Using the Whole Whale - A Nonprofit Podcast

Voter Engagement Can’t Be One-and-Done | Voter Empowerment Project

Interview with Dave Chandrasekaran, Co-founder and Executive Director of the Voter Empowerment Project. VEP leverages skilled volunteers to help front-line community-based organizations that work on voter engagement. Dave shares how they engage volunteers to support communities over time rather than just every 2 years. 

 

Learn how trust was built with CBO's over time and how skill-based volunteering is creating amazing impact. 

 

The Voter Empowerment Project (VEP) is a grassroots initiative that launched in November 2019 and mobilizes individuals to support voter turnout in high-need areas. VEP’s network of volunteer professionals provides remote technical assistance to small, high-impact, front-line organizations that mobilize voters in historically disadvantaged communities.

 

Find VEP on:

• https://twitter.com/EmpowerVoters 
• https://www.instagram.com/empowervoters/ 
• https://www.facebook.com/empowervoters 
• Volunteer here

 

 

Rough Transcript

 

[00:00:00] We have a very timely guest on with the midterms coming up. We reached out to the voter empowerment project, voter empowerment.org, voter empowerment.org, and we found none other then the co-founder and executive director Dave Chandresakaran to join us on the podcast.

[00:00:46] Dave, how is it? It's going great, George.

[00:00:48] Thanks so much for having me on.

[00:00:51] Well, I could imagine, I don't know, a million other things that you are racing to do as we approach such a important time in American Politic, but I maybe we could start with your story. How did, how did this begin? I, I know 2019 was the year, but maybe you

[00:01:08] can bring us back.

[00:01:09] Sure. Our founding was back in 2019, but it really was inspired by some experiences several of us had in 2016. And I, along with many of my colleagues who are here based in the DC area, we like to every election cycle go knock on doors and go phone bank, and we try to recruit as many of our friends and colleagues to come and do the.

[00:01:30] And so in 2016, many of us were in Pennsylvania. And on, on one day I was in South Philadelphia knocking on some doors, predominantly African-American neighborhood. And there was an older black gentleman who answered the door in one case and had no interest in voting. And he explained that was because quote, you people come here every four years, you yell at us to go vote and you leave because you don't give a damn.

[00:01:52] That's something that when I tell that story, often everyone in the room nods their head. They've all experienced that when they're doing election related work. But I think the problem was as I spoke to some of my colleagues in the campaign sector, they said, You know, that's what happens. You talk to 10 million voters and you upset 2 million of 'em.

[00:02:07] It's just collateral damage. And I think as we experience what happened to people, especially communities of color after the 2016 election and for the years afterwards, a lot of people were absolutely suffering, especially people of color. And when we approached 2020, I really didn't wanna perpetuate that situation of having out of towners, parachute into black and brown neighborhoods and just tell them what to do and then leave.

[00:02:31] And so we really, were brainstorming in 2019, how can we still activate volunteers from around the country, but do so in a way that's more respectful, that's gonna have, you know, meaningful impact and really values the communities we're talking to. And so we recognize that. Hundreds or thousands of really small, amazing non-profits out there that are doing this work.

[00:02:52] And they do it year round and they're based in the community. They reflect the community. They work not just on elections or voter empower, empowerment or civics. They also work on housing and healthcare and education and criminal justice reform. So they just have far more trust in their communities, but a lot of them are under.

[00:03:10] And so we thought, why don't we find volunteers from around the country, all of whom are just really smart and have a lot of skills, and let's go to these fall nonprofits and let's say, Hey, if you have access to our network of just really smart people, what could we do for you? And so that morphed into this model where we kind of became a pro bono consulting firm for small organizations that were at the front lines of helping get out.

[00:03:32] That's

[00:03:32] so interesting cuz you hear this, You know, you people come here every four years and tell us to go vote. It's like there's this giant voter apparatus, this amazing engine that gets revved up with the order of billions of dollars and then disappears, vanishes overnight. and it in one way makes complete sense.

[00:03:55] It, it seems like there's just like a lack of feedback loops because I imagine the other side of the narrative, the people that are working for progressive change in these neighborhoods say, Well, well, well, yeah, well, we're going to do the work. Didn't you see that, this or that, or the things that happen, How do you view the, the underlying problem here?

[00:04:12] I've labeled it as a feedback loop, but clearly that's over.

[00:04:15] Sure. So if you think of the sort of electoral industrial complex, it's a multi-billion dollar industry that pops up every two years, every four. I recognize that for better, for worse, that's how our electoral system works. It's donors going to campaigns to political action committees, and then hundreds of millions of dollars spent mostly on advertising, on networks and digital space.

[00:04:37] And the whole goal is either to persuade people to vote for your candidate or to eventually get them to come out to vote. And that's not gonna change any time soon. But for those of us who want to participate in a way that's maybe. We have built our model recognizing that there's amazing groups who do this work, who can help build trust among folks who are disenfranchised, who've really been left behind and can earn their trust.

[00:05:00] When we then go and say, Hey, we'd love for you to register to vote. If you aren't, or we know you're registered, we'd love for you to go and exercise your right to vote. And what can we do to help you if there's barriers because of voter suppression laws, because of the difficulty in finding your polling place because you move.

[00:05:14] and I wish there was more emphasis on that to the larger, broader industry that's working on elections to realize that investing in these groups and doing so not just every two years or four years, but year round, that really helps a lot of these groups report that's funding comes, you know, the summer before an election.

[00:05:30] There's all this beltway influence on them of what they need to do with strings attached to the funding and then it disappear. So they hire people and then have to fire people and then find new ones again. And then, you know, and one thing I'm very thankful of is that a lot of the philanthropic community who cares about civic engagement and democracy have really moved more to this longer term investment in these kinds of organizations, multi-year grants that are big enough that they can hire and train quality staff, that they can use some of that money to invest in the community through outreach and events.

[00:06:01] And I think that is having an. But I'll be honest, as you know, the rise in voter suppression in many states around the country is making the task of helping people vote all the more difficult, You know, dozens of laws have been passed in, in many, many states that are specifically targeted at help, making it harder to vote, especially for people of color and other disfranchised communities.

[00:06:21] So I do hope that the larger industry that cares about voting rights will really look at how we invest that. and the support, not just episodically, but year round over the long term, and helping these groups really expand their impact over time.

[00:06:37] I do wanna get more into how you are working with volunteers, training them, placing them, connecting them.

[00:06:44] But I'm also curious because there's a sizeable voter engagement and, you know, midterm circus going on right now. I know you're focused on the overall, like how do we build over time, But I have you in this moment. What is top of mind for you right now? What are you looking for as we roll into what's gonna be a very noisy week

[00:07:05] politically?

[00:07:06]

[00:07:06] Our model has two. One is helping amazing small, high-impact organizations working at the state and local level who are mobilizing communities of color and rural Americans and returning citizens and first time voters and young people, and we want to really help them expand their impact.

[00:07:24] The second objective though, is activating more people in civic engagement, and so we really prioritize creating volunteer opportunities that are more accessible and meaningful and engaging. For people who otherwise wouldn't get involved. And in fact, in our first year of operations, over 80% had only participated in less than three campaign cycles.

[00:07:46] 40% had never been involved. So we see that as our mission in addition to helping frontline work. And where that really comes in this year though, is what many people are noticing traditionally in midterm election. The enthusiasm among voters and the enthusiasm among volunteers and the enthusiasm among donors is just significantly lower than presidential years.

[00:08:07] And I can honestly say that 2020 probably had the most attention compared to, you know, decades of elections. And I think we all understand why it was a very intense election. There was very vitriolic. But that really has had an impact on us when we're trying to find more people to participate as volunteers.

[00:08:21] It was much more difficult this year compared to 20. So that was huge lessons in what we need to do in a year on fact function of engaging volunteers, building opportunities that will keep them involved, keep them enthusiastic and make sure that they're available to support these groups in a year round fashion.

[00:08:38] Since that's the one, one of the most important things, I think we're seeing that the vitriol and, and devices and politics is not going, not going away anytime soon. And that certainly motivates some people. But there was a lot of people who were volunteers with us and a lot of the groups we. They just really care about helping people get out to vote.

[00:08:54] It doesn't matter whether you're liberal or conservative, it doesn't matter, you know, where the voter is in the country. Everyone should be able to exercise their right to vote, especially those who've been disenfranchised. And I think that's been a huge selling point to a lot of the volunteers that we talk to, rather than door knocking or phone banking and talking to strangers on the phone.

[00:09:11] And, you know, that's a very difficult circumstance difficult activity, and frankly, not everyone's good at. . But instead of that they can use their existing skills helping really amazing frontline groups and the staff they get to interact with. It's, it's just a much more pleasant experience. And so we certainly hope despite lower enthusiasm in these quote unquote off years, we wanna figure out how we can grow our impact in recruiting volunteers so that we're delivering for the groups that we're helping.

[00:09:33] That makes sense. And so, Maybe you could say a bit more about, I think on a macro level, I will also say that we've seen a, a decrease in, in volunteers. There are, you know, big picture things like employment levels after effects of covid involved in this, as well as inflation costs of gas for transport.

[00:09:54] That volunteering in general seems to be on a bit of a decline. What is your hope though, when you recruit volunteers at this time of year? There's a sudden surge, albeit much lower than our every four year. This is an off cycle. What is your hope though, in, in raising the, the visibility of the voter empowerment project, in front of volunteers?

[00:10:18] I guess at this

[00:10:19] moment

[00:10:19] we are very much interested next year and focusing on understanding what motivates people to volunteer, what excites them about it, and what can we do. To earn their participation. So for example, we're really broadening our investment in professional development. So we recruit volunteers. The youngest was 14 in 2020.

[00:10:40] The oldest was much, much older. They are anywhere from students in high school and college to early career professionals, to executives, to retirees. But especially for the younger volunteers, we know that there's a way we can help them develop. Help them find mentors, help them as they advance in their careers or in their education.

[00:10:58] And so we really wanna highlight that. We wanna develop that more formally so that when we approach, you know, the masses we wanna recruit to volunteer, we can say this is something that you benefit from as well. So that it doesn't rely on people's political motivation or the intensity of an election cycle.

[00:11:11] It's just an opportunity that they see that's meaningful to them. We also want to convey that volunteering to help other people vote. Perhaps it's just something everyone should. For those of us who have an easier time to vote, maybe that's a way of giving back the way. Volunteering at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving, or helping to mentor young people in your nearby schools.

[00:11:31] Those are things that many of us have done over the years. This is something we all should just do and everyone can do it whenever you have time using your existing skills. We really believe that it doesn't matter what skills you have. Maybe you have graphic design, social media skills, data analysis.

[00:11:44] We need a lot of. But also just people who are really good at Googling information or really good at just writing and building information putting up to da the documents calling volunteers of a small nonprofit and getting them to come out to volunteer. There's a lot of ways people can help and, and it, so we're gonna spend a lot of time next year figuring out both what to offer and then how to take that message out to the public when we recruit volunteers.

[00:12:07] Yeah, it's a couple steps removed, I imagine, on off cycle years and timing. It is. Potentially tough to connect that, that impact, right? A volunteer who hands out and creates, you know, impact in a soup kitchen is very different than someone who builds capacity in a frontline voter empowerment organization on the ground somewhere doing, you know, as you mentioned, data analysis or marketing, pr, communications, research.

[00:12:38] You know, you're helping the people who are helping the people who are then going to vote. How, you know, are these times of year, maybe I'm getting into more specifically here, are these times of year easier because voting and the importance of voting is top of mind for recruiting volunteers? Or is it just so noisy that it is other sort of more, we'll say soup kitchen focused direct service on the ground, smile and dial types of volunteering that that overtake these.

[00:13:07] The first thing I'll say is we really wanna say there's no such thing as an off year. That voting is a thing we should think about always, regardless of whether it's midterm or presidential election. And in fact, in many places, your state or your local municipal government will have elections in odd numbered years.

[00:13:25] And there's many elections that happen. Some happen early in the year even. And so we want. Both voters understand the importance of coming out to vote, but also volunteers understanding the importance to volunteer throughout the year, throughout different cycles. And we recognize though that, that the larger narrative around what's happening, presidential election, you know, Democrats are Republicans, that's probably gonna motivate most people, but we really think that there were a lot of volunteers in 2020 who wanted to get involved, didn't know how, and once they did, they were really eager to come.

[00:13:56] Our post activity survey in 2021 showed that 97% were interested in volunteering again, and 86% said that they just had a deeper understanding of issues around voter disenfranchisement. And over 60% said that really helped them understand issues around racial injustice. And so we hope that once folks get in the door and they participate once that, they'll really come back.

[00:14:18] And we have seen that. But you're right, there's, there's, nothing's gonna make it easy to build enthusiasm at a time. People have been overwhelmed and traumatized by the pandemic and by other issues and political vitriol and criminal justice reform issues. So we wanna also be empathetic to that.

[00:14:33] Our big motto is that those who want to help, here's an opportunity for one way you can. And there's many, many ways you can help, whether it's in voting or other ways. We just wanna create a very attractive one for the people that it'll benefit and who who would like to, to get involved. And so that's really on us to make that volunteer opportunity attractive.

[00:14:51] And one of the things the volunteers really said, they appreciated volunteering in a nonpartisan way. They appreciated working with these frontline groups, most of whom are led by staff of color, who were just genuinely amazing people. And some of our volunteers built really great relationships with the staff of those groups on the ground, even if they lived a thousand miles away.

[00:15:10] Some of them joined the boards of these organizations. Some of them became direct volunteers for these organizations. Some of them became donors. So I really think that experience is one that makes it worthwhile and we hope to really amplify that message by saying, Here's this great opportunity not just to help the public, but really to help you as well.

[00:15:26] I really

[00:15:27] am interested in how you're crafting this volunteer experience. Clearly based on the, you know, exit polling, , the surveying that you're doing of volunteers that are, are part of. It is working. How many volunteers have gone through this process? Can you gimme an idea of some of the numbers and then as much as you can, Like what kind of impact can you tell these volunteers are having given the wide range of services that these volunteers are then providing to frontline

[00:15:56] organizations?

[00:15:58] Since the start of 2019 when we launched, we've had, you know, close to 500 people sign up, interested in volunteering. About a half of them eventually ended up participating, getting onboarded, getting involved in a project. But I'd say about 180 or so have been like really active in doing, in delivering services.

[00:16:15] And we certainly hope in the future to double or triple that number once we expand our capacity. We know. For most volunteers, it's really hard to balance their work commitments and other things going on in their lives during a pandemic childcare, a lot of you know a lot, and that's why we allow volunteers to volunteer when you have time.

[00:16:36] Do you have a couple hours this week? Great. If that's, if there's a project that needs someone to help edit a newsletter and you have time to do it, great. Do it. And then if you're busy for a month, that's okay. And when you're free again, come back and we'll offer what other projects are. We also want to make sure that the groups we're helping are able to receive our help without adding burden to them.

[00:16:54] And that's why one of the most important things we do is we manage the delivery of services. A lot of groups match people, They match volunteers to organizations, and I think that model absolutely works as well. But we wanted to be careful because. We didn't want the organizations to have to have an additional thing or additional person to have to oversee.

[00:17:12] So we just get the info from an organization. Let's say they wanna update their website, They want new information on their civic engagement page. They just don't have time to research it. They don't have time to upload it. We'll find a volunteer who can do the research. We'll find a volunteer who can then take that information and write copy to go on the website.

[00:17:26] And then we'll find a website expert who can then take it and put it up online, maybe a graphic design volunteer. We'll create some great graphics with it and add it to that webpage. And so, you know, multiple people are working on a. And we can get this done in maybe a week. And if folks want to go out and hire people, if they had the funds that could take, you know, three weeks just to sign the contract and then months of meetings, and then maybe it's update.

[00:17:47] So we really value our rapid response process to help these groups who are in need, who just don't have the time or capacity to do it in house. This is such an

[00:17:57] important point, and I'm really happy that we're turning towards it because I think there's this myth. All you have to do is point a volunteer at a nonprofit and boom, good things happen.

[00:18:08] Ignoring the amount, the amazing amount of project management, organizing, messaging, and generally corralling of volunteers to have an actual workable product created. Maybe you can dig a little bit deeper into how this actually works, because it sounds like you are effectively running an agency. That is leveraging volunteers to have finite

[00:18:36] deliverables

[00:18:37] that can be relied on by these organizations.

[00:18:42] Like, What, This sounds like a PM circus. What is going on? How are you doing

[00:18:46] this? So we often describe ourselves as a pro bono consulting forum for small, under-resourced voting rights organizations at the front lines of voter engage. But I think that sounds a little corporate. So we really consider ourselves an organization that gives free technical assistance in a way that is tailored to what an organization drives is their needs.

