Successful Nonprofits Podcast

Five of our 2016 guests share their New Years resolutions, and our host shares tips for keeping your own resolutions.

5-minute episode with meditations on finding meaningful work and suggestions for enjoying the job search

It's the week before Christmas and New Year, and this is our 25th episode. At this time of year we often get to enjoy some well-deserved "down time" after the presents are opened, the leftovers are stored, and all the candy has been eaten. Many people use this down time to determine their New Years resolutions, and many resolutions relate to finding or being better at the work we love. For this reason, we combined our two most popular conversations about career building into one great episode.

We bring you a featured conversation about social enterprise with Paul Lamb. As part of our conversation, we discussed: • Understanding the culture shift that may need to occur within a nonprofit • Developing a tolerance for risk and delayed return on investment • Recruiting the right professionals to manage and grow the social enterprise • Finding the capital necessary to start a social enterprise

The relationship with the greatest impact on a nonprofit's success is typically the one between its executive director and board chair. While this important relationship determines the tone, direction, and long term success of an organization, cultivating it is often only an afterthought following a meltdown or disaster. That’s why we invited John Fulwider on the podcast to talk about his book “Better Together: How Top Nonprofit CEOs and Board Chairs Get Happy, Fall in Love, and Change their World”.

Wouldn’t you love to get data about individual donors at a broad range of other organizations? Would it be helpful to know the average percentage of individual donors who give online, or the average ratio between major donor and everyday donor? Would it be helpful if you could predict the return on investment in fundraising planning, development staff, or a CRM database? Back in 2010, Heather Yandow saw a need for this kind of data and used her math degree and decade of development experience to launch the Individual Donor Benchmark Project. The project consists of an annual survey of nonprofits to learn more about their individual donor strategies and achievements. Each year, her consulting firm Third Space Studio, produces a well-designed and easily understand Individual Donor Benchmark Report. This self-described data nerd has developed an incredibly useful body of data that you can use to evaluate your current fundraising program, inform your planning process, and advocate for additional resources with boards and funders. We explored some of the high points from the past five Individual Donor Benchmark Report, including: ➢ Universal truths about individual donor giving ➢ The one document that is the bedrock of all successful fundraising ➢ Why a 60% retention rate is probably good but an 80% retention rate may not be healthy for your organization ➢ The statistical ROI when paying for development staff ➢ How to take part in the 2017 IDBP

Learn how to get media coverage for your nonprofit this holiday season (or anytime). Every year, board members and executive directors wonder “how can we get our good work in the New York Times, the Wiregrass Gazette, or the Portland Tribune?“ To help you solve this puzzle, we invited media strategist Peter Panepento to join us. Peter is the principal at Panepento Strategies, a full-service content, digital, and social-media strategy consultancy serving many prominent nonprofit clients: Guidestar, National Center for Family Philanthropy, and the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

We speak with author and fundraising consultant Ellen Bristol. Bristol’s effective fundraising counsel is the result of 4 decades of experience and data from over 1,000 nonprofits that completed the Leaky Bucket Assessment. This innovative online assessment measures nine key practices that contribute to or detract from your fundraising efforts, which are summarized in her book "The Leaky Bucket: What's wrong with your fundraising and how you can fix it".

Our world has changed dramatically in the last 24 hours. The morning of election day, the New York Times indicated that Hillary Clinton had a 90% chance of winning, but last night Donald Trump won the Presidential election. Many of us woke up this morning to an unexpected outcome and wondered, “How will this impact my family, my city, and my state”. For those of us leading and advising nonprofit organizations, we undoubtedly also wondered “what will this mean for my organization”? For this reason, I reached out to my alma mater: the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University, which is known for bringing the lenses of public policy, social work, criminology and economics into focus. Since they have the premiere public policy program in the region, I knew they could offer an expert to help us make sense of the new realities nonprofits might face. Within hours, the Dean had connected me with Associate Professor Janelle Kerlin. Her research focuses on the politics and policies related to nonprofit development and operation. Dr. Kerlin holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, a graduate social work degree from Columbia, and was a Research Associate at the Urban Institute. Our interview covers the following: Nonprofits are non-partisan but historically how are they been impacted by politics and the outcomes of elections? What impact will the Trump Administration likely have on government funding for nonprofits? Trump has said he is the only one who can fix the tax system. How might changes impact foundation giving or individual giving? How might Trump’s major campaign platforms on immigration, terrorism, and health care impact people who often use nonprofit-run social services? How will they impact international NGOs? Generally speaking, when will nonprofits begin to be impacted by these trends? How can nonprofits best prepare themselves to thrive over the next 4 to 8 years?

