This Week: Your One-Page Strategic Plan In a lot of ways, we can see typical strategic planning as a flawed process. Veronica LaFemina shares a more collaborative endeavor, with more staff collaboration and stakeholder inputs, resulting in a more actionable plan with greater decision-making value. She’s the CEO of LaFemina & Co. There’s more at ton…

This Week: Your Strategic Partnerships Local nonprofits, companies, government officials and agencies, business leaders, and others can improve your outcomes in ways you cannot imagine. Taking the time to build relationships with potential partners—before you need them—makes a smart investment in your mission and programs. Mark Lillis from Leaven K…

This Week: How We Got Here It’s the story of the unpredictable trajectory that led to today’s U.S. nonprofit sector. How did we come to be what we are? The history is told by Dr. Robert Penna, author of the book, “Braided Threads.” (This originally aired August 3, 2018.) There’s more at tonymartignetti.com…

This Week: Tech Policies To Reduce Toxic Productivity First, what is toxic productivity? Then, as your teams use technology more often for work, how might your practices be hurting the people who work with you? Finally, what are the better practices and policies? It’s all covered by Marina Martinez-Bateman, at New Coyote Consulting. (This originall…

This Week: Grants Readiness & Success DeaRonda Harrison helps you get ready to accept grants and shares strategies for successful grants research, writing and outcomes. Also, how to win grants quickly (it shouldn’t take years!); how to turn a one-time grant into multiyear funding; and her recommendations for grant research platforms. DeaRonda is th…

This Week: AI, Organizational & Personal Artificial Intelligence is ubiquitous, so here’s another conversation about its impacts on the nonprofit and human levels. Amy Sample Ward, the big picture thinker, the adult in the room, contrasts with our host’s diatribe about AI sucking the humanity out of nonprofit professionals and all unwary users. Amy…

This Week: Quantitative Fundraising Research You can stop relying on conventional wisdom passed on through webinars and conferences. There’s a plethora of quantitative research on how to optimize storytelling to get your best fundraising outcomes. What is social emotion, how do you evoke it and why should you? How much story detail is not enough or…

This Week: Board Members Are People Too One size fits all rules may not make sense for your board, especially if you’re embracing diversity and equity in board membership. Judy Levine is a longtime board coach, trainer and consultant, and she led Cause Effective for 17 years. She’s now an independent consultant. This originally aired August 15, 202…

This Week: A Different Take On Donor Retention Most donor retention research is on process. Like, get your acknowledgment letters out within 24 hours. Kerry Hecht’s research takes a fresh look at how to keep folks with you. She shares her thinking on getting people to donate time (volunteering), and donating through purchases. Kerry is CEO of 10k H…

This Week: Community & Engagement Michelle Boggs shares her thinking on creating community and expanding engagement across your donors and volunteers. How might a Chief Community Officer help? Also, what your nonprofit can do to improve fundraiser retention, which helps you build solid relationships and community. Michelle is with Classy, the nonpr…

This Week: “Empowering Women” Jenny Mitchell’s new book, “Embracing Ambition,” unites the leadership stories of twelve exceptional women CEOs. The result is a mentorship resource for the current and next generation of women leaders. She shares the challenges, including perception barriers, glass cliff assignments and collective vision. Jenny is chi…

This Week: “The Responsive Nonprofit” That’s Gabe Cooper’s new book. He walks us through the 8 core practices that will disrupt the status quo and make your nonprofit responsive. Like dismantling silos, adopting agile methods, managing change, building a durable team culture, and more. Gabe is CEO of Virtuous. There’s more at tonymartignetti.com…

This Week: Get Heard In The Election Season Peter Panepento returns with savvy advice about getting your messages heard through crowded, noisy channels for the rest of this year. He urges you to prepare your messaging, prepare to pivot away from that messaging, and more. Plus, the value of journalist relationships. Peter comes to us from Turn Two C…

This Week: High ROI Development & Marketing Communications Teams You want these two teams—fundraising and marcomm—to align every fundraising hour with its maximum dollars. You want these teams to have the time to secure investment level gifts. And you want them to secure the unrestricted gifts you need to grow and sustain your mission. Sherry Quam …

This Week: “How To Thrive When Work Doesn’t Love You Back” That’s Meico Marquette Whitlock’s new book, and he returns to share his wisdom. The Mindful Techie has advice like honor your priorities; negotiate your boundaries; embody your well-being; mind your meds; and quite a bit more. There’s more at tonymartignetti.com…

This Week: 700th Show! It’s Nonprofit Radio’s 700th show and 14th Anniversary. To celebrate, co-host Claire Meyerhoff brings “Claire’s Quiz.” We have our associate producer, Kate Martignetti, live music from Scott Stein, and our contributors Gene Takagi (law), and Amy Sample Ward (technology), are also on board. Also, our sponsors Donorbox and Virt…