[00:19:08] But you're right, managing all of the different projects is an enormous hercule effort, and it's not insignificant. And that's one of the reasons we're really, you know, aggressively trying to raise more money from foundations, from donors, so that we can hire more staff. It really just comes down to. Good people who are organized, who can help recruit volunteers, who can help identify the great frontline groups that are doing voter engagement, and then who can help assign the volunteers of the work.

[00:19:34] But the most important is following up and making sure the services get delivered, especially since volunteers are donating their time. It's not like their staff, It's not like you have that ability to sort of really just directly have that authority to sort of order them to get certain things done.

[00:19:47] You're really asking for. , which is why we are very supportive in helping. Any time a volunteer needs help or needs information from the organization, we can help facilitate that if needed. Anytime the organization feels like a volunteer maybe isn't responding we'll step in and figure out what's going on and just wanna make sure that soup to nuts, everything gets done.

[00:20:06] And that's our really we pride ourselves in delivering things on time and in a satisfactory fashion. In a way that's equal to or better than what a private sector consulting firm would do because these groups deserve that. They don't deserve second tier service.

[00:20:21] We were talking with the podcast r i p, medical debt and how they turn $1 into a hundred dollars of leverage to alleviate medical debt.

[00:20:30] I see for voter empowerment dot. That you actually can, can claim that you are getting a three to one, right? You're getting matched on your generous founders, which is awesome. Can you explain maybe, is there a leverage where I donate $1 to essentially your amazing project managers there who are organizing all of these volunteers and these hours, Like what type of leverage do you see happening with dollars put into the organiz?

[00:21:02] Yep. I appreciate you bringing up our current fall fundraising campaign. Our, one of our board members has generously agreed to put up $10,000 in matching funds. She's gonna donate $200 for every donor who contributes this fall, and so we're very excited to be able to expand our impact by securing more funds that can both help us, you know, invest in hiring more staff, but also in different projects like our professional development program.

[00:21:31] That's gonna help create opportunities for skills training and mentorship for our volunteers as well as for staff at the partners, because a lot of our frontline partners said we really would love more professional development opportunities, but we also wanna see how we can leverage getting more financial and other types of resources to our frontline partners.

[00:21:48] And so, for example, in 2020, We recognized that a lot of our organization partners had never had voter file data before to help them target their messaging, target, their outreach, door knocking, et cetera. So we said, How can we help you access voter file data? And so we found some opportunities where they existed that were actually pretty affordable, but they didn't have it in their budget.

[00:22:07] So we were able to raise a bit of money from some donors to pay for that voter. But then we realized we have this voter file data. Well now you need to use text banking tools and phone banking tools, et cetera. And some of them didn't have that. And so we said, Okay, why don't for, you know, for the next three months, we'll pay for those services for you so you can get it off the ground.

[00:22:24] And then a lot of them had never done paid advertising on social media before, which is another key way to reach certain demographics. And so again, we were able to raise a bit of money to help them fund their digital marketing campaigns that we ran through volunteers, but we needed that tiny bit of money to help it get out the door.

[00:22:40] So that's another area where we're willing wanna expand our project to help support these organizations. And donor and foundation support is gonna be critical to.

[00:22:48] Yeah, there's a lot of leverage happening here. I, I don't know if it's even possible to say like, Oh, we do this many projects. This is the average size, this is the average output, or however it would come across.

[00:22:59] But this is a leverage play very clearly, where you are able to create the, the tool, get access to the data, and then. Offer it to organizations that need it the most, on the front line and also, you know, it seems like provide funding to them on occasion as well.

[00:23:16] Yeah, we've executed several hundred projects for the organizations and from a wide range.

[00:23:21] It could be revamping or redoing many of their websites and no critique to non-profits. But our websites are not known for being cutting edge . And we were fortunate enough to have several computer science students who then became graduates from Stanford, who were just amazing at this stuff. And we also created, you know, 50 to a hundred pieces of individual social media content, graphics, cap.

[00:23:43] That were plug and play for several organizations based on topics they described, or we analyzed voter file data for them to help them create targets of who they should go doorknob to, who they should phone bank based on the demographics and the zip codes that they wanted to focus on. Or we actually helped some groups figure out how to do volunteer recruitment better, so it could be anywhere from as simple as updating their volunteer signup form on their website to collect the information they need to better use their volunteers.

[00:24:10] To researching what are some great student groups in your area? Or if you need, say, volunteers who speak Korean or Vietnamese, let's find some networks of people who speak that. And then we would actually engage those organizations to recruit those volunteers to the frontline partners. So the projects were, were really diverse.

[00:24:25] And some would take an hour or three hours. Some would take, you know, once a week for, for three months to help execute. And it just, A broad range of ways. We help organizations and the, and create them in a way that volunteers who have different time, different skill sets and different interests can really plug in wherever they want.

[00:24:42] Yeah. This

[00:24:43] is, this is great. I'm, I feel like I'm being sold to become a volunteer. I'm like, Oh, I know how to do that. I could do that. I could, I know how this would work. Talk me through. I'd go, I would sign up on the form and then I'm contacted. I imagine I'm vetted to some extent. What would my experience be?

[00:25:00] And I guess maybe it also depends on the time of year, because right now, let's just be honest, , you're volunteering to like work for the next week. This is not the, you know, maybe the right flow, but big picture, if you care about voter engagement, it seems like a great use of, of energy and skill. So walk me through what that, you know, onboarding, What does it feel

[00:25:20] like?

[00:25:20] What does it look. Well first off, George, I absolutely would like to recruit you to come volunteer, and I know several groups have been interested in launching podcasts. Your expertise would be very, very well received. Oh, yikes. . So, in terms of the process you know, if you find our website, voter empowerment.org, you know, you can click there to sign up to volunteer, and.

[00:25:40] You know, you'll, we'll reach out to you pretty quickly and just say Thank you for volunteering. The signup form includes an opportunity for you to list what are the different skills you might have. It might be creative, like graphic design or social media or writing. It might be technical, like web design or data analysis.

[00:25:56] Or computer programming, or it might be sort of logistics, an administration, like helping to recruit volunteers or helping with backend HR operations. and we'll, we'll onboard volunteers just to give an overview of what the experience is like and we really get a sense of, well, what kind of time, you know, do you have now over time, over the year?

[00:26:16] And then we can add you to our list of volunteers based on the skill set you said you have. And as we approach organizations throughout the year and they share with us, Hey, right now I really need someone to help me draft some new social media content, we'll reach out to anyone who said they had social media expertise and say, Is anyone available to help this amazing.

[00:26:33] Asian Pacific Islander Outreach Group in Arizona or in North Carolina create some new social media content targeting youth from API backgrounds. . And so we see which volunteer might have both the skill set, but also the sort of experience in those communities that can help volunteer. And then we'll, we'll, you know, ma link the organization and the volunteer and we'll oversee the process, provide them with any information and support and check in as they, you know, create the social media content.

[00:26:59] We'll make sure it meets the needs of the partner, ultimately leading to creating, you know, a Google Drive full of content that the organization can, can use. And once that volunteer's completed, you know, we like to check in and see how things. and then the volunteers sort of able to come back whenever they, they are interested or if they get busy, they're, you know, we understand that and we, we, you know, give them their space cuz everyone has a lot going on.

[00:27:20] But it really is flexible, built around your, your availability, your skills, and your interests. The other thing we do is that we know some people might come in with a little bit of knowledge of something, but not a lot. And maybe they wanna enhance those. So let's say you're, you know, preliminarily good at some website design, or maybe you're someone who likes the, you know, you wanna learn more about fundraising.

[00:27:41] Well, maybe we'll pair you with a volunteer who's an expert in that on a project so you can get some sort of apprenticeship exposure. And we hope that you can develop those skills as a volunteer. Not just to be able to help other partners through v e P over time, but also that can add to your skill set as you develop your own career and can apply for jobs that look for those kind of skills.

[00:28:01] So like I said, we really want to invest in the people participating in the program as much as we're investing in the organizations we're serving.

[00:28:06] Yeah. That, you know, that makes, that makes sense in terms of just like the amount of time, like how much time is like, I'm gonna fill out this form. I'm like going through right now, I'm entering in my skills and the extra pieces that I can.

[00:28:18] You know, what is the amount of time before I would be potentially placed on a project? Or is it, it's like I get called in if the project arises that matches

[00:28:26] it. The volunteer can get invited whenever we have any project that seems to meet their skill set. So it might be that someone signs up and maybe they're someone who has video editing and video prediction skills.

[00:28:37] And at the moment there isn't an organization who needs that. Well, it might be, you know, we're not gonna reach out to that volunteer right away until we have that. But for many of the groups, they have such a broad range of needs for, for so many different skill sets that most volunteers have something that fits some project that's open.

[00:28:53] It can be as complex as doing some really sophisticated regression analysis of something, something through data, data tools, or it can be as simple as data. Just need to find out what is the demographic breakdown among 18 a plus year old in Milwaukee. Folks can just quickly research that and pull together and make it into a little, you know, worksheet that they provide to the partner.

[00:29:17] So for most volunteers, we really will have an opportunity right away. Now you did mention, you know, how about right now we're less than a week away from the election, and it's true that most things towards the election is already in motion. But one of the things the organization said very clearly is that when they need help is not only September through.

[00:29:37] Perhaps even more important, starting next year, January through next summer, the summer of 2024, that's when they have time to work on things, to take on new projects. That's when they really want to test out new tools or new ways of doing outreach. That's when they'd like to learn and take trainings on how to, they can improve their social media skills.

[00:29:58] So we really are aggressively inviting people to sign up, to volunteer right now while elections are on their. So they can help us out, you know, in November, in December, and into next year, which I think is gonna make or break voter turnout in 2024, if that's something people care about.

[00:30:13] The human

[00:30:14] response to emotion and disaster thinking and of the moment is gotta be so frustrating for you. We donate and we're triggered to donate to disasters, hurricanes, when they happen, and then the interest die. As well as the attention and then the commitment to it falls off. So it really does seem like when people are motivated in this window is, is when you would recruit the most volunteers.

[00:30:40] Is that accurate

[00:30:42] or do I have this wrong? It's a hundred percent accurate that people are certainly more motivated to donate or volunteer. In the moment in a crisis in response to a, a severe event, whether that's, as you mentioned, hurricanes like Katrina or the tsunami in Southeast Asia or it's in the aftermath of earthquakes or, you know, horrible, horrific mass shootings in the US And then certainly elections and 2020 was probably a hallmark sign of how so many people were interested in getting involved.

[00:31:11] And some found a way, but many didn't. And so we were one opportunity that many people got. And like I mentioned, a lot of folks said they appreciated our opportunity cause it was unique. It allowed them to use their existing skills and didn't put them outta their comfort zone and let them work with amazing small, frontline person of color led organizations.

[00:31:29] But I think that's the reality and I don't blame anyone for being reactive when it comes to their tism in their philanthropy or their volunteer time. I think that's just part of human nature. And that certainly was the case for me when I was younger and, you know, I evolved to become someone who really got.

[00:31:44] Year round. Volunteerism is a good thing, not just for the community, but for myself. And it can help me advance and grow as a person and in my career. So I take it upon ourselves to help educate the public that, you know, next year, next January, February, is as far away from an election cycle as you can be.

[00:32:01] That's gonna, you know, really be on people's minds, but that might be the best time to come. Volunt. And we want to earn folks interest in that by creating opportunities that are easy, that are meaningful, that are rewarding by investing their professional development. But really, we're gonna sit down with all of the frontline organizations we work with, and we work with over 30, and we hope to grow that we're gonna find out what do you need now in 2023 to help you grow?

[00:32:25] I wanna take that directly to the volunteers and say, I just heard from the most amazing frontline groups in Georgia and in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and Arizona, and in Texas and Florida, and this is what they say they need to succeed. And you have those skills to help it. So we're partnering, We're looking to do an impressive outreach with universities.

[00:32:44] For example, we've contacted about 300 universities in several of the states that we're working in, over the past couple weeks, thanks to our amazing interns who are working with us this fall. and we're talking to multiple student groups in those universities saying, We'd love for you guys to volunteer.

[00:32:58] We'd love for your students to apply to intern with us, and we'd love to invest in those students so that they're getting something out of this. And we think that'll be a huge opportunity to, to both support young people, but also create a pipeline among them to become future leaders. In civic engagement, we wanna reach out to mid-career professionals, so folks who might be lawyers or data analysts or web designers and say, This could be a very easy way for you to compli.

[00:33:23] what you're doing in your day job with a little bit of just rewarding altruism out there. And maybe that'll even help you build some connections and build relationships. And then there's a lot of executives and a lot of retirees who have enormous amount of skill, and especially the retirees have a lot of time on their hands.

[00:33:37] Mm-hmm. and saying, You know, here's a great way you can help positively impact our country at a time when democracy is. So I'm consciously optimistic that we'll be able to recruit more volunteers despite, you know, this year's lower enthusiasm as we really invest in what we think is gonna matter to the volunteers.

[00:33:54] One more important

[00:33:56] part of the puzzle, I mean, you're dealing with a two-sided marketplace, which is notoriously the hardest where you're finding volunteers, but also the projects, the types of projects structured in a way that are. Package so that a volunteer can actually plug in play. But more importantly, you mentioned the, the 30 community based organizations as I understand it, that, that you have and you have built trust with because you know that is really where the actual impact occurs.

[00:34:26] Maybe you can talk a little bit about how you recruit them, how you work with them to find those types of projects, and even like what is the most common project you see coming

[00:34:35] in 2020? Yep. In late 2019 and early 2020, I just researched, you know, civic engagement organizations in the many states we were focusing on.

[00:34:47] And I could tell you it was an enormous amount of research. I built a, a very impressive list of 300 plus organizations and I just called email . And then I had emailed them a second time and then a third time, and I got a response rate of maybe about 10%, but even that was 20 plus organiz. But I heard from one of our, you know, the first organization we work with, an amazing group in Michigan called API Vote Michigan.

[00:35:05] The director has since joined our board and, and she's lovely. Rebecca, she's just been an amazing partner. She told me, you know, I got this email from you for free help and communications and social media and web design. I just didn't think it was real. It seemed too good. Definitely fake. Definitely

[00:35:20] fake.

[00:35:20] Here's three. Yeah, sure. Where's the catch? Where's the, you? .

[00:35:25] And so you're right. We really had to earn the trust as a new organization that at the time was grassroots. We weren't incorporated at the time. We were just a, I always say we were just a bunch of nerds with the Google spreadsheet and we were eventually able to earn through, you know, having her on board, having a couple others during our pilot phase, having them be able to give us quotes that we used in our email outreach to other groups to show that we were real.

[00:35:45] And so over time we built up, you know, we built connections with several groups, but the most important thing that we learned from them was that they. Didn't wanna be told what to do. And I think that's a very common relationship between Washington, DC and community based groups. Out in the field is a very didactic relationship, and that's not what we were, We were very wanted to hear from them what their needs were.

[00:36:05] But the other thing they told us is that we would give 'em a list of ways we could help and they said, I didn't even know I could access voter file data, or I didn't even think about creating video ads to post on social media. So we didn't know what we didn't know until v p came and showed us the opportunities and that I really take pride in that we were able to help expand their scope of what they wanted to do to impact other entities out there.

[00:36:26] We were fortunate enough to then get incorporated. Last year we joined a fiscal sponsor that handles all our back ends and now, Formal non-profit c3. We have our web domain, we have our formal emails, so that really helps in our outreach now. And I can assure you I haven't had as much difficulty getting organizations reaching out to me lately.

[00:36:42] Many, many want help. And so we're actually in the opposite circumstance where we have so many projects that need to be done and not as many volunteers. Oh, interesting. Come all on. But again, I think that's the heat of the election cycle. Could we really ramped up in the summer and. And I hope next year as we are past the election cycle, we have a bit more time to both grow our volunteer network to invest in them, but also work with the organizations.

[00:37:03] You know, they don't need a three day turnaround on something after the election the way they do now. So after the election, we can take a writing project on, and it's okay if it lasts three weeks, or we can do a web design and it's okay if it lasts a month, and that'll just help increase the number of volunteers who can participate since it'll fit their schedule.

[00:37:19] That makes a lot of sense, but it also sounds like a lot of work. But that's where the leverage comes in, right? That right there is, you know, building that trust packaging, productizing the types of ways that, v e P can support via volunteers and, you know, then, then move those, those projects forward. I mean, it's, it's really impressive.

[00:37:41] And I will say I'm, I'm sold. I officially, I hope I don't offend you. I literally did. The whole submission of my, my form as a, as a potential volunteer. So, maybe I'll be doing a follow up on my actual experience, because this makes a lot of sense to me.

[00:37:55] I'm always satisfied and happy when I hear a new volunteer signs up close.

[00:37:59] Very exciting. And I, I am shameless in recruiting anyone and everyone in all of my personal, professional and social engagement. So, so I'm very thankful, for you to. I should have

[00:38:08] known when I entered into this, this podcast that this would be the net result. Before we move into the Rapid Fire, any final, final thoughts, notes on the upcoming midterms, the chaos confusion or what you see with the

[00:38:22] organization?