We spoke with nonprofit consultant Eleanor Boyd this week about the first two stages of the nonprofit lifecycle: infancy and adolescence. We discussed not just the key characteristics of infant (or start-up) organizations, but also the strategic steps organizations can take to transform themselves into more stable adolescent organizations.

When Executive Director Bill Lutz dramatically improved his organization's strategy, execution, and culture by creating a quarterly pulse survey. He tells us all about the survey in this episode.

Many of us (including this podcaster) start their career without thinking about their personal brand. But how we brand ourselves professionally shapes our career for years to come. In every stage of a nonprofit professional’s career offers opportunities to brand yourself based on your competencies, core values, and vision. To help us better understand how to brand ourselves, we spoke with Kristin Battista Frazee, who is truly a renaissance woman. Holding an MSW from Columbia University, she has been a geriatric social worker, legislative assistant at a Capitol Hill lobbying firm, published magazine and book author, marketing consultant, and personal branch coach for social and human service professionals. Our Featured Conversation included how to • Recover from low-points in a career • Make a positive lasting professional impression when leaving a job • Become comfortable with self promotion and personal branding • Build your brand online • Develop a classic elevator pitch in alignment with your core audience of potential employers • Find opportunities to promote yourself that is reflective of your values • Elevate your brand by writing for trade journals and presenting on your area of expertise

Today’s Featured Conversation is with CenterLink CEO Terry Stone, who has fun almost every day at work while building his national organization. In just a few months, Terry will retire from a long and meaningful career as a nonprofit executive. He had an interesting path to the top job, and proved himself a skilled leader. Since his first executive director, Terry has been a CEO at several different organizations As tribute to a true nonprofit leader, I asked Terry if we could have a conversation about a career well spent that would include advice for building your own career with intentionality and meaning. He offered five specific tips for a successful and meaningful career: ➢ Surround yourself with people who know more than you ➢ You’re going to make mistakes ➢ Learn each other’s work and communication styles, as well as what you each need to make decisions ➢ Get rid of the words: “I’m too busy…” ➢ Have fun! Terry and I dive deep into each of these tips, but also discuss discerning whether an organization is the right fit for you, managing productive board relationships, building stronger boards, and getting things done.

Today’s episode focuses on women-led philanthropy. For far too long, nonprofits and fundraisers neglected the power of women donors. According to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, female-headed households are more likely to give to charity and these women typically give more than their male counterparts. While many organizations are doing an abysmal job of cultivating women donors, some organizations are held up as shining examples. The United Way of Salt Lake is one such organization, which started a Women’s Leadership Circle and actively worked to cultivate female donors. This donor circle has grown tremendously and today boasts over 235 women each giving at least $1,500. To say the least, we wanted to learn more about how United Way Salt Lake cultivates and supports its female philanthropists and had the following conversation with Zenia Frendt, the staff person responsible for this important the Women’s Leadership Circle

The case for support isn’t just a tool for capital campaigns. As fundraising expert Linda Lysakowski notes, the case for support is an essential tool that ensures consistency among all fundraising and marketing efforts. Linda, who has trained over 30,000 fundraising professionals through her seminars and authored over a dozen books on the topic, shares her insight and expertise on developing and using the case for support. A few highlights of the conversation included: • Delegating just one author while including a variety of voices in the process • Using both emotion and reason in writing the case for support • Ensuring the case statement is written from a fundraising perspective (not just a marketing perspective) • Avoiding jargon and technical terms in the case statement • Helping all staff understand and communicate the case for support