This Week: Exploit Conflict & Intuition To Make Better Programs & Products Our panel from the 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference is Drew Nelson, Cassi Johnson and Eve Lacivita. They explain how to add conflict resolution and intuition-driven strategies into your program and product development. Drew is with the City of Saint Paul, MN; Cassi is at…

This Week: Improve Your Communications With AI Carlos Morales, from Viva Technology, shares how to use specific ChatGPT prompts to accelerate your written drafts; optimize your messaging for clarity and audience; and, personalize your outreach as you maintain a consistent voice, tone and brand. All through artificial intelligence. (This was recorde…

This Week: Use Your Tech To Enable Generosity Our panel encourages you to expand your definition of generosity and how you measure it, to better acknowledge diverse forms of giving. They help you facilitate generosity through your data, tech and business processes. They’re Jamie Mueller with PTKO; Peter Genuardi at See the Stars; and, Natania LeCle…

This Week: The Essential Craft Of Leaving Your Job This provocative panel shares their real stories to inspire you if working at your job, isn’t working for you. They recommend you leave well, and share their advice for your handover plan along with tips for setting up your successor or team for future success. They also help you manage your emotio…

This Week: Gen Z Career Challenges After a deeply personal episode, Ray Sherry devoted himself to helping Gen Z’ers—like the one who saved his life—with their careers. He channels his 40 years of experience in financial services and consulting to share his advice, so younger professionals take charge of their careers. Ray is CEO of Zynd. There’s mo…

This Week: Future-Proof Your Nonprofit With Apps, Tools & Tactics Jason Shim and Meico Marquette Whitlock return from the 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference, with their annual collection of tech to help you manage your tech. From collaboration to inbox management, from transcription to hidden Zoom tools, this panel will help you find greater bala…

This Week: Your Four-Day Work Week This 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference panel introduces you to the national campaign for a 32-hour, 4-day work week. They’re the executive director of the campaign, a company that made the switch and a nonprofit that did, too. They’re Vishal Reddy from Work Four, Karim Bouris with Mixte Communications and Patti…

This Week: Strategic Meetings For Teams Of One As our 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference coverage continues, Janice Chan returns with the savvy idea of adapting team meeting principles to a team of just one. She’ll have you thinking of yourself as a team leader, rather than one person doing everything. Janice is at Shift and Scaffold. Cyber Incid…

This Week: Sociocracy It’s a new form of decision making you might want to try out. Justin Birdsong from Skeleton Key Strategies introduces us to circle structures, domains and aims, and linking roles, as he acquaints us with this more equitable and inclusive, sociocratic decision making method. (Recorded at the 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference…

This Week: Experiential Fundraising Let’s take lessons from the experience economy to create meaningful, memorable experiences for your donors. Brittan Stockert, from Donorbox, walks us through her thinking on events, membership programs, challenges, sponsorships, and more. There’s more at tonymartignetti.com…

This Week: Prompt Engineering For Beginners Our 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference coverage continues. This panel explains how to get the most out of the generative Artificial Intelligence tools when you write your cues, or prompts, to them. You want ChatGPT and their ilk to serve you best, so here’s wisdom from Nyle Malik and Alfredo Ramirez, th…

This Week: Acquiring Email Leads On Social This 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference conversation helps you ensure your email acquisition efforts are targeting those interested in your work. You can incentivize your social audiences so they’ll willingly share their emails and you can measure the success of your acquisition campaigns. Melanie Schaff…

This Week: A Step Back On Artificial Intelligence Beth Kanter and Philip Deng urge you to consider the ethical challenges your nonprofit should grapple with before fully adopting generative AI in your work. They’ve got advice for an ethical use policy and guidelines for training. Beth is an author, master trainer and facilitator. Philip is CEO of G…

This Week: The Generational Divide Across the generations, people think about work differently. They all have different needs. They all bring different skills. They work for different reasons. They communicate in different ways. But they have one thing in common: Every generation wants to be heard and respected. Miriam Dicks helps you manage across…

This Week: Email Deliverability In our age of rampant spam and artificial intelligence, you need to know how to give your emails the best chance of getting delivered. What are DMARC, DKIM and SPF, and how do they help with deliverability? This 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference panel is Jamie McClelland, Natalie Brenner and Alice Aguilar, all fro…

This Week: Avoid Technical Debt Our 24NTC coverage continues, to help you avoid crushing tech debt that would bust your budget and cause you a big headache. Our panel encourages you to manage and maintain your IT infrastructure and software so that costs are managed. They’re Jagan Narayanan, from Fourth Dimension Technologies, and the tech speaker,…

This Week: Living Our Values The first of our 24NTC conversations is with our technology contributor and the CEO of NTEN, Amy Sample Ward. They give us the numbers around the conference, and remind us to walk the walk on our nonprofit’s values, including centering equity. Healing Over Everything Wellness in your workplace. Is that a value your nonp…