[00:38:24] Yeah, I'd say two things. One is, uh, someone who's worked both in the voter engagement volunteer side, but also on the policy side, trying to pass the Freedom to Vote Act this past year that. . I would argue that democracy is under attack now more than it's been in well over half a century, and I haven't been around for half a century.

[00:38:40] So I've consulted a lot of folks who ha were around when the Voting Rights Act and others Civil Rights Act were passed. And they absolutely agree that the vitreal and divisiveness we have now is, is very scary. And most importantly, the laws that were passed to disenfranchise the vote have made it so that it's becoming legal.

[00:38:58] To basically impede someone's constitutional right to vote. And so we really just hope people recognize that and are able to step up again with whatever they can. So my second point is when it comes to the voter empowerment project, we believe strongly that everyone can help in at least one of three ways.

[00:39:14] You can volunteer, you can donate, or you can share. Now we'd love for you to volunteer, but not everyone's schedule allows, or maybe that's not meet their interest. But then would you be considering making a tax deductible donation at $25 during our fall fundraising campaign where you know it's gonna get matched by 200 bucks?

[00:39:31] Uh, but if for, for some reason that's not possible either, can you just take our website and post it on social media? Say you heard it on this podcast, Sounded like a neat opportunity. Maybe you know, a few friends who have skills in graphic design or data analysis or web design or writing or fund. Can you email them real quickly and say, Hey, check out this website.

[00:39:48] And we really feel like everyone can do at least one of those three things to help us try to preserve democracy. And I'm not being hyperbolic. I, you know, it's scary to think about where this country could be in 10 years or more if things continue in this way. So I'm, I'm just hoping we all can do our part and step up in whatever ways we can.

[00:40:04] Yeah.

[00:40:05] Catalyze on this, this moment of compassion and concern for the actual work that needs to be done with the organizations on the front. Makes a lot of sense to me. Alrighty. Moving into rapid fire. Here we go. What is one tech tool or website that you or your organization has started using in the

[00:40:23] last year?

[00:40:23] We recognize that doing everything off of spreadsheets was not possible. And so especially for managing all of the individuals who've donated to us and others we went to a very simple but very accessible CRM called action. And a lot of non-profits start there. There's, you know, bigger ones and more sophisticated ones that are more expensive, but it's really proven to be a very great entry level one for us to really get our, the, the hu the humans we work with into a, a, a more manageable circumstance, uh, so we can engage with them better, but also keep track of who's involved with voter empowerment project.

[00:40:57] What tech issues are you currently battl?

[00:41:00] The single biggest tech challenge we've had is being effective at project management tracking. So we've been using spreadsheets primarily, and I think we were lucky enough to have some pretty smart data people who created really sophisticated.

[00:41:12] Formula is in our project management spreadsheet, so it is very functional, but we recognize the need to move over to more sophisticated project management tools. And we're actually in the process of doing so. Uh, we have a contractor who's bringing us on to monday.com in the next week or so, one of many that's out there.

[00:41:27] And we definitely recommend to small non-profits that these tools, the one that fits your budget, the one that fits your needs. I really do think that they have a return on investment. Uh, and so we're excited to transition over. What

[00:41:40] is coming in the next year that has you the most excited?

[00:41:43] I do believe that one way or the other, the elections will motivate people to get more involved in democracy, or at least I'm consciously optimistic.

[00:41:52] And I think everything that's happening in our public discourse, is, is being felt by more and more people. I hope then we can tap into that by and recruit them to volunteer and that we'll. The broad volunteer base next year like we had in 2020 to really meet the needs of the frontline partners that we know is gonna be great next year.

[00:42:11] Can

[00:42:11] you talk about a mistake that you made earlier in your career that shapes the way you do

[00:42:15] things? Now?

[00:42:16] Throughout my career, one thing I know I've done is try to do everything for everyone, all the. And that means, especially when working with Frontline Partners, which has been a core aspect of my career, whether it's health policy or gender based violence or here in voting rights, and in this project, we really recognized the need to focus in on where help was needed most.

[00:42:37] And so we, you know, had to pick certain states where we knew voter suppression was at high risk. We also had to decide which services do we do, and which services do we know not focus on. We purposely limited our focus to voter engagement and not policy and. And then we really had to decide which groups to work with.

[00:42:54] And so we prioritized small groups that are under resourced, that are at the state and local level. Even though there's other groups that are very deservative of help, we just wanted to tailor and focus in so we can, you know, do it well for the people we're serving.

[00:43:07] Do you believe that

[00:43:08] nonprofits can successfully go out of

[00:43:10] business?

[00:43:10] I think I have a broad response to that question. I think there are circumstances where there's a very intense specific need, a need to pass this bill, a need to address this urgent climate crisis that's in a particular community where a coalition can form or a non-profit can set up and they can say, Look, we're here through the end of this problem.

[00:43:28] It might be a year, it might be five years. We're fundraising for it, we're staffing up for it, we're gonna. For the better. And then we disband, and I think that's healthy. So I think sometimes a lot of non-profits start up and then they're just in perpetuity forever, and then they're just fundraising forever and then they just become part of the Emilio.

[00:43:43] But I do think a lot of the other non-profits that are built to solve some of the most intense issues of inequity, both domestically and internationally, I, I just don't have optimism that we're gonna solve most of those issues anytime soon. And so sadly, we do need those non-profits to exist and to fundraise and to have.

[00:43:59] Over the long haul as we try to solve really big problems with really great solutions. Do you think the voter

[00:44:05] empowerment project could successfully

[00:44:07] go out of business? I will happily, you know, close up shop of the voter empowerment project. If and when every person is very able to exercise their right to vote in a, in a easily accessible way.

[00:44:22] I think the trend is heading in very much the opposite direction. And so, you know, the main reason for us incorporating is. We check, is there a need for this model long term? Is there a support for it? Is, you know, does our frontline partners think that they need this help, uh, going forward? And the answer was absolutely yes.

[00:44:38] So for as long as we can be helpful, we'll be around, uh, as long as we have the funding to do so. But if and when voting becomes as easy as it should be in the country, I will be the first person to close up our shop, free up our web domain for anyone else, and to, for us to go focus on the next big problem.

[00:44:54] We won't be holding

[00:44:55] our breath. Uh, aspirationally. I like it. If I were to put you in a hot tub time machine back to the beginning of your work with the voter Empowerment project in 2019, what advice would you give yourself?

[00:45:07] Uh, a few, a few things. One would be start earlier. Uh, we certainly were aggressive in our thinking in 2019, but you know, we should have started it earlier.

[00:45:13] The second would be to build relationships with formal entities sooner. Whether that's national organizations or especially universities. Uh, it wasn't until later that I really realized how much students were an, an amazing source of volunteers and had unbelievable skills, social media, web design, writing, uh, so start there earlier.

[00:45:32] And then thirdly, I would've invested our project management tool much earlier on because I think that would've made us much more efficient. And so I do encourage organizations to think about that instead of just relying on spreadsheets and.

[00:45:44] What

[00:45:44] is something that you think your org should

[00:45:47] stop doing?

[00:45:49] We're really exploring next year comprehensively. What should our focus area be? You know, do we continue exactly how our model is? Should we expand the organizations we work with? Should we expand how we help? Should we look into charging money for our services? I. One of the things I think we've been good at is making sure we don't have mission creep.

[00:46:07] And so I want us to resist that urge as much as possible. Cuz we've all, we've all heard the great need from the frontline organizations and so far we've been able to resist. I think there's a temptation to want to do more and to expand outward in a way that might stretch us too thin. And so that's one thing that I'm really hoping we, we avoid doing.

[00:46:25] If you had a magic

[00:46:26] wand to wave across the industry, what

[00:46:28] would it. I would absolutely love more organizations to make good on their commitments to dei. I think there's a lot of talk and a lot of great language on websites about wanting to diversify their staff and wanting to ensure that more funding is going to under-resourced organizations from historically, you know, underprivileged communities.

[00:46:46] I think it's starting, It's nowhere near where it should be, and so I'm the kind of person that wants to have this job. But if there's a great person with lived experie, That really has a better way to fit. I wanna be someone who will step out of the way and let them take the reins. And I just hope more people in the in the movement will recognize that one of the problems is who's in charge, and if they're willing to step away, that might actually help, uh, advance the cause.

[00:47:08] How did you get started in the social impact sector?

[00:47:11] It's interesting because my college focus very, was actually biology. I was really into the hard sciences and life sciences and wanted to pursue, you know, medicine over time. But before I applied to med school, I actually did an AmeriCorps program in Boston for two years working with young people in Boston, as well as focusing on healthcare advocacy in Massachusetts, and I got hooked.

[00:47:30] I loved the advocacy area. I love the organizing side. I love the policy side. You know, the thinking part of my brain. Loved problem. But the human side really loved working with people, especially people who were facing challenges. Uh, and so that really, really stuck to me and I ended up going to med school and then halfway through I ended up quitting.

[00:47:48] Cause I really missed the advocacy side when coming back to it. So I thank AmeriCorps so much for that experience. What

[00:47:55] advice would you give college grads currently looking to enter the social impact sector?

[00:48:00] I think broadly is. Really identify what is it you care about in terms of issue. Is it healthcare?

[00:48:07] Is it climate? Is it, uh, criminal justice reform? Think about the ways you, what you like to do. Is it social media? Is it writing? Is it fundraising? Is it policy? Is it organizing? And then reach out to as many people as you know that are in the field. Not everyone likes to take on college grads as mentors, but many people out there are happy to talk to you.

[00:48:25] I'm happy to talk to folks to just give them that advice. I will say this, right now, when you look at the job, If you are in development or you're in digital strategy, those are the two things. Well, you'll be employed for the next 10 to 20 years for sure. So if that's something you understand, I definitely recommend going into fundraising, Going into social media, digital strategy, what advice

[00:48:45] did your parents give you that you either followed or didn't quite

[00:48:49] follow?

[00:48:50] Uh, my, I think at a young age, certainly there was a lot of pressure to do well in school and to make. And I think, uh, I think over time I've been able to help my parents understand how great it is to be in sort of progressive non-profit advocacy. But I think probably most importantly is they're just very into family and community and just sort of, you know, loving respect and honoring people in your life and, you know, contributing that way.

[00:49:13] And I absolutely think I channeled that to the broader community at large. Uh, I will say the advice they're not, I'm not taking, that they would be mad at is going to visit them more. And so I think I know I need to do. Thanksgiving coming up, so I'll, I'll be sure to go and see them. Gotta go visit. Have you called

[00:49:28] your mom

[00:49:30] Yes. We talk, we talk periodically. Not as much as they'd like, but uh, but they've actually over the years, have become a lot more active in social justice issues and fundraising and donating and whatever. They sort of do something progressive or they donate money to a candidate or they, you know, knock on doors.

[00:49:43] My mom will always text me excitedly and so it, it is heartwarming to see sort of how we've both, you know, we kind of share those interests in sort of supporting the. That's awesome.

[00:49:52] Also, shout out to my mom, who's probably listening to this podcast. Hi mom. Alrighty, , final hardball question. How do people find you?

[00:50:00] How do

[00:50:00] people help you?

[00:50:01] Please check us out@voterempowerment.org. As I mentioned earlier, there's three ways you can help that anyone can help. You can volunteer, you can donate, or you can share. Please sign up to volunteer. I promise you the opportunities will be fun. They'll be interesting, they'll be meaningful and rewarding, and we invest in you so you can grow your skills.

[00:50:21] If you can't do that, or in addition to, can you please donate $20, $25, a hundred dollars, whatever you can spare, our, our generous board member is matching every donation with a $200, uh, match. And so we hope to get as many donors between now and the holiday. And then lastly, can you share our website? Can you share our social media?

[00:50:40] Adam Empower Voters on Twitter and on Instagram. And voter empowerment.org is our website. We just need more people to know about us to know that we exist, cuz we know once folks find out about us and get involved, they really do appreciate our model and what, what it sort of allows for them to do as a volunteer.

[00:50:54] And we just need to get that word out more. And we really appreciate everyone helping us do so. You have

[00:50:59] it. Share either your time, your treasure, or your tweets. Do. I love the skill-based approach to a massive problem facing democracy in our country. I wish you all the best, and I thank you. Thank you for

[00:51:12] the work you do.

[00:51:14] Thank you George, so much for having me. And thank you for doing this innovative podcast. I, I always appreciate it and folks in the media really prioritize bringing folks on board who can talk about, you know, movement building. And so thank you so much for what you

[00:51:24] do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Terrifying Twitter Trends - Nonprofits React (news)

Reactions, And Worries, As Musk Twitter’s Takeover Is Finalized

Elon Musk’s $44 Billion takeover of Twitter was completed last week, with Musk officially becoming the owner and de-facto CEO of the influential social media platform. The drawn-out saga of the acquisition, which at times seemed like it would fall through, marks the beginning of a new chapter for a platform now run by one of its most prominent users. Musk's ownership has raised new questions about content moderation, rules around speech, and other fundamental questions about what Twitter (and by proxy, social media) should even be. The takeover, with Musk being a self-proclaimed advocate for “free speech,” has spurred a sharp increase in derogatory posts from trolls, according to the nonprofit Network Contagion Research Institute. While Musk sought to assuage the fears of advertisers by saying the platform would not become a “free-for-all hellscape,” some prominent corporate advertisers already appear to be wary of the change in discourse on the platform.

Read more ➝

 

Summary

 

• How a ‘mental health workforce crisis’ has these nonprofits retooling office culture | The Salt Lake Tribune 
• Swarm learning for decentralized artificial intelligence in cancer histopathology | Nature
• Michelle Obama, Melinda French Gates, and Amal Clooney Announce Collaboration to Support Adolescent Girls’ Education and Help End Child Marriage
• Resource: Scary good AI email writer - Nonprofit Email Fundraising AI Writer (free-for-now) | Whole Whale

 

 

DALLE2 Image - blue birds

Girl Scouts Get $85 Million Historical Donation (news)

 

Girl Scouts Get $85 Million Donation From MacKenzie Scott

MacKenzie Scott, known for historic billion-dollar donations continues to change nonprofits’ fortunes, this time with an $85 million donation to the Girl Scouts of USA. The donation is the single largest donation in the organization’s history since its founding in 1912, and will help the organization recoup a loss of programming and membership as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to reporting from KUSA.com. According to the report, only 2% of philanthropic giving in the United States goes directly to programs expressly interested in serving women and girls. Youth membership in the Girl Scouts dropped nearly 30% in the first year of the pandemic.

Read more ➝

 

Summary

 

• Gates Foundation boosts GivingTuesday with $10M donation | AP NEWS
• Bill and Melinda Gates are chopping funding for reading, writing and the arts to plow $1 billion into math education instead | Fortune 
• Police Complaints in This Indian District Are Going on the Polygon Blockchain | @coindesk
• Countering an Authoritarian Overhaul of the Internet | Freedom House
• Avoggedon strikes Philadelphia: One nonprofit gives away thousands of avocados
  NPR.org 
•  

“Big Lie” Affiliated Nonprofits Scrutinized By FBI (news)

“Big Lie” -Affiliated Nonprofits Scrutinized By Authorities On Eve of Midterm General Election

Two organizations associated with the “Big Lie,” the disproved conspiracy that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, face scrutiny for financial impropriety. The Arizona Attorney General (a Republican who as recently as 2020 courted Trump’s endorsement) has asked the FBI and IRS to probe the nonprofit organization True The Vote, an organization that purported to document unfounded claims of election fraud, according to reporting from Politico. Similarly, the nonprofit organization Defending The Republic led by Sidney Powell, a prominent character in the plot to deny the 2020 election results, has made highly questionable expenditures after raising $16 million, including to private companies that Sidney Powell is listed as a manager, as well as reportedly expenditures to Powell’s personal legal fees. The Justice Department has subpoenaed Defending The Republic’s documents as Powell herself faces multiple lawsuits, legal sanctions, and other legal inquiries as reported by The Washington Post.

Read more ➝

 

Summary

• Century-old nonprofit Goodwill on taking thrifting online | TribDem.com 
• Major bank cancels account of religious nonprofit, demands donor list | FISM TV
• Richmond nonprofit says marijuana possession pardons could help over half of their clients | CBS 6 News Richmond
• Gates Foundation pledges $1.2B to eradicate polio globally  | AP NEWS

10th Annual Giving Tuesday: Predictions & Strategies | Big Duck

Discussion with Farra Trompeter, Co-director of Big Duck, and George Weiner about the 10th anniversary of Giving Tuesday. How should your organization approach this year's event on November 29th? 

 

Will Giving Tuesday raise a new record on the day? Whole Whale predicts it will.

 

Should your organization adopt a new 'Collective' giving approach to the day? 

