0:00  
Hello, everyone, welcome to our continued dive into different perspectives from around the nonprofit sector on our exchange stage here at generosity exchange, I am pretty jazzed about this one. Community is such a core part of how we build what we're doing here at Neon One. And so we love finding people and aligning with people that do a really good job. And in my opinion, there's no one better than Louis here. So, Louis,

0:36  
Thank you. 

0:37  
Well, you're very, very good at it. Right. And so there's other examples like, you know, community centric fundraising and their Slack channel. But I want to kind of dive into what you're doing specifically with LinkedIn, and your broader community, because it's not just LinkedIn there. So tell us about the Donor Participation Project. We're going to tell people how they can join. But let's start with what who are you? And what is it like, let's start with the basics. Again, this is a quick hit folks. 15 minutes. 

1:08  
Okay, good. So we just have 15 minutes, I'm going to go straight for the meet, which is that we are a community and I've done a fair amount of research on community building, where it's kind of very recursive, we are a community about, you know, increasing donor participation, which has to do with community building, and kind of just to get to the goods, I define community, as when people get together in ways that are participatory, purposeful, recurring, and that identify leaders. And if you use that framework, which we apply to ourselves, you'll see how lots of the activities that we do at nonprofits kind of fall along that community building spectrum, right? So I recurring that recurring piece, lots of times we do wonderful events, they're meaningful, they're purposeful. You know, we'll get to the participatory in a second, right? But then they're not recurring. They're one offs because internal drama staff turnover, somebody else came up with a better idea or a board came up with a worse idea. So, you know, when you look at participatory a lot of what we do is sometimes very much one sided, right? So we're putting information out, we're not asking for feedback. And so that's super important. purposeful, sometimes we do something like a gala. And I know, Tim, you have opinions about galas, and

2:26  
which are evolving, I listened to a good podcast, also with red apple events. And Julia Campbell, that made me rethink it a little bit. But

2:34  
I mean, so in my set, and my perspective, like all of this can be done in a community oriented way. Right? So participatory, purposeful, recurring, identify leaders, same thing with giving Tuesday with crowdfunding with anything, you can do it in a very, you know, one directional kind of transactional way that, frankly, works less than this. Or you can do it, you know, in different ways that engage more people and engagement. So donor participation project, we started this out as a monthly meetup, which is our still our main thing we get together every month. It's a free open community, to discuss how to improve donor participation, we usually have a guest speaker. And it's kind of growing by leaps and bounds. It's over 2000 people signed up already. We have 80 to 100 people per call. We're doing other types of programs, we had a conference. So it's really open. We want to have you guys, Tim, at Neon One and everybody else who's listening to this.

3:27  
Yeah, please. And we'll have information in the session notes to be able to join. And and Lewis is always a great follow on LinkedIn. Especially because he helps source these types of conversations. So how did you go about designing the participatory framework? Like because that's a lot of work to do that. Yeah. So I know, you talked about research, but when you started moving into execution, what was important there?

3:54  
So it's sometimes really dumb things. So a nonprofit is doing something on Zoom. They're having a professor talk or researcher, you know, or a staff member, program, program director, talk, and then they decide to do it as a webinar, right? Because it's so messy to have feedback. And people, you know, what might people say? Well, you know, again, that's the whole point. So for instance, in the donor participation project, we've run all our Zoom get togethers as meetings, you know, so it really goes into the technology choices that you use. Our email is sending is actually a list serve. Why? Because people can respond and have a conversation as a group, they're, we're trying to find a little bit better solutions.

4:38  
I'm just gonna say like, where's listserv technology now? Because Because,

4:43  
yeah, exactly. I mean, what we're kind of evolving. This is all an experiment. We're trying to evolve those conversations into a new platform, a q&a site that we created called the ask, because a lot of that that back and forth, was very much for People like if you're interested, it's the most valuable thing in the world. But if you're not interested, it's kind of more stuff in my inbox. So. But anyhow, I think, you know, you're trying to inform all your technology choices from this framework, is it participatory, purposeful is does it help me be participatory, purposeful, recurring, you know, and then the Elevate other people, or events platform we use, when I really like, although, you know, we're not related in any way or tied to it, but it's called Luma. I don't know if you know, it, again, very much helps with participation, it automatically sends feedback. So you've asked for feedback, after all your events, turn that into a continuous business process, you know, don't make that like that. One more thing that you have to remember that you always forget. So to answer your question, kind of all over the place, we do try to live by these values.

5:51  
Well, and the values themselves, how do you use that to drive people's interactions with each other from a place of respect, right? If somebody disagrees, you always see these like, this is why Facebook groups to me freaked me out in terms of there's like this kind of cyclical, like, like it just kind of like crashes sometimes because it gets out of hand and people get into arguments and stuff like that. How have you tried to have respectful debate, while still maintaining that transparency, as well?

6:29  
Okay. The first thing you get when you sign up to DPP is a link to our culture and values document and an invitation to get back in touch with us. If you have questions. I'm going to read them off the website right now, please. We're remote. Okay. We welcome multiple viewpoints, diverse teams, when we believe in diversity is a way to generate better ideas and avoid bad ones. Number three challenge but with care, we encourage members to find ways to respectfully challenge others and be open to challenges of your own views. And then we have some actual examples. As about, you know what that looks like. And when we're actually having a conversation,

7:06  
we developed a community Code of Conduct because we were starting to scale the conversations that we had and things like that, and then I'll definitely want to take a look at yours. I based ours off of what antenne had done. I think they did a very similar good job at like creating that that transparent space in a digital environment because it's so hard. Right? So I love that. Yeah, go ahead.

