This is a really tough time for all of us in the progressive nonprofit world. And I wanted to share a few early thoughts, even as we don't have complete answers on all of the election results. But we have some very important information and it's not good. Many of us, including me, thought this election was going to turn out a lot better than it did. 

And given the results, we have a lot of challenges facing us in the next couple of years at the very least. There's going to be a lot to say in the days and weeks to come, and a lot of thinking and strategizing to do in that time. But right now for these few days, as we process what we know so far, and hope for at least a positive outcome in the House where we still don't know the results. I want to share some thoughts about what I believe is most important for us to focus on. 

We have an extraordinary amount of work in front of us, and there are going to be some things that are different about that hard work that we haven't quite had to deal with before. The good news is we're all in this together. And we're going to find our way forward together.

In this episode, we share:

• The two most important things to focus on in the next couple of weeks to prepare for the work ahead
• Some things to be aware of about what your team is dealing with, and how to support them
• Pitfalls of one of the most common coping strategies among nonprofit leaders 
• The powerful role vison can play in taking you forward

If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  And I’d be grateful if you would leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts, which will help even more people find out about this podcast.

Thanks!

In this week’s episode we're taking a look at two of the most common decisionmaker behaviors that frequently throw advocates off their game. It definitely doesn't have to be that way, but I see it all the time. So I want to give you a few concrete things you can do to put yourself in a position where you're just rock solid and it doesn't matter what they throw at you. You're ready. 

And because you know you're ready, you're able to stay in your groove and be fully present. Which is where real engagement happens. 

In this episode, we share:

• The two most common decisionmaker behaviors that regularly throw advocates off their game 
• Key situations where you’re likely to get especially challenging questions, and how to anticipate those
• Why even questions that seem hostile can actually be your friend
• The single most powerful thing you can do to strengthen your ability to handle the toughest challenges decisionmakers can offer
• Highly effective rhetorical devices for turning even a hostile question to your favor
• How to uncover and address the hidden obstacles that are keeping you from standing in your power with the toughest decsionmakers

If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  And I’d be grateful if you would leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts, which will help even more people find out about this podcast.

Thanks!

The 2024 elections are less than two weeks away. And if your world is anything like mine, you and just about everybody in it are stressing out right now. 

There's a lot of anxiety. There's a lot of worry. There's a lot of fear. And those are very understandable states of emotion. There is so much at stake. And so yes, everybody is kind of scared spitless right now. 

But here's the thing. And I know you know this. All that anxiety and worry not only isn't helpful, it's actually pretty bad for you. It's bad for your emotional health. It's bad for your physical health. It's bad for your wellbeing. But it also is bad for the cause. 

Because what happens when we're in a state of fear is that we become paralyzed. We become demoralized. And that right there is how we lose. 

But there is an antidote, and that is to take action. We absolutely have the power to win these most consequential elections. I am certain of that. But it's going to take every single one of us.

In this episode, we share:

• How taking action counters anxiety and fear
• Two very powerful actions you can take between now and election day to make an impact on the results
• The forgotten arena where your influence may matter most
• The wrong question we’ve been asking about the election, and the right question to ask instead
• Messaging guidance and options for engaging ambivalent voters

If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  And I’d be grateful if you would leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts, which will help even more people find out about this podcast.

Thanks!

As an advocate, one of your main goals is to get to the money and policy decision makers that have the power to make decisions that are going to affect your organization and the people you serve. And one of the things I hear a lot from nonprofit leaders is that especially with contracting and some agencies, it's not that easy to find who's really in charge and what's going on in there. It’s not always clear who has the power to make that decision. 

And what I notice is that a lot of folks spend way more time than they need, trying to get to the bottom of that. So in this episode I’m sharing three keys that will help you get to those answers about who's really in charge, much faster, much more efficiently. So that you can get to the real work of engaging those decision-makers, and building a partnership and getting to the decisions you want. 

In this episode, we share:

• The missing information that makes decisionmaking systems feel opaque and confusing
• The three organizing principles that decisionmaking systems are built on
• How to find or build a roadmap to any decisionmaking system
• How to find a local guide who can fill in the details of your roadmap that aren’t written down anywhere
• How to identify patterns across different organizations so you can decode their decisionmaking process
• How to get to the point where you know exactly which questions to ask to quickly identify the key players in any system

If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  And I’d be grateful if you would leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts, which will help even more people find out about this podcast.

Thanks!