Farra talks through a recent post about collective giving how to bring a spirit of abundance and consider how you can use this day to educate and inspire your supporters beyond your mission.

https://bigduck.com/insights/approaching-givingtuesday-with-a-collective-lens/ 

 

 

 

Image: Dalle2 Megaphone on pasta

Marijuana Win For Social Justice (news)

Weekly Nonprofit News summaries.

 

In Win For Criminal Justice Advocates, Biden Pardons Marijuana Charges & Orders Evaluation of Cannabis Scheduling

The Biden Administration announced last week a series of pardons for those charged on federal, simple marijuana possession charges, in a win for criminal justice reform advocates. The legacy of the Nixon Administration’s “War On Drugs” is still felt throughout the United States, where black and brown Americans are more likely to be charged for marijuana use than white Americans, despite similar rates of usage. NPR quotes Patrice Willoughby, vice president of policy and legislative affairs at the NAACP, who says that “The failed policies on drug criminalization have ensnared many on nonviolent, marijuana offenses.” Biden has also “instructed the attorney general and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to start the process of reviewing marijuana’s status under federal law, according to Politico. Advocacy groups continue to highlight the need for reforms at the state level.

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Summary

 

• U.N. refugee boss warns of 'severe cuts' without immediate new funding
  U.S. Reuters
• What Happens When a Company (Like Patagonia) Transfers Ownership to a Nonprofit? | HBR.org Daily 
• Black Lives Matter tops list of groups that Black Americans see as helping them most in recent years | Pew Research Center
• Nonprofit Helps Salem Family With Wheelchair Makeover Fit for Halloween | NECN

 

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What is the CURE for medical debt? | RIPMedicalDebt.org

On this episode Allison Sesso, the CEO & President of RIP Medical Debt talks about their unique approach to alleviating medical debt of Americans. By leveraging medical debt markets and partnering with hospitals, RIP Medical Debt is able to achieve 100X leverage on every dollar donated to wipe out debt at scale.

 

How big is the problem?

The SIPP survey suggests people in the United States owe at least $195 billion in medical debt. Approximately 16 million people (6% of adults) in the U.S. owe over $1,000 in medical debt and 3 million people (1% of adults) owe medical debt of more than $10,000.

 

 

RIP Medical Debt by the numbers:

• $7,091,262,274 in medical debt relieved so far
• 3,987,191 individuals and families helped
• 2021 Annual Report

 

The debt relief we provide reduces mental and financial distress for millions of people. Here’s how we got started.

 

RIP Medical Debt was founded in 2014 by two former debt collections executives. Over the course of decades in the debt-buying industry they met with thousands of Americans saddled with unpaid and un-payable medical debt and realized they were uniquely qualified to help those in need.

They imagined a new way to relieve medical debt: by using donations to buy large bundles of debt that is erased with no tax consequences to donors or recipients.

From this idea RIP Medical Debt was born, a New York based 501(C)(3). The results have been spectacular—billions in medical debt eradicated so far, providing financial relief for millions of individuals and families.

 

About Allison Sesso

President / CEO

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Allison Sesso became the President / CEO of RIP Medical Debt in January of 2020. RIP Medical Debt was established for the sole purpose of reducing the medical debt burdens of low-income individuals with limited capacity to pay their medical bills by leveraging donations from people across the country. They have abolished $7,091,262,274 to date for over 3,987,191 people.

Under Allison’s leadership and in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, RIP Medical Debt launched the “Helping COVID Heroes Fund” focused on relieving the medical debts of healthcare workers and emergency responders like nurses, home health aids, pharmacists, social workers, hospital technicians, the National Guard and others working on the front lines of the pandemic. It also benefits service workers and others facing financial hardship resulting from the COVID induced economic downturn. Through this effort RIP has abolished over $100 million in medical debt.

Prior to joining RIP Medical Debt, Allison served as the Executive Director of the Human Services Council of New York (HSC), an association of 170 nonprofits delivering 90% of human services in New York City.

Under her leadership HSC pioneered the development of nationally recognized tools designed to illuminate risks associated with government contracts, including an RFP rater and government agency grading system. She led negotiations with New York City and State government on behalf of the sector and successfully pushed for over $500 million in investments to address the nonprofit fiscal crisis.

During her tenure at HSC, Allison also led a commission of experts focused on socialdeterminants of health and value-based-payment structures and published the report,Integrating Health and Human Services: a Blueprint for Partnership and Action, that examines the challenges of operationalizing relationships between health and human services providers, offering several recommendations. She also served on the New York State Department of Health’s Social Determinants and Community Based Organizations (CBO) Subcommittee helping to formulate recommendations around the integration of CBOs into Medicaid managed care.

Allison’s work on behalf of the human services sector led City & State to recognize her as a top nonprofit leader in 2018 and 2019, one of the 25 most influential leaders in Manhattan in 2017, and one of New York City’s 100 “Most Responsible” in 2016. She recently received the 100 “Most Responsible” award for the second time for her efforts at RIP Medical Debt.

Allison also serves as the Vice Chair of the nonprofit “Right to Be,” formerly Hollaback!, a global movement working to end harassment through bystander intervention training and storytelling. 

 

Rough Transcript

 

[00:00:00] George Weiner: This week we have an awesome guest who I, I think I promised I would track down somebody from R IP medical Debt because they kept showing up in the news and innovative approach to dealing with, uh, a tremendous. Problem in America around, uh, I'd say healthcare and debt, and none other than Allison Seso, the CEO and President is joining us.

[00:00:52] This means a lot. Thank you, Allison, for, for taking the time today.

[00:00:55] Allison Sesso: Thanks for hunting us down and finding us. We love talking about our work and, and the issue of, of medical debt, so I appreciate every opportu. . Well,

[00:01:05] George Weiner: let's drive right into it on the front page of r i p medical debt.org. On the front page of the.org site, I see every $100 donated relieves 10,000 in medical debt.

[00:01:19] First off. That gets my attention. What a perfect way to start a conversation. But how does that work exactly?

[00:01:29] Allison Sesso: Yeah. We are a, uh, a unique model and we take advantage of the for profit, uh, debt market, uh, and use it for a mission driven purpose, which is really exciting and, and I think unique. So we do get an incredible return on investment and it's because there is a market for debt buying, uh, that is, has been established, and That is because, uh, there is a for profit industry that we take advantage of, uh, and they are looking to make money off of the issue of debt. We, on the other hand, are trying to relieve debt, so we take donations from individuals, we take 'em to the debt market, and we buy large portfolios at.

[00:02:10] So, the individuals that are in those portfolios tend to be financially burdened. They are poor, they are, um, in fact, to qualify for our program, you have to be 400% of poverty or below, or the debt birth burden has to be significant compared to your overall income. So it has to be 5% or more of your income.

[00:02:28] We do an analysis of the debt portfolio and we buy all of the accounts that qualify and then we purchase them based on. For profit rates. And so we're competitive with that market, but because the for profit folks are trying to make money, they have to really depress the prices and they have to have a really deep discount in order to make sure that they're making their money back.

[00:02:49] And so we don't have to make our money back. And so we're able to take, you know, $1 and turn it into a hundred dollars of medical debt relief. And as you pointed out, you can ex expand that. So, you know, $500 gets rid of 50. Um, $50,000 of medical debt. And so that's how we're able to, provide massive debt relief to the tune of $7 billion to date and grow.

[00:03:12] George Weiner: Yeah, I think there's a lot to unpack there. Maybe I, um, wanna poke a little bit more into like, making sure I actually get this. So let's say I'm, you know, a family living below the, the poverty line meeting your, your standards. There's an, uh, unexpected accident and injury. I then am in the hospital for a few days and suddenly I'm walking around with 45 grand in debt overnight.

[00:03:34] And because of the way our systems work, this is now. A debt I owe to creditors. Now that debt, as I understand, can first go from the hospital to maybe a secondary buyer, right? There's like all these markets of like, Oh, I'll grab that one, I'll grab that one. And then it seems like they're, there's a discount on it cuz it's not dollar for dollar you're getting.

[00:03:56] A hundred x leverage on it. So there's some discounting of my debt with that 45,000. Can you just walk me through like the individual, like I am sitting here, I've got 45 grand in debt. I can run off to a sort of like Go fund me type site and be like, Please, please, please, please pay this money. I have a story.

[00:04:19] I have a narrative. And unfortunately I have to compete with other stories around me. What is the alternative path that my 45 K debt takes in your world?

[00:04:29] Allison Sesso: Yeah, so your, I could buy your debt probably for $45. That's the diff . That's, that's the difference. It's pretty, you know, I'm sorry, I don't understand.

[00:04:39] I'm sorry For $450. Sorry. Yeah. Okay. Um, Um, Um, so yeah, I could buy your debt for $450 and that is because I'm not just buying your. I am buying the entire provider's portfolio of bad debt, so it's more attractive of an option. So basically I'm, I'm a hospital or another healthcare provider. I am serving people who can't afford to pay.

[00:05:02] They are poor as you just described. And, and by the way, just to be clear, it's 400% of poverty or below, so it's not just under poverty, but four times the amount of poverty. So it's people that are poor but but not necessarily. Oh, so

[00:05:16] George Weiner: four x the whatever, $45,000 Exactly. Anywhere you are. Okay. So

[00:05:21] Allison Sesso: that, that matter.

[00:05:22] So we're really like helping people that. Really trying to make ends meet but aren't actually, uh, technically in poverty based on the federal definition. So you, you know, you, there's, there's, you have to, In order for our model to work, we're buying the entire portfolio of many of those individuals who have the 45,000 or a thousand dollars or $2,000 of debt.

[00:05:43] Uh, that all together. So it's source driven. So basically I'm going to the hospital or other healthcare provider and I'm saying, Give me the debts. Give me your entire portfolio of debt that you have tried to collect and you have been unable to collect and mostly been able, unable to collect because the individuals are, uh, financially stressed out and can't.

[00:06:03] Afford to pay this bill. I will look at that portfolio and I will assess what can I pay for that? And this is if I'm a for-profit, not F R P medical debt, but as a for-profit debt buyer, I will say, Okay, I'm gonna pay this. I'm gonna pay you an X amount of dollars for the entire portfolio for thousands of people's bads.

[00:06:23] On the bet that at least I can squeeze enough out of that. Mm-hmm. , you get to make up for the investment that I've made plus, Right. Cuz I'm looking for a profit and I squeeze those individuals either by calling them, by putting it on their credit, you know, and giving them bad credit by sometimes suing them and taking, putting leans out on their.

[00:06:43] Um, on their cars, on their vehicles. So I take different tactic to try and collect on that. And so that establishes this debt market that establishes a price that is very depressed and discounted. And again, that's what r i p medical debt takes advantage of. So I'm competing with that already depressed price that is driven by the fact that people are trying to make a profit off of these bad debts.

[00:07:05] But in my world, I've sort of flipped it on its head and I'm. I will pay the same as the for profits, but I'm not trying to make a profit. I'm just trying to provide relief. So I'm going to take donated dollars, so I don't need to make any money back. I'm gonna go to that same debt market. I'm gonna say, give me all of the bad debts that you have available.

[00:07:25] I'm gonna pull out the ones that are for, which is most of them, like 80% oftentimes of people who are financially uh, struggling. And I will pay. this amount, and I pay based on, usually the debt is, um, the older it is, the cheaper it is because

[00:07:42] George Weiner: the idea is it pays outstanding, puts a higher discount on the probability

[00:07:46] Allison Sesso: that gets behind.

[00:07:46] I'm, I'm paying like, you know, a million dollars for, you know, $300 million worth of debt in one fail swoop. And so it's thousands of people that are getting helped.

[00:07:58] George Weiner: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . So staying with the story here, I have incurred this 45,000. I have not been able to pay it back in thirty, ninety, a hundred eighty days.

[00:08:09] I am within that window of one to four x the poverty level. And do you like show up at my door? Like an oversized check. Is it like, uh, so like how am I notified that? Like, hey, you're suddenly like, you don't owe this anymore. Like, how does this final, like I release you of your burden before, Like what, Like is there a confetti?

[00:08:34] I'm like, that would be a lot of, uh, groundwork for us because we've helped over 4 million people. So that'd be a lot. Lot

[00:08:40] George Weiner: of confetti. And then we got the environmental problem on that. A lot of conf the

[00:08:43] Allison Sesso: confetti ideas. Yeah, exactly. It would be a lot, lot of champagne, you know, it would be a lot. no, we, what we do, first of all, The debts tend to be at least a year old because the hospital does it is required like by regulation, they have to try to collect that could be sending one letter, it could be sending two letters.

[00:08:59] It depends. And so every hospital is different. And the thing is, when you've seen one hospital and their approach to collections, you've seen one hospital and their approach to collections. So there is no like, well what's the standard? There's some norms, but there's really differences. Like for example, not while hospitals sell their debt roughly and.

[00:09:17] Like, I'm not even a hundred percent sure, like, but it's roughly like 30% of hospitals that sell their debt. So not even all hospitals sell their, their debt to begin with. but we do get hospitals to sell to us that don't normally sell to other for profit debt buyers, which is, I think, important. But So you are that individual.

[00:09:34] We would not have access to your file and your debt and when, until a hospital engages with us and agrees to work with us. So that's an important element of our model, is that hospitals have to be interested in working with us and say yes to dis debt relief. Once we get a hospital involved, we will get their entire bad debt portfolio.

[00:09:53] So you, if your debt of that 40, uh, what did you say? $45,000? Mm-hmm. , then we. , uh, send letters in mass like we do to every other individual that's in that thousands at one time that basically say, We are our IP medical debt. We have relieved your debt. You are free and clear. Check us out. We're for real.

[00:10:14] Like, believe us. and

[00:10:16] George Weiner: oh yeah, but there's a lot of, Sure right Where, where's the timeshare agreement?

[00:10:21] Allison Sesso: Right. And you don't have to do anything. And the other thing that's really important is there's no tax burden associated with it. When, when certain debts are relieved, there can be a tax burden because it's considered a gift equal to the amount of the debt that's been released.

[00:10:33] Right, exactly. So could you imagine you get a debt relieved and then you get a tax bill. It's like when you win a lotto and you have to pay taxes. You're like, what? ? The good news is soured. but with r p medical debt, that is not the case because we are disinterested third party. So you get this debt relief free and clear.

[00:10:48] And honestly, the, the debt relief happens whether or not you actually pay attention to the letter. They really can

[00:10:53] George Weiner: just continue to do what you were doing, which was ignore the problem and hope it goes away. Which I have to say, never were, I can't use the word never, because apparently sometimes that works.

[00:11:04] Allison Sesso: Well, I mean, look, the people who were, we are helping though, at the end of the. everyone. I mean, we get the stories back from individuals. Mm. They want so desperately to pay. They really do. And they feel like failures because they haven't been able to pay. Mm-hmm. . So these aren't people who are just like, Whoa, let's hope for the best.

[00:11:25] I'll just keep ignoring this. And you know, these are individuals. Something happened to them. Either they got sick, they were in an accident, whatever happened to them. Maybe they just are poor, like, and, and have other obligations they have to pay for and they can't pay this bill. And so we are relieving those debts of individuals who were forced to pay a bill that they should have never been forced to pay because it's unaffordable.

[00:11:51] George Weiner: Yeah. Cuz clearly they had that desire to pay it back, but not the means by which to do it. What's more, medical prices are not exactly accurate in the United States.

[00:12:03] Allison Sesso: I don't know if the word is accurate. They are all over the place because we have this weird system where the insurance company is paying and the prices are ar.

[00:12:16] Yeah.

[00:12:18] George Weiner: Yeah. Uh, when you operate as an individual in a system designed for these large players that are charging what they will, it just breaks, it seems like, and you're just left with outrageous numbers, and debt burns.

[00:12:32] Allison Sesso: I think that we've created a, a. Typical consumer approach to healthcare and it doesn't work like the economics don't align when you're buying healthcare, first of all, you would pay a lot more than you would for any other good or service, right?

[00:12:49] Because it's your health and your wellbeing. So like your artificially willing to to pay more. And I think we take a little bit of advantage of that in some ways. And, and I think that the fact that we have insurance companies that are negotiating what to pay is. Makes it complicated and it's really hard to navigate this as an individual, nor I think should we have that expectation that people, while they're sick, should be navigating what they're gonna pay for a service that they have Really no real way of doing comparison shopping on.

[00:13:24] George Weiner: this is very different than a lot of other models that I see. And you must, and I see it on the site saying, if you were an individual looking for medical debt relief, that is not us. And that must be hard because you were. You know, behind the curtain that's behind the curtain running in debt markets, which frankly, you know, this may be the first time many people are hearing about this.

[00:13:51] I'm curious how, how did this organization come about? It's been around for, for a while.

[00:13:59] Allison Sesso: Well, I mean, actually we've only been around since 2014, so it's not that old considering, I mean, a lot of nonprofits. Just years old. You know, we, we were . We've only been around since 2014 and we, we came we came into being, because we have two, uh, former debt buyers who understood the market.

