the mark you left on the organization, and then help them be true to that, right? So invest and appreciate, so I want to just make a comment, and then I want to leave some time for questions. I want to make a pitch for continuous learning. These jobs are hard, they’ve become seem harder with every passing year and there are two things that I believe can make all the difference. One is continuous learning, and one is community, like this community here that DonorPerfect has built today and tomorrow. You’ve got to enrich yourself. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, you’re here, so you get that there are podcasts galore, leadership podcasts, and not necessarily even nonprofit ones, ones that will get you thinking outside the box, ones that will motivate you, that’ll help you come up with that great idea in the shower, which is where so many good ideas happen. There are blogs out there, but they’re also outside the sector. I read HBR, I read SSIR, I look at TED Talks. Enrich your leadership. Try this, for example, before a board meeting.

Speaker 4 44:59
Send out three TED Talks on leadership, prime their leadership pump, and spend 1520 minutes and go around the room. What did you learn from the TED talk you saw, or some TED talk on storytelling, the power of storytelling. You’ve got to actually really prime their pump, and by the way, in so doing, you’re also enriching them. Their experience as a board member is teaching them new things, is enriching them in ways that are on sometimes surprising. Clearly, our friends at DonorPerfect know about the power of continuous learning. They know how important it is. Otherwise, they would not have invested the kind of time and treasure that a conference like this takes. Just a quick word about our offering, so about nine years ago I started thinking not everybody is going to be able to afford a coach or a consultant. How could we scale what we know to be true about building the board of your dreams? How to ask people for money, how to reach out to lapsed donors, how to diversify your board. How do we scale that in a way that is affordable for small to mid sized nonprofits? And we came up with this idea right here that it is both resources and a private community where we have experts, myself, our CEO, Glenda Teston, who are in that private community every day, answering specific questions you have, and what you will find in the nonprofit leadership lab, and if you are a member of the lab, I would love for you to echo my sentiment. Hopefully, you can Google a resource, but you can’t talk to somebody who’s been in your shoes who’s helping you untangle some really tough organizational dynamics, so we have a human touch, our community helps each other, and success is the result, right? The lab helps make sense of it with honesty and integrity. There are people who have been with us for nine years, because it just is there when they need it, and as someone has said saved me from throwing in the towel dozens of times. We are a community of people who care, and so I wanted to just say this is one resource that I think you’ll find very helpful if you want to just grab that QR code, just a gift from us, just as a give you an example of the kinds of resources that we offer, and, and, like I said, I think this is really, really important. I do this work because, because I don’t want you to feel alone, because I hate the idea that you are under duress, under attack, that any of that to be true. So, with that said, let me just leave you with a society grows great when we plant trees in its shade we know we shall never set. And I just want you to remember that every day you go to work, you are touching the lives of people you will never meet, and that’s pretty awesome, and quite a gift. So that’s me.

Speaker 1 49:07
Well, I see some hands clapping. Are you ready for some questions?

Speaker 4 49:10
Indeed, I am.

Speaker 1 49:12
Okay, all right. So they have the ability to upvote questions, so the one with the most upvotes, they asked, how do you create a culture of philanthropy when there’s such a pay gap between development and program staff.

Speaker 4 49:34
Well, first of all, I don’t.. I don’t know that. I mean, you guys can put in the chat if that’s like, is that 100% true? Right, your executive director should be grappling with that particular issue and making the argument to the board that everyone plays an equal role in the success of the organization. I feel like there are two different. Questions in there, Lori. One is pay gap, and one is cultural philanthropy. Right, a culture of philanthropy really is building a legion of staff and board members who are storytellers and in the invitation business. The other one is an HR issue. It is common in the sector that development, finance, administration are seen as support services for the people who do the real work, and I believe that’s a leadership moment for an executive director to say no. Right, when you get to budget time and goals, there’s something called pay equity, an equal value for the work that’s being done by each person there.

Speaker 1 50:48
Okay, as you were answering that, there were more upvotes, so I think they appreciated the response. Okay, this one also a lot of upvotes. Is it okay to go around your ED if they are not effective?