We're less than 30 days out from the 2024 elections. And I don't have to tell you there's a lot at stake up and down the ballot. From the presidential race to congressional and Senate races, to state legislatures. And on down to city council, county board, mayoral and school board races. All of them matter. And all of them have the potential to have a big impact on the wellbeing of our clients and their families. 

And as you're no doubt very aware, the polling is really tight in many of these races. And that just reinforces how very powerful a single vote can be. Hopefully most of your clients are already registered to vote, perhaps with your help. Registration deadlines have passed in a number of states, but there may still be time to register where you live. So definitely double-check your deadlines and do everything you can to get your clients registered before the deadline. 

But now it's time to focus on helping your clients make a plan to vote, so that they can be assured of their vote counting. And that's what we're zeroing in on in this week's episode.

In this episode, we share:

• The three key ingredients to a successful plan to vote
• The most helpful and effective questions to ask your client about their plan to vote
• Six essential pieces of information your clients need to make sure their vote counts
• How to address voter suppression efforts aimed at your clients 
• How to help clients who want to vote on election day instead of voting early
• A one-stop, easy-to-use resource to help your clients become well-informed voters

Link to Ballotready.org 

If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  And I’d be grateful if you would leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts, which will help even more people find out about this podcast.

Thanks!

Today we're talking about something that I hear so often from nonprofit leaders just freaks them the heck out, and that's negotiating. 

The truth is, nonprofit leaders are negotiating all the time. But many leaders tell me it is definitely not their favorite thing. For some it's super stressful. It can be really uncomfortable. But it can also be exhilarating and exciting and rewarding. 

So how do we get from stressful and uncomfortable to exhilarating, exciting and rewarding? We're going to talk about two of the most critical secrets for that shift to happen. There are a lot of ingredients to successful negotiation, and it's important that we become skilled at all aspects of it. But in my own negotiating experience and in working with my clients, it's clear to me that there are two things that seem to get in the way the most. And if we can master those two things, all the rest go a lot more smoothly. 

In this episode, we share:

• How to get completely clear on your bottom line(s) and deal breakers
• The hidden costs you need to account for when determining your bottom line
• How to anticipate and prepare for counter offers
• The mistake that will derail you from sticking to your bottom line in a negotiation
• How to deal with discomfort around saying “no”
• The three core elements to focus on in your negotiation, and how to use them to your advantage
• The faulty training many nonprofit leaders have internalized, and how to break free of it
• Practical strategies to help you if you have trouble saying no in a negotiation
• The universal tool that will help you in every negotiation

If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  And I’d be grateful if you would leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts, which will help even more people find out about this podcast.

Thanks!

The frustration I hear most often from the nonprofit leaders I work with, is that the money and policy decision makers in their world don't seem to get the value of what they do. And that comes In a lot of forms and flavors. One that can be especially frustrating is the decisionmakers not understanding the full scope of the problem. Or why the ways that the problems manifest for your clients are as difficult to solve as they are. 

Part of the issue is that money and policy decisionmakers are always looking for the easiest way to solve the problem, which is only human. But that desire for simplicity, that desire to take the easy route wherever possible. Tends to lead to frankly, some pretty lousy decision-making around policy and around how resources should be allocated and invested. And very often it leaves the most effective programs and the most effective services short of funds. 

If we want to solve this, we have to get at a more fundamental issue. Which is that most decisionmakers have a significant mental block that keeps them from seeing the complexity of the problem. And until we break through that mental block we're not going to make a lot of progress.

In this episode, we share:

• Why decisionmakers often fail to grasp the complexity of the problems you solve
• The critical knowledge gaps decisionmakers commonly have about your clients, that they’re often completely unaware of
• The common faulty assumption we make about decisionmakers that causes our messaging to miss the mark
• How to craft your messaging to crack open the decisionmaker’s core biases and mental blocks
• The biggest caution we need to have when engaging decisionmakers around their mental blocks

 
If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  And I’d be grateful if you would leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts, which will help even more people find out about this podcast.

Thanks!

Has this ever happened to you? You go to engage a decision-maker. There's something specific you want from them. And you start laying out your case and you can tell you're losing them. They're not engaging. They're kind of glazing over and you're struggling to figure out what the problem is. You're giving them your very best stuff, telling them all the key details of your work. And the more you talk, the more they glaze over. Or they pay polite attention, but when you're done, they don't have any questions. And they just say, well, thanks for coming. Appreciate your visiting. And that's it. 