[00:14:17] I think that was a key element of it. Craig and Jerry understood, uh, how the debt market works and what it costs to buy. , they were inspired by Occupy Wall Street, actually. Uh, and they saw that there was this group doing this thing called the Jubilee, where they were trying to do just what r i p does in, in large scale, which is to buy medical debt, and relieve it, but to make a point.

[00:14:42] And they recruited actually Jerry's help in this. And then Jerry referred Craig. Then they sort of made their point as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and they were gonna pack up and go home kind of on, on this whole debt relief front. And I think Jerry sort of said to Craig like, We gotta make this a real thing.

[00:15:01] And so they did. They, they really, they, and I think that they have a book that, that they put out talking about this. You can find it on our. , it's called End Medical Debt, and it tells sort of the origin story of of R I P and and and how they thought about this and one of the key moments that really helped the organization propel forward.

[00:15:20] Was being highlighted on John Oliver, which, you know, I'm a big fan of, I was before I got this role and knew about r i p medical debt, but he really, did some debt relief through the institution and, uh, and that propelled a lot of donors to come to the table. Cuz without donors, this really doesn't work.

[00:15:38] I mean, I can go to the debt market all I want, but if I don't have a lot of people supporting my ability to buy the debt, it, it doesn't, it doesn't work. So, That's our story. It was two Defiers who were brave. They took some. They almost went into poverty on, on, on their own because of the fact that they, they took this, uh, this on and they just thought this was too good of an idea to let go.

[00:16:00] And again, John Oliver helped propel us and then the board of directors, you know, said, Let's take it to the next level. And, and then I came in as a, as a seasoned executive director type and, and we were able to really, uh, propel this work forward and we're gonna keep doing. .

[00:16:16] George Weiner: Yeah. I mean, 24, I mean, you've made it through some, some filter bubbles for sure.

[00:16:22] In terms of like the filtering of can you make it five years, can you make it over a, a certain amount of revenue, but you're starting to, uh, really pull. Pull through. It also strikes me because medical debt is the number one reason someone declares bankruptcy and it seems like this is, uh, something that may slow that down.

[00:16:45] Uh, but I don't know how big you need to be, like billions of dollars that you have done. 4 million people. I think you said like those are big numbers. How big do you actually need to be in your mind to, I'm not gonna use the word solve, because you, you are not solving, you are resolving a broken system that will continue to break things.

[00:17:08] But how big do you need to. To take this actually on at the level that you'd imagine?

[00:17:13] Allison Sesso: Yeah, I, it's a good question and it's one I often think about as an executive director, or sorry, as a, as a CEO of the institution, it's one I often think about. What I would say is that, , we need to both be a certain size and relieving a certain amount of debt every year.

[00:17:32] And I don't know what exactly what that number is. It really depends on the donation size. Maybe it's 10 million, maybe it's 20 million. I like the number 25, in terms of our budget size every year, uh, I'd love to grow to that size and, and you know, we're, we're more than halfway there already today, in consistent revenue, but, you know, we'll,

[00:17:51] But the other thing is, I, I loved how you framed it and said, We're not solving but, but resolving this, the issue. And that's a hundred percent true. And that is our mantra. What I wanna make sure is that we're not just trying to grow to a size that picks up and just keeps resolving the issue, but at, in the process of resolving the issue for individual.

[00:18:12] We are very intentional about telling the larger story about the issue of medical debt and how systemic in nature it is, and that we are very intentional about pushing for larger changes that are above our pay grade as an institution. And so to me that is really the key. So our size almost doesn't matter as much as our.

[00:18:36] And so by growing our voice within this work and growing our expertise and taking the data that we are getting in mass, so we are having a deeper understanding. How many people, uh, we, how many people we're helping, what their situation is, what is their race? What is their economic situation? Where do they live?

[00:18:56] Is this, is this problem more prevalent at certain types of hospitals, nonprofit versus for profit? I think over time we'll be able to take a deeper look at our data collectively as we do more and more direct hospital work and contribute to this issue in a larger scale. And be able to hopefully push for, uh, larger solutions that are above again, our pay grade and who we.

[00:19:22] George Weiner: So the debt, we were talking about this before, the debt that a individual incurs, going back to like, here's a, my $45,000 and surprise debt that I now owe. I have a family, uh, we live, you know, in a house we're doing right. But this is something that frankly does not fit into the budget, not even by a long shot.

[00:19:42] Uh, I may. Go into bankruptcy, but it seems like there is a like actual adverse medical effect to having debt. There's like a relationship to having this like held over my head that has negative consequences. We think we were talking about the drama report or other reports out there that suggest that like, I mean, it's just.

[00:20:09] It hurts my brain to put it in the order of logic that like I went to the hospital to get better and now I'm probably gonna get worse because of the overpriced and debt that now chases me indefinitely. And can you tell me a bit about that relationship of debt distress?

[00:20:23] Allison Sesso: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, it is the number one theme that we see in the letters that come back from individual.

[00:20:29] We help, uh, it's overwhelming for individuals and, you know, stress is. Undermining of health and financial stress. Stress is one of the biggest things, and we look at poor communities and we see. You know, diabetes, we see all these stress related diseases, heart issues that are all stress related, that are more extreme.

[00:20:54] Uh, and so in, in terms of medical debt, it is in itself a social determinant of health. And the social determinant of health is something that hospitals have increasingly been looking at and are spending. Millions, billion dollars, billions of dollars across the country trying to invest in community programs that address social determinants of health.

[00:21:16] And yet, as this Gemma report that came out just recently shows the medical debt created from going to the hospital itself is a social determinate of health. So if, if we can really look at medical debt, , we can actually get rid of one of the stressors that's causing people to have to go to the hospital or get care to in the first place.

[00:21:38] So I think it's a really key issue that you're raising and one that we wanna make sure that we keep elevating. Cuz again, these providers, these hospitals are investing lots and lots of money into social determinants of health. Those are things like environmental situations family dynamic. You know, lot things that are in the environment, not your own personal health.

[00:21:57] You know, living in a food desert. All those kinds of things contribute to the undermining of health. And it's a, it determines how well you're going to be healthy, hence, hence the social determinate of health language. And so the fact that medical debt itself is among those is something we need to really look at.

[00:22:14] And I'm so grateful that there is this new report that points to this because I think it will create, To reexamine billing and practices at.

[00:22:26] George Weiner: and I think this is the Jam and Network, uh, that that put this out. But we'll put a link in the, the show notes on it cuz there's a certainly a lot in there and it's one of those things I'm glad somebody did the research on and I am now forced to think about it, but also, I'm sadly not surprised.

[00:22:44] I'm not surprised that having, uh, you know, the, the threat of somebody putting a lean on the house that, you know, my kid lives in, like wouldn't cause me stress. Like I go, I went in cuz I broke my ankle, right? I went in cuz I broke my, and I walk out like two years later with diabetes and other stress related disorders that put me back on that bill.

[00:23:05] Like,

[00:23:06] Allison Sesso: well not only that but the other on top of that, the. Stressor is that people don't go to that hospital because they're scared. They're either gonna incur more debt cuz they have had some, or they know of a friend or family member that's had debt and that it's put them in a, you know, difficult situation and so they don't go and get the care that they need.

[00:23:24] People are sitting outside of hospitals waiting to see if the pain dissipates before they walk in. or they're just ignoring it and, you know, putting, you know, Ben Gay on their knee over and over and over again, and taking Advil and trying to ignore the problem until it gets to a point where it's actually even more expensive to solve and to adjust.

[00:23:46] George Weiner: Yeah, I mean, the, the size of the problem, it, you know, it's, what I like is that this is a pretty smart and leveraged play at an intractable problem, like the, the scale that you need to play at. And I'll just play, I'll, I'm show my own hand. I don't think it's solved by GoFundMe. No. Truly just it is, and you also even brought up the tax issue that I'm pretty sure if I got my 45 grand from people giving me money, and it showed up as a check to me, I now owe at least a third of that I think in taxes, depending on where I

[00:24:19] Allison Sesso: am.

[00:24:21] Yeah, I'm not exactly sure how the GoFundMe works in terms of the tax system, but it's definitely a popularity contest. How. That's the problem because what I mean for GoFundMe to work you, you need to tell your story effectively enough to have people give to you over others. GoFundMe is, The number one thing people go to, like they go to GoFund me for medical debt.

[00:24:47] It's the number one reason to go to GoFund me. And most of them do not work. They do not reach, reach their goals. And certainly you're not gonna reach your goal if you have an ongoing medical issue. Like what? If you have, uh, a chronic condition, you can't keep going back to the well and begging your friends and family.

[00:25:02] Not to mention the fact that a lot of people are able to. Money if they have friends with money and people with money tend to have other friends with money. People without money tend to have friends without money. So the, the, the GoFundMe is absolutely not a solution and it really is a popularity contest.

[00:25:18] It's how well you're able to tell your sob story. and I just think that's a freely heartbreaking situation that we're putting people in to have to put themselves out there in that way in order to solve their medical death. .

[00:25:33] George Weiner: Yeah. The, you know, frankly, it's, it's not really the, the individual's supposed to do everything they can in their power.

[00:25:39] and so if you're back into the wall, I understand the market force is there pushing there, but there's only one winner in that. It's the person that takes 2% of transaction. if you were looking at a macro system, something like r i p, medical debt, uh, I'm wondering if, you know, just to sort of speculate on it, are there other areas where you feel.

[00:25:58] George Weiner: Financial levers, debt markets even are unexplored avenues for this type of impact.

[00:26:08] Allison Sesso: I mean, I think that there's probably other kinds of unaffordable debt that could be looked at for sure. The thing is, medical debt is unique, and I do think that people are potentially more willing to donate to, uh, medical debt causes because you have such little control over the situation.

[00:26:27] You, you can be insured. Most people actually are insured. 90% of Americans are insured today. yet 41% have medical debt. So it is not a matter of having insurance. So you can do everything right. You can have, I. , you can still and are likely actually to get medical debt. In fact, the, the number one cause of medical debt isn't, is, or, or directional relationship is not whether or not you have insurance, but whether or not you get sick, like, so you're, that's, that's the number one connector, which is that means you couldn't be insured.

[00:27:02] So I. At the end of the day, we can't look at things like GoFundMe for the solutions here. I think you're right that it is, uh, just creating more profit on top of a, a profitable system. Yeah, we, we have to, we have to look at at bigger solutions beyond beyond this, and I think that, that our model could be used for other areas.

[00:27:25] but I think that people are more likely to give to medical debt because of the fact that there's so much little control over how much debt you end up in. People are less forgiving if you end up overusing your credit card or, Yeah, even if you can't pay a utility bill. Honestly. Yeah.

[00:27:40] George Weiner: Yeah, the story obviously, obviously matters, but also, you know, I'd say your ability to, as you came back to it, say like you're able to go through and understand the data behind the actual communities that you're choosing to go for, and just to track back on the conversation.

[00:27:56] You're like in your. Ideal world, you're like, I think we have about 25 million worth of work you wish you could do every year in this.

[00:28:05] Allison Sesso: Yeah, I think 25 million feels right today. Now, I don't know. I mean, ask me, you know, in, in a year from now how, how we feel about that. But I think 25 million gives us a pretty steady pace.

[00:28:16] Of doing debt relief, in mass, right, For individuals while also investing in our own ability to tell the story of medical debt. Cuz that's important, right? Like not every dollar do we only spend on medical debt. We spend a lot, almost every dollar on medical debt relief. But we also are intentional about investing in storytelling so that individuals can be heard and that we're, we are thinking about what is, what it feels.

[00:28:43] To have medical debt. And what are the implications on your mental health? What are your struggles with the hospital finance system? What is it like for your family every single day when you have this thing looming over your head? How have you avoided care? What other trade offs and decisions have you made?

[00:29:00] Have you borrowed from friends and family? All those kinds of things. So we are investing in different systems, but I think 25 million. Feels good as an annual like rate of our budget size because I think that gives us a large scale ability to relieve debt across the country for a lot of people again, and, and lifting up the stories at the same time.

[00:29:26] Yeah.

[00:29:27] George Weiner: Yeah. Well, just, I mean, I won't call out your nine 90, but it, it is all public and so you're, you're hoping to grow there, it seems.

[00:29:36] Allison Sesso: Yes. We're hoping to grow there. That's right. I mean, we've had, we've been, uh, lucky to get a 50 million gift from McKenzie Scott, uh, which is Jeff Bezos's ex-wife, and she's been wonderful in the nonprofit sector and able to.

[00:29:51] push organizations forward. But that's a one time gift, right? Yeah. We're able to do those in multiple years, but we have to be careful about you not expanding our staff to have an expectation that that's gonna be our permanent bottom line. So we pay lot of attention to that reality, and so that's propelled us forward in a lot of good ways and allowed us to invest in even ways in which we can donate and become more, you know, In which we can maximize our ability to fundraise and then also look at our own systems, become more efficient so that we don't need as much staff.

[00:30:26] Uh, so we've done those two things with those funds, but we need to grow to, I think, a, a permanent, like 25 million size where it's year after year we're able to support that.

[00:30:38] George Weiner: And that makes sense. Part of my mind, I keep going back to this $45,000 family that just ran into this just stroke of unlock and, you know, following through the pattern.

[00:30:50] Like it, it is amazing that there is R ip, medical debt that may show up like in some ways, like a lottery ticket that you're like, I didn't know I was playing this one, but I won. And like frankly, I've lost enough. That's amazing. I wonder if there's a world where the probability that I'd have to pay my full debt could be made more publicly known to me.

[00:31:12] And I know there's also nonprofit hospitals that technically if they're serving the public benefit actually are. Uh, due to absolve some of that debt as well. But I feel as though you're not told the full truth when you're handed that bill for your, you know, scan your PT scan and you're like the what?

[00:31:29] And your overnight visit. There's no like, and by the way, you know the probability if you're in this area and you make this much, that if you just wait, frankly one year and don't pay this, like nothing battle happen because the converse is true. We've been taught to pay every bill that shows up to us.

[00:31:44] Cuz that's how you are an honest participant in. , uh, economic society, What does that look like? ?

[00:31:52] Allison Sesso: Yeah. So it's, that's a difficult question to answer because I don't think we're in enough hospitals yet, by any stretch, to, for anyone to feel confident or comfortable to just, you're just gonna

[00:32:02] George Weiner: run around and catch that fly ball.

[00:32:04] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:32:04] Allison Sesso: Right. And also, we're still investing in our fundraising abilities. And I don't know, at some point maybe people are exhausted about paying for this too. And our issue. Not as exciting. You know, we, we are competing, frankly for donate donor dollars with things like Ukraine or abortion rights or gun rights, you know, so there are, there is a limitation to how much I can guarantee that I'm gonna be able to relieve people's debt.

[00:32:28] And also remember that in order for me to relieve your debt, you have to be financially burdened, right? So you have to be 400% of poverty or below, or the debt has to be large compared to your. So I would be leery of people feeling comfortable with the idea that eventually not

[00:32:45] George Weiner: pay. By the way, this is not financial advice.

[00:32:48] I repeat, this is a nonprofit podcast. This is not financial

[00:32:51] Allison Sesso: advice. Right. And, and, and I will say, frankly, you know, there is some concern on the hospital and provider side that, that if they work with us, that that. That that will happen, right? That if that people will bush think, Well, I don't have to pay my bill.

[00:33:04] So I don't think that that's a good way. Wow.

[00:33:05] George Weiner: I didn't even think of that, but

[00:33:07] Allison Sesso: Right. That, that's, that's a good way of

[00:33:10] George Weiner: not you have thought about this as the ceo. Yeah,

[00:33:13] Allison Sesso: exactly. And it's not something I would say we've experienced. What we've experienced is people who can pay their bills do pay their bills.

[00:33:22] There's people in the middle Right. That also pay their bills, but to a, a large. where it's a a difficult situation for them to pay the bills. I would like to address those people as well, like they sign up for a payment plan that they can't afford. What I would advise people, is to not sign up for payment plans that they can't afford.

[00:33:43] If it's $700 a month and that's gonna create a real financial burden on you and your family, then do not sign up for it despite all of the pressure that you might feel from the debt collector, if it's an individual, individual entity or if it's the hospital themselves. So that's what I would advise.

[00:34:00] Unfortunately, as much as I hate having to tell people. be their own advocates. This system is set up that it expects you to be an advocate for yourself, and so you have to advocate for yourself and make sure that you don't sign up for things that you can't afford.

[00:34:19] George Weiner: Uh, what a mess. It just, what a mess. In my mind, I'm just saying like, Well, what if I just waited, like I had my $45,000 debt and I just waited out of like, I'm gonna buy this back on a penny on the dollar in a year. I'm gonna come back to you as an independent broker, and I'm just go buy back.

[00:34:36] Allison Sesso: Yeah, but you aren't, you can't do that.

[00:34:38] Right. You know, you're not gonna have the negotiated power that I can collectively, and you can't come to r i p and. Well look, I got this one debt. It's 45,000. I'm in

[00:34:46] George Weiner: Texas. Hear me out. I mean, you can, I will donate this much over here for the help my angle get better fund, right? Exactly. Doesn't, doesn't work.

[00:35:01] No,

[00:35:01] Allison Sesso: it doesn't. It doesn't work that way, unfortunately. But I do. But I will say this, when we work with hospitals and increasingly so, Our vision is for when we work with hospitals that they take a look at their financial assistance policies and try, because you're right hospitals, especially non-profit hospitals.

[00:35:20] Mm-hmm. are supposed to give out charity care. They're supposed to focus on low income individual. Remember that

[00:35:25] George Weiner: C3 classification in the old taxis?

[00:35:27] Allison Sesso: Yes, exactly. But the thing is that, Hospitals don't really get that classification taken away. Like that's not, that's not a thing that really happens that frequently.

[00:35:38] Yeah, I, and I, and I don't, I don't mean to imply at all that hospitals don't take that seriously. I think they take it very seriously there. They're nonprofit status, and again, not all hospitals are alike. There are some bad actors and there are some that are genuinely struggling right now. Hospitals are not really in a great financial place.

[00:35:56] Compared to some of the patients, they're probably better off. It depends, you know, on the situation. But hospitals are supposed to provide charity care, bottom line, and so they are not necessarily as generous as our program. So there's people in between, like some of them could be 200% of poverty or there's discounts provided at 300% of poverty, not the full, you know, getting it all relieved like r I p.

[00:36:21] So we do hope though, that by doing an analysis of their bad debt file people, that means people that did not get charity care, whose debt we are buying, that we're able to give them information that helps them reflect on their own charity care policies and approaches, like letting people actually know about the charity care, making sure the application process is not to burdensome.

[00:36:45] We encourage hospitals to do what's called presumptive eligibility, meaning that they just take a look on their own by buying data from, from TransUnion like we do, or any other, you know, Equifax, whatever. Buying the data, looking at people's incomes and making assumptions about whether or not they deserve or, you know, can get.

[00:37:02] Charity care based on their income, and then they just give it without, just like we do. We just give it away. We let people know that they've gotten this free kick, this debt relief without them having to fill out any paperwork or anything like that. .

[00:37:17] George Weiner: So that's so interesting. I didn't realize You're not looking at pii, personally identifiable information to the degree where you see maybe a name and an address.

[00:37:24] You're getting like top line stats on somebody Or could you do like, do the search for, you know, George, we in Texas who's got 45 K in debt and you're like, Ah, I found

[00:37:34] Allison Sesso: you, you're there. No. Well, when we get a, when we get a file, so we are HIPAA compliant, right? So we, we have a DAA with the hospital and, and we, you know, we do keep , uh, we're very vigilant about our, our cyber security and all of that other stuff.

[00:37:47] But, and we, we have to be able to have the information of the individual or else we wouldn't be able to let them know about the fact that we've relieved their debt. Right. Right. You do know it. Right. So we do have that information, but, When we analyze a file from a hospital, we're doing it in the aggregate.

[00:38:03] We're not focusing on the individual at all, that we're completely ignoring the individual's name and all of that stuff. All we're focusing on is those elements that qualify them, and so we take the entire part that qualifies, and that's what we hold onto, and then we send out the letters after we've bought that debt, et cetera, etc.

[00:38:24] George Weiner: Gotcha. I love, still, in my mind I'm thinking like, but there's technically a way I could go through and be like, if my name comes up, let's just say I'd be, uh, encouraged to make a donation. You'd never do it, but would it open up a second? Don't get my debt for me.

[00:38:42] Allison Sesso: Let you know. We'd never, ever let you, We would not, we don't give away the names of the individuals that we.

[00:38:49] if people want to tell their stories, they are encouraged to do so, and we let them do that and they can put their stories on their web, on our website, and they can talk to our anthropologist, but we would never tell a donor you helped X, Y, Z. Ever.

[00:39:01] George Weiner: Oh, that's fair. I was saying in reverse like the, the person who's like in distress, like, could I go search a database to be like, Oh, I'm in this distressed category of people, but you can't open up it up because of hipaa.

[00:39:11] Yeah.

[00:39:12] Allison Sesso: Well, you need to find out if we already relieved your debt. If it's already gone, we, we would've notified you.

[00:39:20] George Weiner: Oh, thank you for humoring me. I'm such a, such a rabbit hole runner. That's even a thing. All right, we're gonna move to rapid fire. okay. With your permission, Please keep your responses as short as you feel like they, eh, feel like.

[00:39:34] Okay. What is one tech tool or website that you or your organization has started using in the last year?

[00:39:40] Allison Sesso: Max Q D, which is a qualitative data analysis visualization tool. Cool.

[00:39:49] George Weiner: What are some tech issues you're currently battling with?

[00:39:53] Allison Sesso: Well, we are making sure that our cyber security is so to compliant, so we're really focused on that and we're super excited about that.

[00:40:01] And we also are trying to send people emails in addition to hard copy letters, and so we're working to incorporate that into our model. ,

[00:40:10] George Weiner: what is coming in the next year that has you the most excited?

[00:40:15] Allison Sesso: The ability to enhance how we analyze our data, specifically with a focus on.

[00:40:24] George Weiner: Talk about a mistake that you made in or maybe earlier in your career that shapes the way you do things today.

[00:40:33] Allison Sesso: Creating space for everyone who's a stakeholder, be it on the board, on your team, uh, donor to make their voice heard and to be part of decision making. By not doing that, I think you really undermine everyone's buyin to what you're doing and the direction you're headed.

[00:40:52] And that was a mistake I made in my career that I have overcorrected for, probably .

[00:40:59] George Weiner: Do you believe nonprofits can successfully go out of business?

[00:41:04] Allison Sesso: I sure hope so. I really do. I think that nonprofits are generally not set up to solve problems, but resolve them in your. And I hope that nonprofits can have a greater voice in getting systemic change so that they can help solve problems at a larger scale.

[00:41:24] George Weiner: If I were to put you in the hot tub time machine, back to the beginning of your work at r I p Medical debt, what advice would you give your dryer self yourself

[00:41:34] Allison Sesso: to focus on the progress over the. So that I could feel more excited about the work that I'm doing going forward and less

[00:41:43] George Weiner: stressed. Uh, if I were to give you a magic wand to wave across the industry you work in, what would it do?

[00:41:52] And you can't say, just clean up every single bit of debt

[00:41:57] Allison Sesso: across the industry. Uh, I would, I, I would say, and when I say the industry, I'm talking about the nonprofit industry at large, I would say improve the marketing of the industry. I think that we. A, a skewed view as if we are the secondary industry that's sort of just doing what everyone calls God's work, which I hate.

[00:42:16] I think that we are doing an essential, fundamental, fundamental function for society and that it takes real skill that not everybody has, and not everyone can from a business can just jump in and do, and take over and do well. And I think that I would do a better job of marketing who we are and how important we are as an, as an industry in terms of non.

[00:42:38] George Weiner: What is something you think you should stop doing?

[00:42:43] Allison Sesso: Uh, sometimes I think we put our heads down too much and do the day to day work, you know, going in and outta of meetings, taking, checking off our to-do list and I think we need to stop doing that as much and put our, pick our heads up and look at the big picture and appreciate what we've accomplished.

[00:42:59] George Weiner: How did you get your start in the social impact sector?

[00:43:04] Allison Sesso: I don't have a good answer for that. I feel like it's a calling for me. As lame and cheesy as that sounds, I've always, uh, felt like I needed to work in a mission driven, uh, capacity. And so here I am. ,

[00:43:19] George Weiner: what advice would you give college grads looking to enter the sector?

[00:43:24] make sure that you have a strong ethical and moral compass and that you have people to talk to to ensure you stay with that because money and donors even can really influence you in a way that's not

[00:43:37] George Weiner: always. What advice did your parents give you that you either followed or did not? Heed

[00:43:47] Allison Sesso: Finding balance in my life, both in terms of work happiness and personal happiness.

[00:43:56] To be

[00:43:56] George Weiner: clear, you heated that advice. I

[00:44:00] Allison Sesso: did. Yes. I'm very happy in both my work life and my, My question

[00:44:03] audio1239347413: could

[00:44:03] George Weiner: have gone the other way there. Life, right? could have been a real dark turn. Yeah. Uh, that's wonderful. Uh, how do people find you? How do people help you?

[00:44:14] Allison Sesso: Well, first donate to us please. Uh, r i p medical debt.org.

[00:44:19] I can't do this work without that. You can also follow us on Twitter, on Instagram. Just add our ip medical debt. but I really encourage you to, uh, to take a look at our website, check us out and, and talk about the issue of medical debt, uh, how it impacts you. I think one of the biggest problems with this issue is that people feel like they've personally failed when the reality is the system is broken.

[00:44:41] And you have to remember that. And unless we talk about it in our personal stories, this issue's gonna be with us and it's gonna be killing us slowly, literal.

[00:44:51] George Weiner: I'm grateful for the work that you are doing. Thank you. Thank you for, uh, just, uh, continuing to, to make this a national issue and an Avenue, Avenue to finally put dollars to work, I think, in a high leverage way.

[00:45:03] Thank you. Thank you.

Should Nonprofits Takeover ESG & Hurricane Ian (news)

Discussions of Corporate ESG Ratings Should Be Monitored By Nonprofit Industry

More and more, discussions about the efficacy, morality, and financial benefit of ESG-rated publicly-traded companies on the stock market are becoming commonplace. At nonprofitnewsfeed.com, we think that nonprofits need to be equipped with the context needed to engage both prospective donors and the public at large with what ESG is and is not. ESG, a catchall term for “Environmental, Social & Governance” is marketed to be a way to group, define, and measure companies by their broader (hopefully positive) impact on the world. However, as this op-ed from The New York Times makes clear, ESG (and ESG-related financial products like indexes or funds) are at best unproven in their effectiveness, at worst, a marketing ploy designed to obfuscate the harm done by the very companies on the list. Nonprofits should heed that fact as the general public and high-value donors discern significant investments in a wobbly economy, ESG may well increasingly become part of the conversation as a socially conscious (but financially beneficial) alternative to charitable giving in the minds of wealthy donors and investors, regardless of the efficacy of such an approach.

Read more ➝

 

Summary

• How can I help with Hurricane Ian? Volunteer, donate to Florida
  USA TODAY
• What happened to giving money to charity? | Vox 
• Pennsylvania school district accused of banning Girls Who Code book series | the Guardian
• How Indigenous Peoples’ Day is Supplanting Columbus Day
  Whole Whale
• The 2022 Nonprofit Power 100 | City & State
•  

 

 

Nonprofits Respond To Hurricane In Puerto Rico (news)

Nonprofits Respond To Hurricane In Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico felt the brunt of hurricane Fiona last week, shutting power to the island and devastating everything from homes to agriculture as severe flooding uprooted life yet again in communities. Puerto Rico, still recovering from hurricane Maria which landed back in 2017, again finds itself in need of assistance and as yet a path towards a resilient recovery. Nonprofits like New York-based Your Network Caring Community Advocates have already started collecting supplies to aid in recovery, and on-the-ground organizations like the Hispanic Federation are also accepting donations. While digital attention for providing aid to help in the wake of natural disasters spike to highs in the immediate aftermath of an event, the long-tail recovery efforts often require sustained rebuilding that takes years of reinvestment.

Read more ➝

 

Summary:

• Time to Start Making Hospital Executives Vow to 'Do No Harm' | Esquire 
• Nonprofits pay Texas farmers to not water crops during drought | The Texas Tribune 
• Local nonprofit seeks to reduce America's political divide - News8000.com | WKBT
• Nonprofit organization levels up Concord with 'Donkey Kong' mural | WMUR Manchester 
•  

Pooh & Public Domain Creative Opportunities | MarketingArtfully.com

The copyright on Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne officially moved into the public domain this year.

What does that actually mean? 

How might nonprofit's use public domain characters like this to help tell their story?

Tara Jacobson is the owner of MarketingArtfully.com with over 20 years experience in the marketing industry. She helps us break down what is possible and comes up with creative ways nonprofit causes might use the IP. 

 

Resource links

A lot of websites were shared on this awesome episode, here are the URLs mentioned.

• Creative Commons
• Trademark/Copyright search TESS
• RedBubble.com
• https://creativemarket.com/ 
• https://morguefile.com/ 
• https://fiverr.com
• Canva.com
• Openai.com
• Public Domain Story List
• MarketingArtfully.com
• https://artsyfartsylife.com/ 

 

About Tara Jacobson

Tara Jacobson is the owner of MarketingArtfully.com with over 20 years experience in the marketing industry which translates into highly successful marketing systems for her “DIY” and entrepreneur clients.

Tara’s strong history in Psychology, Entrepreneurship, and Creativity, combined with her 100 miles per hour, “tell it like it is” personality have earned her the title “The Queen of Marketing Ahhh’s” from her raving fans.

Tara brings a true small and medium sized business perspective to her work. She has talked with over 1,000 small biz owners about their goals, plans and dreams, helping them to grow and make sure that their marketing increases their intended efforts!

 

Rough Transcript

 

[00:00:00] George: We have a very interesting guest who is, I'll just say it very brave because she is coming in because I reached out to her completely cold, like completely cold. I'm sitting there looking up information about creative ways of using public domain characters and works and none other than marketing, artfully.com.

[00:00:50] And then I reached out to the owner and Tara Jacobson was nice enough as the owner of marketing, fully marketing artfully com. She has over 20 years experience in the marketing industry, but is, I would say coming at this as an outsider to the nonprofit and social impact industry in her work with over thousands of small and mid-size businesses and in this world.

[00:01:13] Tara, can you tell us maybe a bit more about your work and what.

[00:01:18] Tara: So I started internet marketing and making websites with like dream Weaver and all of that back in the day. Merge two, I was a realtor for a couple of years. That was interesting. And then I owned a marketing company for years and one of the reasons why I got so interested in.

[00:01:37] More so trademark and copyright and later on, interested in public domain is because it's I believe it's $600. You get fined as a business. If you use somebody's copyrighted or trademarked work and it's $10,000, if you do it for a client. So I was like, I have always bought every picture I've ever owned.

[00:02:04] I've always had. Oh shoot. What it was called, where the domain of where you got your things and yeah. You sourced the information and yeah that to me was super important years ago when I was posting things for people, making social media graphics, things like that.

[00:02:23] And I got really interested in it. So we're gonna talk today. I'm gonna give you a little course in all of the D. Terms that are gonna come up. And then I love that we're gonna brainstorm some ways that nonprofits can use 'em the only nonprofit I've ever been involved in was the Colorado house rabbit society.

[00:02:49] I do have a blog post on my website about how to get volunteers, cuz they were really bad at it. And so I did I did write them a blog post on how to get volunteers, but I haven't worked tons with nonprofits, but I've worked with all kinds of businesses over the years, small businesses and medium size SSEs and small business.

[00:03:13] George: Yeah. And I think that's helpful context too, to say, like what's at stake. Why do I care about this on one end? There's the penalty side, which is frankly, not as much fun as the creative, which we'll get to, but I'll just say from personal experience, we had interns writing content at whole whale.

[00:03:32] Seven years ago, I get this email from it's like a take down notice, but also basically we used like a picture of a squirrel with some nuts that somebody just Google. Just Google the image and the content really wasn't used at all. And we got fined. I will say I, I can't officially say, but it is in the thousands of dollars for a picture, an intern put on our website like a decade ago.

[00:03:57] Like it's very real what you're talking about and very painful. So I think your note, I'll just put an exclamation point on. It's worth checking because the algorithms that people have for quickly searching and scanning websites have improved for scanning for this type of copyrighted work, all righty onto you.

[00:04:17] What, and there's

[00:04:18] Tara: so much available for free or a very little money. I'm gonna explain the difference, how you get super free stuff, and then how you get like really tiny money. And to me, tiny money is under $10. Maybe not under $300, I'm talking tiny money. So we're gonna start off by talking about what trademark is.

[00:04:47] So trademark gets talked about a lot and trademark is just the words. So you, so Nike's swoosh. The picture of it is copyrighted because it's an image, but the word just do it is trademarked and you can't use those kind of terms. What you're talking about with the creative and the marketing, and maybe pictures for blogs and maybe pictures for things to sell or images for things to sell.

[00:05:17] Is called copyright because copyright covers artistic things like pictures poems, books, things like that. And things come out of copyright. I looked it up after 70 years. So things before 1924 are in the public domain right now. And something super exciting came into the public domain this year, which was the original poo bear.

[00:05:46] And

[00:05:47] George: all the characters, right? So everything from the mil books are public domain.

[00:05:53] Tara: Yeah. And there's illustrations of P bear and EOR and the hundred acre words and things like that, that people truly have a heartfelt connection to. So if you're talking about doing something that is going to help a nonprofit, you're not looking for something that's going to.

[00:06:16] Be mercenary or something like that. You want something that people can go back to their childhood and think, oh my gosh, it's poo bear. I love poo. And there's a whole list of and you can put a link on it. I have a whole list on my website of stories that are in the public. So Rapunzel, Rapunzel it down.

[00:06:47] Your hair is in the public domain. So that is something that people can use. Oh, we have to talk about public domain too. But that is a story that people can use. What they can't use is tangled. Tangled is the dignified version of. Yeah, Rapunzel, let down my hair. So what you wanna do is you wanna make sure that anything you're looking to use, there's a database.

[00:07:19] It's the PT, PTO database. It's called test T E S S. If you just search test on. Google, they have a way to search for it. And you put in only look for live ones. So if you look for live and dead ones, then you're gonna get a lot. But we only care about the ones that are live right now. And so you can find out if something is in the public domain is a avail, is copyrighted or not.

[00:07:46] Now public domain is way more just than things that have gone on a copyright or that aren't trademarked. There are things called creative commons where an artist or a writer or people like that will take their items and file them as creative commons. Now you want what's called creative commons. Oh zero zero.

[00:08:12] And that means they hold no They don't have any license on it. Where if it's just like a plain creative comments, a lot of times they'll exclude a commercial license, even though you're a nonprofit, if you're selling something commercially, that would be violating the terms of that license. And you can find all kinds of things doing that search for pictures, for your website, for things like that.

[00:08:38] Now there are places that say they. Creative commons things like morgue file has a lot of pictures on it. It's just one of the places. And, but they don't have a vetting process. They rely on the people, uploading the pictures to do it. So we're gonna talk for just a wee minute about why sometimes it's better to purchase it than not.

[00:09:05] Okay. Even if you're using something that's in the public domain. So we're gonna talk about poo. Because I love him and absolutely but you could go, you could grab a book off the shelf. You could download that you could scan that image. You could fix all of the little problems with a graphic.

[00:09:29] Program like Photoshop and make sure it's in the proper condition to use on a t-shirt or use on postcards or things like that. Or you can go to a place like creative market where somebody has already done that for you. Like an artist has already done all those steps. And you buy it with a commercial license.

[00:09:52] Usually they're about $11, I think, to get like a set of P bear images. Alison Wonderland is in the public domain. So you can use Alison Wonderland. Now they have, somebody has trademarked Allison Wonderland on t-shirts. So you still, even if it's in the public domain, you always wanna go check the trademark database.

[00:10:14] It's not, there's no like blanket, these are all safe and these are not all safe. You always wanna go and check. So does,

[00:10:22] George: so the trademark database, what does that look like? Is that tests or is that a different that's test? Yeah, no

[00:10:27] Tara: that's tests and all you do is you put you put in Alison Wonderland in tests and click live and click search, and then it'll show you what category of things are.

[00:10:42] Ex like you have to exclude. So say it says t-shirt clothing. I can't remember what's all in that category, but you could make greeting cards. Nobody's trademarked that for greeting cards. So that's why you wanna check. So even if you think, oh my gosh, Allison wonderlands gone. It doesn't mean it is.

[00:11:04] If you're not using it on the thing, they've trademarked it for. And I have such a good example that I looked up for you. So the word elf. Is trademark for lighters, photography, backdrop, and amplifiers three different categories. You can't use it for that. But as of right now, if you wanted to use it on a t-shirt you be, it's not just the, you're gonna put a picture of an L on a t-shirt and you're and for nonprofits, you may be able to avoid some of these problems, because you're functionally selling. to your constituents rather than as much trying to sell internationally. Sometimes you may wanna sell internationally, but if you're doing a fundraiser internally and you're not gonna be advertising it online or in a huge way, then you may be able to get away with it.

[00:12:08] If they do send you a cease desist, then you have made commercial money on it though they can claw back that money. So it's worth looking.

[00:12:16] George: Yeah this complicates it a bit more because prior to even you saying that, I just assumed if it's in the public domain, I'm looking at a picture of Winnie the poo.

[00:12:26] Somebody could have trademarked that on a t-shirt. So I'm like, oh, I can spin up my t-shirts with Winnie the poo on it.

[00:12:32] Tara: No, they can't trademark the picture of Winnie the poo they could tra they could, and they can't copyright it because the copyright belongs to AA. So Uhuh, the original artwork is in the public domain.

[00:12:49] What they could do is, and it would take 'em a while to do it, cuz they have to show the first time the trademark, the word was used in the public and then they have to pay money to get it. It's about 12, $1,200 to get the trademark and then they have to go through a whole process where it's vet. So you and they won't go backwards. So if you were to sell a Winnie, the POH says, Winnie the poo, it's the poo bear old P bear you're done. And in two years, somebody trademarks Winnie the poo and you had used it. They don't go backwards. Does that

[00:13:26] George: help at all? You know what it helps with reminding folks that just because it's on that list, you should double check the database, especially if you're going to put marketing power behind it, putting it on products and as you go to use it, but.

[00:13:40] Again, though, is a massive shopping list because there are some edge cases maybe you can't put poo on a lighter, but

[00:13:50] Tara: no, you can't put, you can't put an El on a lighter

[00:13:53] George: I know let's get your, let's get it straight. Elves, not okay. Poo, like we'll just memorize whole thing. Poo's good. He's good to go on a lighter.

[00:14:00] There's that huge the movie's coming out, right? They did a horror movie with Winnie the. Can drop this season because you can do

[00:14:12] Tara: that. You can do that now. And so all of these amazing things that people, and it's not even just, so Walt Disney was brilliant. He took over so many fairy tales.

[00:14:31] Yeah. And stole them for him. There is a real beauty and the beast story that is an old fable from like, When the black plague was around that he then made specific. Now you can do all kinds of things with beauty and the beast. You just can't do the bell in the yellow there iconography, right?

[00:14:58] Yeah. Okay. And then spec. So that's from both the old movie and the new movie, and then you can't do, and then you can, but there's so many things you can do. Like sleeping. Beauty is you can say sleeping beauty. He doesn't own sleeping beauty. He owns Aurora because that wasn't the name of the original sleeping beauty.

[00:15:22] It was. Sister. And so he picked that one. So then you wanna really try, I do know a lot about this. You wanna try to make sure that something isn't copyrighted or trademarked before you use it and just BEC and do not go to Etsy, do not go to anywhere and do a search and think, oh, look, this is all over Etsy.

[00:15:46] It must be okay. That's not how the world works.

[00:15:50] George: Yeah, you're really talking about the original, like name of the character as presented essentially in the trademark language, in the copyright public domain and the images I'm looking through your piece on Allison Wonderland. You may have that image of Allison, a blue dress and the the mad hat, or it is a very different look, frankly, but it's still recognizable as the charact.

[00:16:16] but it doesn't necessarily have that immediate brand recognition that essentially that's a Disney version Disney, it Disney it. But right now, for instance there's two movies about pinoc one on, I think Netflix and one on Disney as a rerelease guess what, that's another story similar to, as you just mentioned beauty and the beast that you

[00:16:35] Tara: can run with.

[00:16:36] Yeah, there are so many things. And oh and they're really mad about this, but I think in the next year it might be next year, Nikki's coming

[00:16:45] George: to town.

[00:16:47] Tara: Old Mickey, like really old Mickey. Oh, G Mickey. Yeah. OG Mickey is coming out of copyright. And so that's, what's fun about it to me. Like I, I make stuff for now I make artwork.

[00:17:03] I'm an artist now. And I make artwork. So I made my own version of the mad hatch actress who does not look like Johnny Depp. It doesn't look like Disney's version. She's a woman in a hat and the original Alison Wonderland had that 10 and 10, six thing in her hat. And so she's very recognizable as Alison Wonderland, as the Matt had her from Allison Wonderland, but she's a feminist version.

[00:17:41] George: So now we get into maybe some of that creative elements, unless there's some more guardrails you wanna toss

[00:17:45] Tara: out for folks. Nope. I think if you've gotten this far and you have all of the warnings

[00:17:51] George: you really made them take their vegetables first, right? Amen. Vegetables and vitamins first. So you can riff on them.

[00:18:00] You can take this original concept and riff on it. Can I just maybe up to a thou 3000. Explain to me what are the advantages of using a character that has this recognition

[00:18:14] Tara: already? Okay. So the reason why there is copyright and trademark is because it would be so much easier to sell a Alison Wonderland.

[00:18:30] Queen of hearts mug. If it looked just like Disney's right, people have already paid money to go to the Disney movie. They've already paid to go to Disney world. Walt Disney has already done the work to make people want to like that. And so it's unfair if you think, oh, I wanna do something with transformers because there's good brand recognition.

[00:18:58] The reason why you wanna do it is because there's good brand recognition right now. The reason we now I wanna I'll give you my Madha example. The reason I wanna do a Madris is I can use all the words except for Alice in wonder. So mad Hatter, isn't trademarked tea party. We are all mad here.

[00:19:23] All of those things are not trademarked, so I can make a mad Hatter shirt with we're all mad here and I can market it in a way that it will be able to get found by a portion of the population that's interested in the Alice Wonderland story. That's why I wanna make a bad hatch actress, because I know that there are people that already resonate with that character, whether it was the Disney character or whether they read Allison Wonderland in their childhood, or whether they saw Johnny DEP any which way they have a feeling towards that character.

[00:20:00] And I can use that to help sell my stuff.

[00:20:04] George: Gotcha. So you're shopping for. These characters in part because of this. And I wanna come back to the value that you are essentially borrowing for free. Think about the amount of attention it took to bring that character to millions of people. How much would that have cost for you to do the same?

[00:20:24] Now you then, because of that attention, as I understand it, there's recognition. Oh, I see that. I grew up with that. I was read that. And then with recognition, you then can play with the affinity, which by the way, can be positive and negative. There are often villains in here as well, but you then can immediately start on page five instead of page one.

[00:20:45] And then it sounds add your flavor of brand message, even advocacy. Does that sound right?

[00:20:53] Tara: Yeah. Exactly. So gimme an idea of one of your nonprofits.

[00:20:58] George: Oh gosh. We have a lot of animal welfare organizations I'd say interested in preserving and saving and protecting lands.

[00:21:07] Tara: Okay. So animal welfare makes me think of the big Wildcat organization when I was in Colorado.

[00:21:14] Which makes me think of the cowardly lion and they could use the cowardly lion, the original Frank bomb, cowardly lion, which is in I'm 95. Yeah. It's in the public domain and do something with the cowardly lion that matches their the way their nonprofit is set up and who it's serving animals, right?

[00:21:43] Yes. And so if the Wildcat sanctuary already knows their people love big cats, and now they're giving them the cowardly lion with that affinity to not the movie, the book. And that character, but you can still use cowardly lion and all that comes with it. And all the heartstrings that come with it, then all of a sudden you have a target market group.

[00:22:10] That's already predisposed to like it and buy it at a higher price because they don't really care. They know the profit's going to. The animal rescue group, they know that this is something that they're gonna love and cherish because it helped their thing, but they also enjoy wearing it. And in wearing it now they're promoting the animal rescue group.

[00:22:32] So there's like this amazing circle of wonderfulness.

[00:22:37] George: Yeah. I thought you were gonna go with Tigger, but you threw me a curve ball. I maybe have gone with You could ERs and saving Tiggers because he is a character inside of winning the poop. Now

[00:22:49] Tara: you there's once you start brains but think about that, you and I went to two totally different things that are both actually big cats that could help an annual animal rescue.

[00:23:02] So say you rescue turtles. You wanna find. Maybe I, and don't take, don't quote me on this, but maybe the wind in the willows is in the public domain, the original book, and there's a fun turtle in there. Or those are the kind of things you wanna try to figure out how you can mono, how you can really use their.

[00:23:24] Brand recognition to make your customers who are your donors, more willing to buy something and not only buy it because that doesn't help as much. If they're not wearing it and helping spread your message.

[00:23:38] George: I wanna pull the thread a bit more because immediately you talk about merchandise. And I imagine if I were to drop you into many sort of after thoughts of we'll call it a Shopify or a Spreadshirt or a very cafe press talking about we put our logo on a shirt, so our.

[00:23:55] Audience can go get it. It's an afterthought. It's not the forefront. Can you explain very quickly, like when you look at the opportunity of petsy or putting imagery on a shirt, is there money there? What does that look like in your

[00:24:08] Tara: world? Okay. So for a nonprofit, specifically, not in my world, because in my world, I'm an artist now, but for a nonprofit number one, I would suggest they use red bubble.

[00:24:21] It is incredibly simple. You do not pay a dime to list any of the products. And as a nonprofit, you make this say, you say, and you don't have the, you don't have anybody on staff with the ability to make what you need. Number one, you can go to creative market right now and they have there's a gal on there that does dark Alice.

[00:24:53] There's all kinds like pink, Alice and dark Alice and you can just buy a graphic. That's already ready to drop on a t-shirt for 12 bucks or 20 bucks. So you've bought the right to use that on a t-shirt and then you can put words on the top words on the bottom, wor you know, the name of your charity on the back.

[00:25:17] And if your people do not have the ability to do that, you can go to a place like fiber, which is F I V E R r.com. And give them the graphics that you wanna use that you've paid for. Don't rely on them to get the graphics because you want to control the fact that you have purchased commercial rights to use this.

[00:25:43] Ask them to make you a t-shirt and they'll make you a t-shirt for 20 bucks.

[00:25:50] George: So the, then the creation of it. So how do you set up a shop? What do you point people to set up your shop for red bubble? And you can set up a custom shop with my nonprofit and I get some graphics that just frankly, go beyond here's our logo.

[00:26:04] We

[00:26:04] Tara: did. Oh, gosh no. You could put your logo graphics on there. You could like that could, and you could even make it cute. Okay. So if I had at least the I, okay. Let's not as cute as the WWF, cuz they have a super cute logo, but say you just have a word logo, right? Yeah. You could take and put a Christmas hat on it for Christmas and then they would have to buy it for Christmas and you could put some Mardi Bo beads hanging on it or put some shamrocks on it.

[00:26:38] For I was gonna say the 4th of July, but for St. Patrick's day. And you could do all kinds of things. If you just wanna tart up your logo and then yes, other people in the world could buy it, but primarily you're gonna be driving the people who already like you. To that place so they can buy things. You can buy stickers, you can buy blankets, you can buy.

[00:27:03] And all you do is you upload your thing once, and then they put it on all that stuff, if you want.

[00:27:09] George: And it's on demand creation and shipping, and it's all handled for you. But I think getting back to our ideation, let me give you another another type of organization, and this is gonna be tough, but you asked for it.

[00:27:20] We've got. Cancer related organizations interested in awareness for let's say lung cancer or colorectal cancer. So what types of I see her smile. You can't see, dude. I'll narrate, she's laughing and smiling. She has an idea. All right. What do you well for the call I'm way, ER, than nonprofits, right?

[00:27:46] Tara: That's okay. So for the colorectal one, I would go with but why didn't you get your test with somebody's butt and not saying B U T, but B UT, but why did but implying that everything's about a butt, right? Colorectal cancer. It's your butt. I like your job.

[00:28:07] That's the kind of thing that you have to get out of your own way and figure out something cute with a marketing hook that is going to to be interesting to people, to buy cards, to buy.

[00:28:27] So what, so if you're

[00:28:28] George: not, I would've gone wizard of Oz with this one, like a behind the curtain, or like a wizard behind the curtain or a. Maybe a 10 man or something like I have no heart. All right. Like maybe I guess in my mind went there.

[00:28:41] Tara: I'm not done with this yet.

[00:28:43] George: Oh, hold on. Keep cooking.

[00:28:45] Tara: So for the lung cancer I would and you can do this on fiber, or you can ask if anybody's an AR is artistic in your group, get longs and have them painted with. Have them painted with some kind of PA cute pattern. So have some artist make lungs look pretty. And then that's going to be something that people already sorry about the rustling.

[00:29:18] People already want to support this, but if there's a beautiful set of lungs and you can put that on something on a card, on a whatever. So if you aren't looking for products, I guess I'm just stuck in the products right now. What were you looking to use public domain stuff. So I can give you better examples

[00:29:42] George: then.

[00:29:42] Yeah. Moving out of the product land. I would say it's the process I'm imagining is shopping through a, Winnie the poo in all the characters, and then saying what type of graphics could we use in our website, art blog posts, social media, mini campaigns that might be around fundraisers and that type of use where it's just it's the ability to have an immediate, as I mentioned before, a combination of recognition and.

[00:30:10] Then telling a nuance of your story,

[00:30:16] Tara: I would still buy the cause. You're when you're buying the P bear thing from creative market. You're buying the set. So the entire set of the P air images. So you've got, say you were to do that and we'll let's talk about the Colorectal one, because if I'm going in, I'm going to the hardest one you have Tigar and I'm so happy that my, my friend P got his colorectal screen.