This Week: Artificial Intelligence For Nonprofits, Redux A second savvy panel takes on the impact, leadership demands, promises, responsibilities, and future of AI across the nonprofit community. We convened a panel in June last year. But this is an enormous shift in nonprofit workplaces that deserves another look. This panel is Justin Spelhaug, fr…

This Week: Election Year Activities In this presidential election year, everything related to politics is prohibited, right? Not so fast. It’s not that simple. There are actions you can take, including lobbying on ballot measures. As long as you follow the rules. There’s no one better to explain those rules than Gene Takagi, our legal contributor. …

This Week: Publish Your Book, Thought Leader Thought leadership can be valuable to you, your nonprofit, or both. Publishing a nonfiction book is one way to become a thought leader or expand your credentials. From outlining and writing to publishing and marketing, Stephanie Chandler shares her personal experiences and professional wisdom. She’s CEO …

This Week: Your Partnerships With FGWs First Generation Wealth creators have different values and mindsets than those who inherited their wealth. And FGWs far outnumber the inheritors. Esther Choy’s research helps you understand these folks and how to build valuable relationships with them. She’s president of Leadership Story Lab. (This originally …

This Week: Frustrations & Opportunities With Jay Frost Jay returns to share his reflections on four decades in the nonprofit community. There are things he’d like to see us doing better, that the sector has been talking about for many years. But they haven’t changed much. Yet he remains optimistic, so he recognizes the brighter future that’s possib…

This Week: Overcome Your Fear Of Public Speaking We’d rather face death or the dentist. We’d rather talk about money or sex, than have to speak to an audience. Even a small one. Laurie Krauz can help you overcome your anxiety around talking in public, with her preparation strategies. She’s a presentation skills coach, who Tony worked with for years…

This Week: Zombie Loyalists Peter Shankman is a 5x best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker. His book “Zombie Loyalists” focuses on customer service; creating rabid fans who do your social media, marketing and PR for you. Peter’s book isn’t new, but his strategies and tactics are timeless. This originally aired 12/19/14. Ther…

This Week: Decolonizing Wealth Edgar Villanueva’s book, “Decolonizing Wealth,” takes an innovative look at the purpose of wealth. His thesis is that the solutions to the damage and trauma caused by American capitalism, including philanthropy—can be gleaned from the values and wisdom of our nation’s original people. He’s a Native American working in…

This Week: Team Engagement Tips The company Firespring uses unusual and fun strategies to engage their 185 employees, so everyone lives and celebrates the Firespring values—each day. We’re talking Firestarter meetings; Culture Club; Power of Three; and more. Kiersten Hill shares her employee experience to spark your thinking about team engagement. …

This Week: Performance Measurement There’s a systematic method for you to get feedback on your nonprofit’s finances; programs, clients; and employees. It’s both art and science. Bryan Shane explains this management and decision-making tool. He’s co-author of the book, “The Leadership-Driven Method to Performance Measurement.” There’s more at tonyma…

This Week: Our Esteemed Contributors’ 2024 Outlooks Amy Sample Ward and Gene Takagi kick off the New Year with what they’ll be keeping eyes on this year. They delve into artificial intelligence (AI); the presidential election; donor advised funds; workers’ rights; and more. Amy is our technology contributor and CEO of NTEN. Gene is our legal contri…

This Week: Lessons From The UPenn President’s Resignation Two weeks ago, the president of the University of Pennsylvania resigned, in large part because major donors to the University harshly criticized her publicly, withdrew their donations, and encouraged others to do the same. Can you prevent an uprising at your nonprofit? How do you manage one …

This Week: Lessons From The Sam Altman & OpenAI Headlines Our legal contributor, Gene Takagi, returns to first, unravel the story in his clear, plain language way. Then he shares his wisdom on the takeaways for nonprofits including good governance, proper documentation, gift acceptance, commercial co-ventures, and more. Gene is managing attorney of…

This Week: Misinformation & Disinformation Amy Sample Ward returns with their insights into what to do about these maladies plaguing our world. They reveal smart internal tactics to reduce the odds of your nonprofit’s info being misused by bad actors; what to do if it is; how to avoid your org itself being a source of misinformation; and a lot more…

This Week: Donor Surveys You’ll make the most of the donors you have by discovering their potential through surveying. Crystal Mahon and Christian Robillard talk principles, best practices and goal setting. Crystal is with STARS Air Ambulance and Christian is at Beyond The Bake Sale. People-Powered Movements This team helps you build more effective…

This Week: Your Case For Support Whether you call it a case statement or case for support, it’s a critical part of your next fundraising campaign. Febe Voth has devoted decades to the art of crafting these fine documents. She shares lots of savvy advice from her 2023 book, “The Case for your Cause.” There’s more at tonymartignetti.com…

This Week: Fundraising 401 That’s Laurence Pagnoni’s latest book. When this first aired, it was his new book, but Laurence’s strategies and tactics are timeless. It’s a series of masterclasses for all levels and a collection of revelations he gained over 35 years in nonprofit management and fundraising. (This originally aired May 29, 2020.) There’s…