While there could be several causes for this, one of the most common is the key mistake of falling into TMI syndrome. Giving decision makers way more information and content than they want, need or can absorb. Treating all facts as if they are equally valuable or important. In a vacuum that might be true. But in the context of engaging and influencing decision makers, it not only isn't true, it will actually undermine your most persuasive points. 

What we have to do is get to what is most relevant in this context, in this moment. That are exactly the points the decision maker needs to hear right now. The good news is there's a simple framework that will help you do this. And start getting better results from your messaging.

In this episode, we share:

• The four-question framework that will help you identify exactly what your decisionmaker needs to hear from you right now
• Why the things you’ve been taught about how to add value with information will actually sabotage your effectiveness with decisionmakers
• The common trap that we can fall into as subject matter experts, when engaging decisionmakers
• How to identify and weed out TMI elements from your messaging
• How to use story to deliver your high-value message elements in the most compelling way

Links:

Episode 13  – How to Use Story to Create Breakthrough Messaging with Decisionmakers

Episode 57 – How to Turn Data into a Story that Engages and Compels a Decisionmaker

If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  And I’d be grateful if you would leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts, which will help even more people find out about this podcast.

Thanks!

There is no question about the significance of the 2024 elections from the presidential race on down to every single local race. I'm pretty sure I don't have to convince you on that front. Nor do I have to convince you how much your clients' votes matter. Both in the larger sense, but also in terms of ensuring that we have elected officials who support policies and the allocation of resources that will in concrete ways help make your clients' lives better. 

The simple fact is you can't vote if you aren't registered. And that's where you come in. As a nonprofit, you and your team are in a uniquely valuable position to help your clients take the critical step of registering to vote, which is the first step in making their voice heard at the ballot box. Here's something you might not know: Low-income voters engaged by non-profits are 15% more likely to vote than folks in that same cohort who don't hear from a nonprofit about registering.

Your voice and credibility really matter to the people you serve. And your offering to help them register to vote might make the difference as to whether they decide to participate in this election. One of the most common reasons that people haven't registered so far, is that no one has ever asked them. It's very possible that you will be the first person that has ever asked your client to register. 

In this episode, we share:

• Three levels of voter registration support you can offer your clients, from basic to advanced
• The two most important questions to ask your clients to move them to register to vote
• The top national resources to help you do advanced-level voter registration work with your clients
• How to engage and support clients to register if your service model doesn’t involve in-person contact with them
• How to help your clients successfully navigate restrictive voting laws designed to suppress the vote
• What you and your clients need to know about ID requirements for registration and voting, and how to navigate them
• Key actions you can take to support voter registration by immigrants who are US citizens

Links to valuable resources mentioned in this episode:

Vote.gov – The one-stop resource for you and your clients to access key info on how to register in a particular state, and how to reach your local elections office. This site is run by the US government.

State Guides to third-party voter registration. These are an indispensible resource for advanced voter registration work.

Nonprofit VOTE – They specifically help nonprofits engage your clients in registering to vote. 

Fair Elections Center – Co-creators (with Nonprofit VOTE) of the state guides. They also fight against voter suppression laws and other attempts to restrict voting access.  

If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  And I’d be grateful if you would leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts, which will help even more people find out about this podcast.

Thanks!

Opportunity is everywhere. But too often, we miss those opportunities because we didn't know about them at all, or we didn't find out about them in time to capitalize on them.

The truth is most nonprofit CEOs are pretty good at constantly scanning for opportunities. And your opportunity radar is always switched on even when you're not at work. But if there are just one or two people in your organization who are doing this. By definition, you're going to miss a lot.

What if you could expand your radar by five or 10 times or more? How many more opportunities would come to your attention? And how many more could you take advantage of if you could just do that? 

There's a simple and obvious way to make that happen, which is to develop more skilled opportunity scanners within your team. If you're a leader who scans for opportunities all the time, and who's always evaluating them in your mind. You've probably advanced to the point where most of that is just intuitive. But the reality is, it's a significant skillset. And it can be taught.

In this episode, we share:

• Why untrained team members miss about 95% of the opportunities they encounter
• The four key categories of opportunity your team should learn to scan for
• Three essential screening questions to teach your team to assess whether to bring the opportunity to the Leadership Team
• How to create simple, concrete and structured learning opportunities for your team to build their skills
• The four main tasks leaders should focus on to successfully teach and coach your team to scan for and analyze opportunities
• The most common mistakes leaders make when building their opportunity generating team, and how to avoid them

If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  And I’d be grateful if you would leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts, which will help even more people find out about this podcast.

Thanks!