[00:30:56] He's bouncing on his tail, right? Yep. so this is something,

[00:31:01] George: no, you're right. You can take these characters and have a dialogue. And what does it mean? That happens. It's just it is so much it IBUs it with so much more nuance. Doesn't it? Because then you're not thinking. So colorectal cancer for Mego.

[00:31:16] Tara: I go directly to the gal who was on the today show whose husband died. Jay died. Super cute lady. Can't remember her name right the second. And so there's a lot of bad associations, sad associations to that. And there's not this This feeling of hope that if you help donate to my cause we can.

[00:31:47] Do so many more things than just mourn people. We can help with research. So maybe you have, what's the one that's always the owl, is the smart one. And so the owl says did you know that your donation helps us research cures and things to help with colorectal cancer? Like now you're saying, oh, it's not just this horrifying thing that everybody's gonna die from. It's that you, as an organization. Present a way for people to be hopeful and to want to donate because, and to want to share socially. Yeah. Do you wanna share a picture of a colon? I have seen a picture of a colon and they are not attractive.

[00:32:42] Do you wanna share a picture of a colon or do you wanna share a picture of tiger jumping up and down? With a funny context to it, but here's the game that I'm seeing. You're bringing in characters that have a normal relationship, and then you're adding dialogue. It's a caption contest in some respects of saying, what would this dialogue look like if it were about our cause?

[00:33:03] George: All right, I'm gonna throw you another one, unless there's another point here. No, I like. Okay. The news literacy project, and then generally anybody dealing with misinformation online. And so this particular organization works with educators and journalists to give students the skills they need to discern fact from fiction and know what to trust.

[00:33:23] Tara: Oh my goodness. I would totally use. Was oh, we just watched this. Oh, you can't use it. I can give you a great example. Can't uses. So you charming was the villain and guy was the villain in in frozen. You could do this on social media. You could absolutely do this without getting in trouble. Yeah.

[00:33:55] Prince

[00:33:56] George: times. So just yeah. Who like a quiz who was the villain in social media da, everybody knows fake news sometimes or however you put it, that things aren't always what they seem at first glance. Yeah. And so you're talking about the fact that don't forget when you're reading the news things.

[00:34:21] Tara: Aren't always what at first glance ever news or Scrooge is in the is in the public domain, that Scrooge store. That's why you have, that's why you have SCR and you have all those movies that are made of it, but you could put something about You can't use Scrooge duck, but you can use Scrooge and you could put something about the fact that Scrooge goes bankrupt.

[00:34:52] Loses all his money. and then underneath you could say something like not true. He donated it all to a, to worthy causes after tiny Tim taught him the right way to do it. Make sure to fact check. Yeah,

[00:35:07] George: I. All right here. I'm gonna play one into you. See how you would go with the queen of hearts is public domain.

[00:35:14] Yeah. And notoriously pretty terrible leader. Did you have the little cards as like defenders or like at least the soldiers, right? No. You could have she has queen of heart soldiers. Yeah. Two soldiers, the queen of hearts talking to each other, being like, I'm not sure red. Paint's so great for flowers, but I'm not gonna look it up.

[00:35:35] So painting the roses red, like all of that sort of iconography and you're like check the, so this could be part of an ongoing joke series. Could even be a, could even be a shirt. go, I'll go back to your product. But no, but it could all

[00:35:48] Tara: of that's and I just set up a I've had an Etsy shop, but I just, the reason why I suggest red bubble.

[00:35:54] Is because it is the easiest thing in 20 years, I have ever done online the way they've made the website and the ease of adding. It just has to be a big enough picture, which is why I suggested a fiber person, cuz they're gonna be able to there's terms like it has to be 4,500 pixels by 5,005.

[00:36:17] And nonprofit people are like LA. I can't hear that. but any kind of graphic artist can do that in a heartbeat. That's just not a hard thing. And so if they have an idea that they wanna implement, they could implement it with somebody on five or very easily. Gotcha. All right,

[00:36:37] George: you ready for another one?

[00:36:38] Sure. Let's keep going. All right. This is one move for hunger, but also hunger organizations in general, food banks, collecting food and in general for move for hunger, they're a national nonprofit, and they have a sustainable way to reduce food waste. Mainly when people move, instead of throwing it away, they have moving companies that have been part of their network that get food that last mile to donated to local food banks.

[00:37:01] So anything in the food bank, food insecure. Space. Okay. What

[00:37:07] Tara: would you play there? So I go to the mad Hatter's tea party where they're eating right. Right after this, they called the moving company and they came and, or they called moved for hunger and no food. No teacakes were, was. And that's all imagery you ha can go grab and that's all imagery. It's just there. And people already know it. And they know about the, I if I was doing move for hunger, I would do a whole series of it with like cupcakes, like a really cute cupcake. Maybe even not a Alice Wonderland cupcake, but you can use, drink me.

[00:37:49] You can U I. Always check. You can use drink meat. You can use eat me and then say

[00:37:57] George: no, those little tags that are like so iconic to

[00:37:59] Tara: it. Yeah. So eat me on a little cupcake. Cause you can buy those kind images already made. And once you have your little cupcake, then you can say not a Chrome went to waste.

[00:38:13] Because the food bank showed up or the Mo food movers or move for hunger showed up. And so you're go, like the big part of whatever you're doing is gonna be the cupcake and the eat me. And then especially on social media, then the underneath of it is the message with a link to your donate page or a link to your about page so people can understand what your thing is.

[00:38:39] People want to know how to help, but you have to attract their attention before they know that you're there. I adopted three kids from foster care and so food, poverty is super important to me because my kids came from that situation. But there's no way for me to know. And I work with realtors all the time, cuz of that little two year thing in real estate, I would think that you could contact realtors and have them give everybody who's moving a flyer to put in the homes of the people who are moving.

[00:39:16] And you're literally touching so many more people who are moving, but you have to attract that realtor first.

[00:39:24] George: Yeah. I had the thought of Winnie the POH and honey, I'm done. I'm all in poo, but Winnie the POH and honey, like he's always looking for honey, always hungry and nothing is Sader than a sad poo and an empty honey.

[00:39:35] Tara: Exactly. That's wonderful. I love imagine, right? That is wonderful. There's a whole bunch in SCR. So you, so then at Christmas time, yeah, you do Scrooge and tiny Tim never had enough to eat. This is the. If tiny Tim had been alive now move for hunger. Would've been able to help. So your image is something endearing and heartfelt and that, and then your message is that this is an actual thing that helps people.

[00:40:12] And what you, oh, here's another thing. Oh, this is a big one. Let's talk about demographics, right? Who has the most disposable income right now? And I see a lot of people tr okay let's start. Coherently cuz I just got really excited. So people with money are I'm 56, so I have money and people older than me.

[00:40:39] So let's say 50 and older have money, disposable income to donate. So you want most of your Donations your hardcore, Hey send like I, I support best friends, which is a dog rescue. It's a giant rescue place, but they had a dog town, TV show and stuff like that. So I donate to them and they send me emails with pictures of dogs and dog stories and sometimes dog t-shirts and things like that.

[00:41:11] And I have the disposable income to do it. I also donate to Kiva and which is for entrepreneurs overseas, their micro loads. So you want to take. And figure out what kind of images are going to appeal to people who are older. If you're looking for donations, not to say, to ignore younger people but that's a better target market to to.

[00:41:43] To get money, easy money, recurring revenue, whatever you wanna call it, because the disposable income is there. If you are trying to get volunteers, I don't volunteer very often. I'm old and grumpy, and I don't really like to leave the house and. So you are gonna get a lot more volunteers from the younger people.

[00:42:08] So you would direct if this is what your what the data from your past marketing campaigns has shown in your nonprofit. If it doesn't show that, then don't do this, but think about it. And if you can get volunteers from younger people, then figure out how you can use those kind of things, more hip and ed.

[00:42:33] And mine can go back to tradition and sentimental and things like that. So those are all also things you wanna put in the mix, not just what is the character you're using, cuz you could use Tigger the same way. You said to you, I said, oh, I said to use. No. You said to use 'em for the wild cats, but you could also use him to say, Hey, hop on over and help us with the the drive to end colorectal cancer.

[00:43:07] George: Yep. Fairly it's really usable. And I wanna put a finer point on what you're saying with regard to generational targeting because the characters. Are coming into public domain are 70 to a hundred years old. They are perhaps more recognizable, they're recognizable and broad, but specifically higher affinity, higher recognition for let's just be honest, a generation over 45.

[00:43:30] Tara: Absolutely. I agree with that a hundred percent now I would say that my daughter, who is 17 recognized the mad hat. Because my artwork is a little cartoony but if you, yeah, your style. Yeah. Yeah. My style is a little bit more cartoony, but if you were to just put and she recognizes old poo, so then you would have to go to the really big ones.

[00:43:56] You couldn't go to like owl from poo. You would have to go to poo bear, Tigger, EOR. Piglet and then you want yeah. Piglet, but then you want to to find out like how people are using those characters in common vernacular in the zeitgeist, because are you a Tigger or are you an E or is an actual thing?

[00:44:29] I'm an ER, meaning that I tend to be a little. I just had this conversation with one of my friends today that I'm a little bit more grumpy and a little bit more doubting and she's a ticker, she's all everything's great. And everything's fine. And da. And so that's already in the Zeit case.

[00:44:50] So you could do a fun quiz on, on your social media and say, are you a ticker or are you a E or. We're gonna have a drawing for a free entry to the, whatever you have coming up for one person from whichever team wins. Yeah, I just throwing other just looking through fictional characters, there's so much more than I realized Robinhood, Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein's monster is a, we've only just scratched the surface of kind of what's possible.

[00:45:26] George: I wonder I've been playing around with Dolly two and image creation from AI, and I realized that you can actually take one of these originals and do riffs. I think you'll get more random than you would an artist, but the ability to do variations, even on, on some of these imagery, once you have, as you acknowledge like that style of the original thing that people may recognize, you could actually move those characters around more easily than ever before.

[00:45:51] I think especially for a nonprofit on social media, if you're doing no commercial sales and you're just posting on social media. Yeah. And you wanted to take, say the drippy clock from Dolly. And put it on the front of your building and say, Hey, it's time to, it's time to donate times times running out to donate for the September big cat whatever for that.

[00:46:24] Tara: There's a general feeling that as long as you have changed, as long as more than 40%. Change, so there's a, I'm really big on the bad things that happened. So do you remember that Obama poster that was really graphic stark graphic? That was, are you saying the Shepherd's ferry one?

[00:46:51] I believe so. Yeah. Yeah. He copied that from a picture that he didn't have the commercial rights to use oh, that's. Okay. So he is in trouble for that. He's getting sued by the photographer, or he's been sued by the photographer for that because he didn't change it at all. Short of poster, short of what anybody could have done in illustrator.

[00:47:16] He made it exactly.

[00:47:18] George: He just dropped it down the middle and changed one shade, changed the other shade, hit it with an outline and he is And bam you're done well, the original photographer could prove it was his. So the thought is that as long as you change about 40%, but there's lots of really recognizable.

[00:47:35] Tara: I don't know if CLE. K L I M P T. He made all that gold arch where there's two people on you. Yeah. And there's gold. All of that is in the public domain. His stuff

[00:47:48] George: is his is the kiss, right? That's the

[00:47:50] Tara: symbolic one. He did the. Yeah. So there's tons of stuff. If you start to, to take a look and then, so you can go to, you can do a search for creative commons which is an actual place.

[00:48:08] Creative commons. Yeah. Yeah, of course. And use lots of things there because there are a lot of contemporary artists. There are a lot. Just people who love to make art or who love to take pictures who are willing to have people use their artwork with a commercial license. Cause you still have to have a commercial license.

[00:48:30] You are a commercial entity, even as a nonprofit yeah. So you're not using it for personal.

[00:48:39] George: Yeah, you have to, especially I think the bright line here I'm taking away as we wrap up is for general social media and your website use there's clearly ways you can use it, but you definitely have to double check, triple check and even consider paying for some access to it.

[00:48:54] When the commercial rights of like, all right, I'm putting it on an item to be sold and revenue will be generated albeit even for a non-profit

[00:49:02] Tara: a hundred percent. But I also think that there's ways to. Collection like to pay for a commercial license of a large collection for a low amount of money that you then know unilaterally, you have purchased the commercial right to use, right?

[00:49:19] So if you have all the poos and you have all the Allison wonderlands and you have a creative intern and you say let's all help you brainstorm things to do. They could be posting on social media or your website for the next year. With all different kinds of fun things. Yeah.

[00:49:38] George: All right. Normally I end with rapid fire questions, but I will trim it down a little bit, maybe for you and some final wrap up questions, unless there's any other finer points you wanna put on this overall conversation?

[00:49:51] Tara: No, I think this was fun. It was interesting.

[00:49:54] George: Little bit different. Alright, so what is one tech challenge you're currently facing right now?

[00:50:01] Tara: I just wrote in my newsletter about this, that my first reaction to anything is I can't do that. I'm an EOR, so I think, oh, I can't do that. I don't know how to do that. And one of my friends today, her coach told her she had to do TikTok and she said I don't, she was freaked out, just freaked out.

[00:50:27] And she said, I don't know how to do this. And so I talked to her for a little while and at the end of it, she's oh, I absolutely can do this. So I think when my first reaction is I can't do this, number one, I'll phone, a friend. And then number two, I will look on YouTube because everything you need to know about how to do anything is on.

[00:50:49] George: All right. What new website or tool have you started using in the past year? That's been a game changer for you, red bubble.

[00:50:57] Tara: Red bottles. So fun. Love it. And I have no affiliation.

[00:51:01] George: Yeah, no this ad brought to you by red bull com find your new

[00:51:07] Tara: hobby. Exactly well, but I think it's because I've used Etsy for so long and I've worked with so many entrepreneurs and it is hard.

[00:51:16] Like it's just it's hard to use. It's hard to do things and. So it's distressing to give that as a person who suggests ways to make money or to do marketing or to do things like that. It's distressing to me to recommend something that I know that they're probably gonna spend a lot of time at and may not succeed.

[00:51:40] Yeah. Where I was like whoa. All my little people will be able to cause my, my readership for marketing artfully is women who tend to be older, who may not be as technically inclined. And so to have something to recommend them. I'll give you another one though. canva.com. Oh,

[00:52:01] George: we're friends of Canada.

[00:52:02] Yeah. Okay.

[00:52:04] Tara: All right. If you're doing any kind of graphics. They like, so you could totally pull your logo into Canva and they have all kinds of elements in there. And when I said put like a little Santa Claus hat on it, they would have a Santa Claus hat. You could stick onto your to your thing, even for the top of your new, how fun would that be?

[00:52:29] The top, the header of your newsletter every month. You stick something on it and then seasonal

[00:52:35] George: iconography.

[00:52:36] Tara: Yeah. Yeah. And then people get used to looking for that, and that's a way to get them to read your newsletter, which is the point.

[00:52:45] George: All righty. What is one piece of advice your parents gave you that you either followed or did not

[00:52:50] Tara: follow.

[00:52:54] Don't open things with your teeth. I paid a lot for them and I opened things with my teeth all the time.

[00:53:04] George: That might be the best answer to that question we've ever had. And we've had many years of this that's I'm not gonna pull all the thread there. I think that was perfect. Final hardball question here.

[00:53:13] How do people find you? How do people help you?

[00:53:17] Tara: So I I have a, I marketing art fleet is helpful to marketing things. I have another website called artsy Fary life.com and I have a lot of stuff on there. That's artsy Fary art, artistic stuff, and then also a bunch for Alzheimer's. Cause my mother-in-law has Alzheimer's so caregiving for Alzheimer's.

[00:53:45] So if anybody has that, then there's a lot of good information.

[00:53:49] George: And what might somebody reach out to you personally, to do, to work

[00:53:54] Tara: on? I don't work for people anymore. don't

[00:53:58] George: I did that. I'm outta the client games. All right. It's lucky,

[00:54:01] Tara: but you know what, but you know what? I have an open offer to anybody to email me questions and I get lots of questions.

[00:54:10] It's Tara at marketing artfully. And so while I won't do it for you, a lot of times I have either a recommendation. Or I can answer a question really quick, quickly for you. That would maybe be something that would take you a long time to figure out. And I have people email you know how some people don't mind getting texts and a text will Fritz out my day.

[00:54:34] I get emails all day long from people, and I've done that for years. For 20 years. My email has been out on the internet and it's in lots of my blog posts that say, feel free to email me if you have any questions. And then if you're more artsy, I have a really cool newsletter on artsy Fary and if you're more marketing, I have a really cool newsletter on marketing artfully.

[00:54:56] George: I appreciate you answering my random cold email to you, and it all makes sense. Now. I appreciate you giving generously of your time and thank you.

[00:55:05] Tara: It was nice talking to you today.

 

 

Podcast picture credit: OpenAI DALLE2 edit of A. A. Milne Winnie the Pooh on a log being interviewed