Speaker 4 51:10
So, going around right, we’ll call that. It depends on what going around means, right? If you are going to go and rat out your ED for being a lousy fundraiser, you’re probably going to be in deep, in deep doo doo. Right, there are diplomatic strategies, and that’s why you need these partnerships with a board chair with a development director, right? Is that when you have, when you have a low performer, whether it’s a board member or an executive director, the object of the game is to increase the volume of the voices of the people who get it, that then put influence on the executive director. So, go to your allies on the board, presumably on the development committee. Do not talk about, you know, talk about how do we all get involved in in development work, but I think it’s just like, just like getting rid of trying to get rid of a bad board member, it’s hard to do that, it’s easier to add two great board members, and so what you want to do is lift up the voices of the people who really understand what cultural philanthropy means, lift those up and get the ED listening to other board members who get it.

Speaker 5 52:55
Okay,

Speaker 4 52:56
but it’s a great question.

Speaker 1 53:01
Yeah, that had me thinking as well when I saw it pop up.

Speaker 4 53:05
Right.

Speaker 1 53:06
Okay. So next question by Amber is, how do you suggest keeping and keeping an ambassador program engaged? It started with a bang, but despite regular communications and social toolkits, the engagement never took off. We provided the tools, but it feels like we were forgotten in rooms our names should have been brought up in.

Speaker 4 53:31
Sometimes I think we overdo on the tools, right? Board members will say, “Oh, I need 25 things” when they just need one good story, and I do think that it’s these are muscles that have to be exercised, and so if I’m the ED, I’m going to talk about development and storytelling at every board meeting, I’m going to part of the every development report, I’m going to the board chair as a board chair, I, and again, a lot of this comes to the board chair. How willing is the board chair to really lead the board? Another recruitment issue, too, right? Finding people with leadership potential who can actually run a meeting where people are engaged, enriched, ignited, where they’re practicing their ability to tell stories, and they’re held accountable to do so. So, I think these are things to think about, but I also, I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently, about the amount of communication that you give to your board, the length of it. I’ve had people, I’ve said, ‘Send me the report you sent to your board every month, and I’ve looked at it, I said, ‘I wouldn’t read that, I would never read that, it’s too long, like, like, give me something I can do this one thing.’ Right, start really small, and then appreciate the hoo ha out of the people who do it. Celebrate a success of a new person that’s been brought into the organization as a result of a story. You’ve got to actually model it, you’ve got to celebrate it, you’ve got to put a spotlight on it.

Speaker 1 55:25
Okay, I’m looking at some other questions. I’m not sure we’re going to have time. They look like they’re going to need little more than one or two sentences as response. So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to bring Clay back out, I’m I

Speaker 2 55:44
am here.

Speaker 4 55:45
Play is back

Speaker 5 55:46
here. Hello.

Speaker 1 55:51
Okay, it looks like we’re not going to have too much more time with today, so I don’t know if you had any lasting comments or other things that needed to be covered before we finish for today.

Speaker 2 56:04
First and foremost, Joan, thank you so much for this inspirational. I took pages of notes, the chat was flying, and I know a lot of people got a lot of great resource from that and great information from that, and Lori, as you said, there’s there’s 1001 questions and comments that I would love for us to have the time to delve deep into, but Jen, that was terrific. Thank you, and there were a lot of well wishes for you to take care of your, take care of your throat, drink, go to have good hot tea, and know that people are rooting for you. For everybody that’s here, thank you so much for being a part of day one of our Donor Perfect conference. We loved having you. We hope you enjoyed the day. Please do remember that we still have day two starting tomorrow at 10am Eastern for my fellow West Coasters. That’s 7am so make sure that the coffee is hot in various time zones across the country. But 10am Eastern, you can join our lounges, talk one on one with our DonorPerfect trainers, ask any questions or how to. And then, at 1030 tomorrow morning, President of DonorPerfect, Lauren Sheehan, will kick off our sessions. There’s more than 10 sessions tomorrow. There’s something for everybody, from beginner to advanced. We will see you tomorrow. Take a good rest tonight, you’ve earned it. Joan, thank you so much, and Lori, thank you, and everyone, for all the great work behind the scenes, making sure this all went off so smoothly today. Thank you, everybody. We appreciate you. Take care of yourselves, and we’ll see you tomorrow.

Speaker 4 57:30
Thanks, Clyde.

Speaker 2 57:31
Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 57:32
Bye.