7:30  
No, no, all of this is recursive. How did we do this? We put we had a group a community session, we talked about it, we put up a Google Doc, and we had the entire community weigh in through comments. So again, participatory.

7:42  
Well, so what's what's the proudest initiative? Besides the whole thing? What's the proudest like, executional thing that you've done in let's see the past six months?

7:54  
I was gonna say things that are gonna happen. them do that.

7:58  
That's fine. It's your it's your, it's your community. You tell us you tell us what are you excited about?

8:03  
Okay, I will answer your question. We did a conference that was for a group of people who are not as experienced as you are, you know, I think it was quite an achievement to pull that off as a group of volunteers. Right? We have the ASK, which we just launched in a week, we already have people asking and answering a really kind of love that

8:21  
name, by the way. I love that name. That's a great name. It's a really good name.

8:26  
Well, okay. Okay, folks, I mean, you know, we all know what in higher ed the copy and steal everything. So I, you know, fine. And then we have a kind of semi top secret, or else I wouldn't be speaking about it, but to provide. We've been running some pro bono projects that I'm really excited about. And to have our community members help nonprofits in very specific targeted ways that you know, provide a lot of value within maybe like a two to three week timeframe. So we're looking at scaling that maybe not always having it be pro bono. But you know, excited to announce that and I think that's kind of a logistical, operational thing that is pretty big.

9:11  
Now. It wouldn't be so we have to at least touch on also the video game work that you've been doing to look folks I just literally established this right before we started called, I just got this new chair. Right. Like just yesterday I it's a video game share I got from Staples. And so you've actually been kind of charting out some some really exciting events as it relates to even video games, which is such like, a really good example of when it's done well of community, because there's that there's toxic elements there, but when it's beautiful and brings people together. So tell us about how that's fusing with the fundraising world a little bit more.

9:55  
Yeah, absolutely. So I think you hit on the nail on the head then it's a There are communities being built digitally right now in video games around video games around streaming around eSports. And that's people that get together regularly, sometimes around the purpose because these communities are very philanthropic, generally they are, you know, and these people know each other. So one of the first comments I got when we started talking about video games was Isn't this like very, you know, just another transactional gimmick? And I said, Well, actually, the reason we went into that is because it isn't. Okay. So there, there are people doing this, that, you know, their charities and nonprofits being that are getting heavily involved and, you know, invested into this. And we felt that because of those, like, you know, that combination of communities being built, and, you know, philanthropic communities being created, that lots of nonprofit professionals could benefit from learning about this. So what did we do, we put out a call in the group, you know, in our community, it turns out, we have like five world class experts that are building these programs, St. Baldrick's Foundation, Make a Wish Canada, the USO. And we had a chat, and we put on a course. And that course is wrapping up this week. So we're at the end of September when we're, you know, recording this time. But we look forward to having more like you never know when these things will go. And as people listen to this, if you're interested, do send us a note, it will give us kind of, you know, fire to keep going,

11:28  
What's some of the anecdotal or even hard data impacts that you've seen of the community itself. Because a lot of times when people hear this, it's like, yeah, but I have to choose what I'm going to spend my time on, why would I do this? What are people getting value out of joining the, the participation project.

11:48  
So people join, because it's a networking opportunity, because it's a career development, you know, tuning into new stuff, and because it really does help to connect with other people who are going through your same struggles and challenges, you know, in a kind of respectful way. Anecdotally, every time we get a call, we have new promotions in the group. So just somebody now with this new VP of advancement at some, you know, school, it I don't know if that's just the profession where people change all the time? Or is it that we're kind of self selecting people that want to improve themselves and improve their organizations? So I would say what I mean, what's most interesting is that applying these principles to a nonprofit, and I did that at Muhlenberg College, where I was previously working, and we have people in social services that are telling us stories, it's the those kind of incredible effects really, that it's having. So like donor retention, going up, increased gives really good fundraising years. Things like we talked about lurkers all the time, so you do these things, and then nobody shows up. Just be aware that people are seeing it and are being impacted by it. And then we have all these stories about people showing up. Oh, I love how you invited me to those town halls, I couldn't come to any but here's $100,000. You know. So I do invite everybody to, you know, maybe start a conversation about doing more research in this in this direction. You know, this link between that deep type of engagement and giving. I have done some, but we need a lot more, I think, you know, to turn to type. 

13:25  
And I think that nonprofit professionals, especially. So our audience is small shop organizations, not necessarily higher ed, but the reason that I was so excited to bring you on here besides, I think that they could get a lot out of this professional development too, is there's there's things that you can be inspired by to also drive that type of community building within your donor base to it's not just talking to other professionals. Yeah, it's so so that's why I think it's I'm so grateful that you were able to join us at generosity exchange, if people want more, we're doing it. We're hitting our time, man, we're hitting our time. If people want to join, they want to participate. Say it audibly. We'll be putting it into the session notes. But where can they find out more information?

14:18  
Super easy. Join dpp.org Check us out, see our programming, if you are interested, sign up. That's about it.

14:26  
Love it. Love. It was thank you so much for your time today. And I know that this is going to be a evolving thing. And that's what's so beautiful about it is that you build in public. And I think that's that's why there's such a great values alignment between what we're doing because that's how we're all going to get through this folks. We're going to thrive by building in public because that's what our donors want. That's what our sector needs. And we have to collaborate in order to do that. So love it.

14:55  
A beautiful thing. Thank you. Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai