Speaker 1 00:00:07 Welcome everyone to another episode of why it matters. I'm Tracy transact, director of innovation here at now matters. And as always joined by stalwart companion, Tim Walker,
Speaker 2 00:00:20 I'm a stalwart companion to Malaki welcome. Uh, it was great to see, I think not everybody would know this, but Tracy and I actually got to hang out in person analog hangout last week at, uh, in, in San Francisco for Salesforce Dreamforce. And that was absolutely great to see you, Tracy. I feel like, gosh, analog travel and meetings. It was, it was just great. So
Speaker 1 00:00:47 This trip, I changed my watch face from digital to analog on my apple watch. I was like, everything's going analog now. And the first question that one of the kids asked me is what is wrong with your watch? And I was like, no, honey, what's wrong with you?
Speaker 2 00:01:02 I used to work.
Speaker 1 00:01:04 This is what time looks like in reality. So, um, it is super cool to be joined today by Tim, Sarah Antonio from neon one. I just want to say Tim, before I throw it over you to introduce yourself, I have a long history with neon one, although I never really like have opportunity to talk about it a million years ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth. And I was, but a wee bit of a technology manager at a national non-profit. We went through a database selection in 2007 and I selected with my team neon one. I loved me on one for the record I worked with your, with your founders, uh, that would be Lee was at lesion and Jeff Gordy. That's correct. Both of them, uh, at the time were both founders and salespeople, uh, end developers. I think those are their three jobs, founders, salespeople, developers,
Speaker 3 00:02:03 And support and support
Speaker 1 00:02:06 To,
Speaker 3 00:02:07 Um, I'll tell a quick story on that one. Actually, this company was so small at that point that they created a fake support person called Dan Miller.
Speaker 1 00:02:20 No, Dan was not a reality.
Speaker 3 00:02:23 Dan Dan was Jeff Gordon. Dan, you have, if you have emails from Dan wordy and, and people still for years would call up and be like, can I speak to Dan? And it's like, yeah, well we'll have him email. You we'll get
Speaker 1 00:02:39 Three kids together wearing a trench coat and we'll, we'll put them together for a damn
Speaker 3 00:02:44 That's the original hustle folks. If you are doing, if you're just doing a tech startup, then well welcome open to some insight
Speaker 2 00:02:52 There.
Speaker 1 00:02:53 I actually kinda know that hustle. I have a fake, not a fake Gmail account, but I do have a Gmail account that if I never log in again, it will never update it security. So it is an anonymous email with only one word attached to it as a name, not more than one and if I never log in and I just keep forwarding back and forth from it, I can keep it that way. So I, I get that hustle. I use it for interesting things online.
Speaker 3 00:03:21 Um, so that's another type of podcast. Um,
Speaker 1 00:03:29 Uh, I love, I love neon one though. Uh, neon one was the start of my cloud computing career for, for many people. It was Salesforce, but for me it was neon one. And I kept in touch with the folks from neon one. I think I plagued you Tim with custom objects. When I suggested them, when Salesforce was launching them, I talked one or more of your founders into the notion that what neon one needed to compete with custom objects. And they very crazily listened to me. And I think that made your life miserable. I'm so sorry about that. Uh, but it, it works and it's awesome.
Speaker 3 00:04:10 I directly am sitting in my role today because of that conversation basically.
Speaker 1 00:04:14 It's awesome. Yeah. So this is a, this is a product that I have a long history with that I absolutely adore the people who work with. Uh, like I said, I entered into Salesforce Landia in 2008 when it was dropped on my head, somewhat reluctantly, but I was actually cloud computing with neon one in 2007. So cool. Tim, you should introduce yourself as, right. So I'm just going to tell war stories about those days and that's not really why we're here today.
Speaker 3 00:04:43 Well, thank you. Thank you, Tracy. And Tim, I'm really excited to be on the podcast. Uh, love the work that you folks are doing obviously. So it's, it's fun to be able to kind of get our conversations that we've been having in a more organized format for people to, to enjoy. I am Tim, Sarah Antonio. I am coming up to my 10th year working for the, uh, the legal entity known as neon one, LLC. Um, uh, which, uh, is actually a few different companies that have been combined into this larger vision and ideas specific to the nonprofit sector. Um, so I started in sales in 2011. Um, I was basically the first sales person who didn't get fired, um, at the company. And
Speaker 1 00:05:30 You actually made your quota.
Speaker 3 00:05:32 I made my quota, uh, uh, the founder, uh, where the founders, Jeff Gordy, you know, it was in a small office in Chicago and said, I need somebody who has fundraising experience, uh, tech experience and a sales experience. And I said, well, I only have two out of those three. Um, but fundraising is harder. And so I could barely get out of the room before they hired me. And that was, um, at a time when it was a very small company, there was not even 10 people working at it. And now it's a, you know, $20 million plus, you know, high growth company that services 10, you know, thousands of nonprofits directly tens of thousands of nonprofits through extended technology. And th the, the vision, when it was found, I'm getting like LinkedIn happy anniversary things. And it's like, that's not my anniversary. That's when I, I started the LinkedIn account for the company's legal entity as it is. I sent you
Speaker 2 00:06:31 On happy three years.
Speaker 3 00:06:32 Yeah. Happy three years. And it's like, that's, that's when the press release went out and I needed to have the LinkedIn account ready. So, um, so yeah, 10 years in November is actually what I consider my real anniversary. And in the nonprofit tech sector, before that, I worked for various nonprofits in Chicago as a fundraiser, um, by, uh, I don't even remember the first data. It probably was a civvy CRM thing that I downloaded, no clue what I was looking at. It was
Speaker 1 00:07:03 By the way for the record,
Speaker 3 00:07:05 Uh, uh, then I, then I worked at a job where I was trying to get a, uh, uh, coordinate a FileMaker pro 10 database via email to get built by a volunteer, uh, that didn't work out. Um, and then I worked for a Blackbaud's 11th client up in the Rogers park neighborhood of Chicago secret heart school, and, and just got a hundred hours of training on Razor's edge, hit the jackpot, worked at a place that had really good structure for fundraising. Cause a lot of people, I can't speak to other, other sections. Cause if you go into the social work side, the programmatic side, there's a little bit more of a, a set path in some ways, um, at least at the larger, uh, nonprofits in the more healthcare nonprofits and, and academic institutions, but fundraising in particular, at least from my experience, everybody has a weird story of how they got on the island of misfit toys.
Speaker 3 00:08:04 And so for me, I wanted to be a labor historian. I went to school in Ireland for a culture and colonial theory went to Columbia for history of education, moved to Chicago because I thought I was going to get into, you know, schools in the Midwest because that's a thing that's exciting to somebody in their twenties, let's go live in the cornfield in the middle of carbon Dale. And, um, and then I just didn't get any of the programs. So I had to go work for nonprofits and that was starting in 2008 as a grant writer. So that's kind of been my journey,
Speaker 2 00:08:37 The labor historian, like that's a very specific history. Like
Speaker 1 00:08:43 What did you say it was corporate? What did you say was your, your full major
Speaker 3 00:08:49 Oh, culture and colonial culture and colonialism was the masters in Ireland and then history of education in Columbia university
Speaker 1 00:08:59 Colonialism has a lot to do with contemporary it, like, let's be clear. That's awesome.
Speaker 3 00:09:07 And, and I don't know if you're joking or not, but actually I do think
Speaker 1 00:09:11 Joking, but it does. That's my point. It sounds like a joke, but I think it actually does
Speaker 3 00:09:17 A lot of the implicit biases that are even informing things like artificial intelligence or the resource allocation or the way that we structure our, our AI. Um, if you, if you look at, um, that amazing book, the big nine, um, by, I think it's Amy Webb, uh, off the top of my head. Um, apologies if I got that or no, I'm pretty sure. And so she talked about the economic structures between, you know, corporations like Microsoft and Google and Facebook, um, academic institutions like Harvard and MIT and the government. And a lot of it's just like, you know, the a of people having a small party together, driving what AI is,
Speaker 1 00:10:02 Oh, it's worse. It's not just driving what AI is, it's driving, how people are educated in colleges and what classes are available to them. I'm only,
Speaker 3 00:10:12 I have credit ethics course path, half credit ethics course. So, so that's, and I imagine we might get into that type of stuff. But the work that I do at neon has devolved into more thought leadership because I just honestly talk to hundreds of nonprofits. Look, people are overworked. I talked to a lot of people who couldn't afford expensive technology. I would come from that. I know I cost my school thousands of dollars to get trained on how to understand the tech. And then they in turn, I had to be trained on why the tech mattered relating to talking with donors and I, and appealing to their sense of support and an identity to why that specific appeal being done on this date was something that they should respond to when the response rates. And so it was a bit of a trial by fire and then to work at a technology company doing that. And one of the first cloud-based databases out there for nonprofits specifically was really cool. And so, uh, so that's kind of where my DNA in the industry started, but it's definitely evolved, um, identity.
Speaker 1 00:11:22 Perfect segue to the question I want to dig into with you, by the way, I can tell you a FileMaker war stories too, man. I had one running on a mat, uh, what it was it, uh, apple X serve over a hardware, managed national VPN distributed to Oakland, Chicago and New York FileMaker on an excerpt that you would log into over a VPN hard line. It was fantastic.
Speaker 3 00:11:48 Um, and, and now your children yell if they can't load candy crush
Speaker 1 00:11:52 Or Fortnite,
Speaker 3 00:11:53 Or what is the other stuff that bop or Minecraft or blast? I don't even know. We totally don't sound like old people yelling at the clouds. Right?
Speaker 1 00:12:04 We are. All right. I have to ask you. So I love that history because this question is what we kibitz Dawn right before we started recording. And that is Tim really, and truly what is the next generation CRM, because I've grown up with Microsoft and Salesforce. There's a lot of big actors, but you see differently. So what's, what's the next generation CRM from where you're setting.
Speaker 3 00:12:33 I love, I love the question. Um, and I'm a historian at heart as mentioned, right? And so I feel that, that, and, and if we even like, look through theirs, I can't, maybe, maybe my next job will be writing the history of nonprofit tech, right? Like, like that would be, that would be something that I think would be like, I'd pick that book up. You know, I read the whole Seiko versus Nintendo book. Like there's an audience for this type of thing.
Speaker 1 00:13:00 I was going to say that book looks a lot, like the book that Bruce Campbell's looking at an army of darkness. So if I remember
Speaker 3 00:13:07 Exactly, so, so there's been three, I think there's been we're in general, there's, there's three primary stages of technology. There's the, the stage where organizations, if they're adopting technology kind of have to like hunt and find for it and choose and make a decision that they're going to make a dedicated, invest, like pure investment into having an it staff, for instance, like I would, if I wanted an update for Razor's edge, I'd have to go contact the it guy and run it by him and say, are we going to install, update 7.1 9, 6, 7, 12 <inaudible> And he would go, no, and I would go, okay. And so then, like, that would be, but
Speaker 3 00:14:00 Yeah, just thanks. Thanks. You know, we'll so what would happen is that I think that people would have to make, especially with, with installed services, there there be more elements to talk about, and this is not specific to the nonprofit space, but we're really talking, you know, the founding of Blackbaud in 1981 in Manhattan, um, for a private school, basically starting the, the transition of our specific vertical and our specific state's space. You could start that pretty much in 1981, because before that, it's, it's almost like what was, you know, was the version of the nonprofit version of Wazniak in a garage building for, you know, his social good enterprise that he wants to help like the community center. And so then you get into a period of, of installation. And it's like, I remember going to one very early conference and like a company was like, well, how do you get your database?
Speaker 3 00:14:58 You know, going? And I was like, you, you open your computer. They're like, well, had, I was like, how do you get yours? And they hand me a CD. And I was like, okay, I didn't realize we're playing SIM city 2000 basically. But that's the thing. That's great game. That's why I referenced that one. Um, but like the reality though, is that like cloud computing in the nonprofit space really didn't kick in until like the two thousands early two thousands and beyond first neon was when you got E tapestry, you got neon, K E tapestry, Jay love out of Indianapolis comes out. Then then shortly after, uh, neon gets found that's 2004 around what we're talking about. So maybe early two thousands, there was maybe some smaller stuff, but this is where it starts to evolve. Then now it's 2021. So again, 20 year jumps, it looks like, it sounds like 20, 20 year jumps are our, our sector, which is slow compared to other sectors, obviously.
Speaker 3 00:16:00 But, but a lot of it is, is kind of where the lagging output of what's happening in the for-profit space. And so what we're seeing now is a third wave. So the future is CRM is not CRM. That's the, that's the future, because one, we need to be very careful. What we need is, is, is centers of identity of truth on who a individual is, meaning, you know, this is, uh, this is, this is Tim, Sarah Antonio, and Tim, Sarah Antonio is this Joan or, and here are the things that this person contributes to. And it'll either be a world where that, and you've seen some of the bigger players try to do this like Salesforce, when they rolled out the idea of like an employee can take their giving history and philanthropy cloud and they can transfer it and it can go to other things hasn't, hasn't really been adopted.
Speaker 3 00:16:58 But the idea was that you can take that and move it around. Then you have a lot of digital technology that especially during the pandemic has accelerated. This is where I want to put a big goal. Let's remember the money though, always follow the money. Whenever you're looking at tech, always follow the money and that's following the money in two ways who owns it, like who profits and what is the actual money being done. And so let's start with that second one, cause it's a little bit easier to identify, um, even during the pandemic and even before the pandemic, uh, individual fundraising revenue, if you took out of a hundred percent of all, just individual giving digital fundraising, credit cards, ACH, things of that nature, apple pay, Google pay, all of it, Venmo, all of that, not even crypto, I'm going to put crypto off to the side, just like hand, hand me your credit card. We're still talking, not even 20% of all revenue for individual giving still. We're not we're we're, we're not at 20 pre
Speaker 2 00:18:04 Or post pandemic. I forgot
Speaker 3 00:18:07 Post even post, even post it's accelerating, but beware, I've seen digital fundraising companies put out things like 77% year over year growth in fundraising for this snore. And I'm like, yeah, if you start from zero and you get 77 bucks, that's that's wow. Look at that. Yeah. So, so that's the thing. Question the numbers talk about things like actual growth in giving percentage, which is, you know, basically profit and loss in some ways, but you got to go beyond that when it comes to growth and giving, which is a very fundraising specific stat, but it's like the turn that you're seeing in your donor base versus the growth in your donor base. And it's both donors and revenue dollars, right? That's a real stat that people should pay attention to. So ask the vendor, what's your, what's your growth and giving rate. Don't give me your year over year annual aggregate. Give me your average organizations year over year, giving growth and giving, and that's better indicator. So there's that. And look, I love digital stuff, but like the reality is is that like, we still, there's still a lot of money for nonprofits that is tied up in government grants, program fees and all good. All good. Uh, and then, um, uh, uh, individual donors are still writing checks. It's a bunch of old people writing checks.
Speaker 2 00:19:31 This is the percent of checks. I mean, that's where I immediately go to is like, what? Like, it's this all just,
Speaker 3 00:19:38 It's a lot of it's check. It's a lot of it's check and we have a research report coming out later with visa or partners at visa that, um, art it is showing that they've seen in, uh, in about a five-year span or so that 20% like decrease in check usage. So there is an acceleration in terms of, of check usage for in the charitable space specifically, this is what we're going to be looking at some transaction stuff, but it's still very high, but at least some encouraging data out of the fundraising effectiveness project and giving Tuesday, which we're a part of, it's a nonprofit data aggregator that basically looks at individual giving even the larger, the larger money is moving digitally. Like people are feeling more comfortable doing that. We saw an 88% year over year increase in ACH with the caveat that yes, we are starting from a much smaller number compared to, um, uh, credit cards, but it was still pretty good for the size that we have. It's just the smaller companies that make that claim. You have to go. Hmm. I don't know about that, but there is literally so much to dig into. And I know I have like, you
Speaker 1 00:20:48 Know, sort of like, you know, when they induce, where they go into sort of fold space with the spice, like that's where my mind just went. Right. I don't know why I'm feeling really nerdy today, but I am, um,
Speaker 3 00:21:01 Bring it out.
Speaker 1 00:21:05 So here's the question you said it, you know, I, I have been personally trying to articulate this for three years, that the commodity of the future is data, not where the data resides. Right. And therefore all of our efforts, our policy efforts for nonprofits should be focused on data as a public good. Our digital efforts should be focused on data transportability and integration. And our service efforts should be focused on data modeling and data standardization, to the extent that it can be to help nonprofits reduce, you know, all of these inefficiencies that, you know, have come up the picture that has come in my mind based on what you're saying is this 20 year cycle is something I've observed as well. I used to do a slide when I worked for big corporate entity, um, eighties, it was like the little computer and the disc was the revolution. The nineties was the, like, I can email somebody revolution. And the 2010s was the like that stuff no longer needs to stay back on the computer and on the disc, it can talk to something else, but didn't, they have that
Speaker 3 00:22:19 Chart in the innovator's dilemma.
Speaker 1 00:22:21 What
Speaker 3 00:22:22 The innovator's dilemma. Did you ever read that book? Oh yeah, I remember it, it was like a book like that mark Cuban always talks about and it's like, literally I think he actually, you would, you both would get a kick out of it because if I remember correctly, it's like, oh my God, there's, it's really slow burn on technology adoption. Like relating to like, like, like, like, like, like disc, like the actual like thing, like the disc technology. It's like, just that. And I'm sitting there reading this going, like, why am I reading this? But like, I was like, I stuck with it. And it was the whole idea of like, what is an actual disruptive technology? Like what's actually disruptive. That was the thing that I got, I of it. And for me, I think that was like very early in my career at neon leading to my shift of like, because my job now is like who we are, what we do and why is it mattered to the rest of the sector? That's it, that's all I do.
Speaker 1 00:23:21 And like what matters to me and what you said and feel free to disagree with. This was, if you look at how, uh, I guess the proper term is as tsunami works right before the tsunami comes in, all the water goes out, right? And we have been doing this play with CRM for 20 years now saying siphon everything into the same place, siphon it into the same place and you'll be fine. Well, you know, some of the medical complexities of doing that, haven't panned out the way we want it to. And now that wave has crashed and it's like, there's data everywhere. Every time I look, there's a new online tool. Every time I look, there's a new way that nonprofits can quote unquote, raise money, save the earth, like engage their peers. That wave has crashed. There's no longer this siphoning in thing. So the leading tenant to that in the beginning, oh, well they could issue it.
Speaker 1 00:24:20 Wasn't there. It couldn't, nobody could, it was an impossible endeavor. Um, and that 360 view became a myth that was sold to nonprofits, right? So now that wave is crashed. There's literal data pockets everywhere. And our job to your point is the new CRM is no CRM. So how do we get to that space where we can comfortably work with that information? And it's embedded in something you said about sources of truth. And I want to pick you pick your sort of thinking on that a little bit more because there's a thousand ways to create truth via business process, but what is the right answer or something non-profits now dealing with this crashed wave of data, everywhere need to be thinking about if the answer isn't just suck it into a single source.
Speaker 3 00:25:15 Obviously this is a big question. And I feel like the two things that need to happen are that one companies internally have a responsibility, especially if they want to state that they are going to be some sort of database of truth for an organization, not a quote unquote point solution, but if there's, if they are going to market and build product around the fact that they are holding sensitive donor data, that goes even beyond credit card information, because we've seen this with the Blackbaud data breach, for instance, right? Like there's, this is going to happen and it's going to happen more. And, and there's going to be sloppy development teams that are going to be doing things that like either leave the door open or they just, you know, oopsy Daisy, right? And so th the hacker side is not going to go away because the money's starting to flow into the industry.
Speaker 3 00:26:08 There's a lot more private equity being focused on the sector compared to, before you
[email protected] for Salesforce, Microsoft HubSpot, there's a lot more data companies that are in here. But the reality is is that the nonprofit space will be an only, will be best served by people who understand the actual sector itself. This is not a random vertical. You can't treat this like a food and beverage vertical. You can't treat this like a yoga studio vertical, or this is the youth sports vertical. It doesn't work like that. Right? So the reality is, is that one, the companies who build their own internal tech need to connect it better, it needs to work more easily. And it needs to be very secure where that data is absolutely secured. That's the investments we've been making. For instance, you know, we have single sign on to get into every single one of our tools.
Speaker 3 00:27:02 You have your authenticator apps. That's the only way that you can do it for any of the administrative stuff, you know, PCI level, one compliance or anything for the transaction side, you have to do that. You have to make those investments. You can't cut corners there. However, the reality is that we also need more robust API APIs, as well as cross sector collaboration and discussions between competition and you know, together to do better data analysis. Like I, like I mentioned, the food beverage industry, there is no benchmarking tool like we have in the private sector to say, even with individual giving on impact metrics, this is what is an accurate understanding of what's happening at this moment in this specific slice and dice revenue vertical, you go to the food and beverage sector, something like that. And what they do is they say, okay, Diageo, you want to know how sales are happening in Chicago to justify opening a new Guinness storehouse, they have their internal data, but then they can also go to the top line market data and understand that what's happening in the Chicago land beverage industry, by the way, they are opening a new Guinness facility in the meat district of Chicago.
Speaker 3 00:28:19 So this is why my exam. Yeah, I know. See, I have actually, I'm pretty, I'm actually pretty jazzed about that. And so even though I love craft beer, because they're understanding they're able to understand what's happening in the beer market, both internal to their product, as well as external, if a competition or a company like mine wants to do that, they have to go to 20 different places in order to understand what's happening with giving to ha to, to even get the closest thing we have is the fundraising effectiveness project. That's the closest. And so for people who don't know that that is a, a cross-company quote, collabor, uh, competition saying, you know what, we're going to put that aside and we're going to work together. And we're going to actually bring things into one secure data source. And we're going to look at gifts and it looks at three pieces of data, the data of the gift from a CRM, the date, uh, the, the, uh, amount of the gift and an ID flagging that this is a unique individual at this nonprofit to help with retention analysis. And that's it. You don't know who the donor is. None of that's exposed. And then, uh, a little bit of country data, us, Canada, stuff like that. That's Bloomerang donor perfect Keela, neon one right now, absolute competitors, but
Speaker 1 00:29:41 That's amazing. And that's the kind of structure that's needed across the industry because of the fact that nonprofits, you cannot predict you can't predict their sales cycle, nor can you predict where your technology tool is going to land inside of a nonprofit. And this gets to something that I think, you know, is important for all of our work, you know, Tim, and that is how you also put resourcing on technology is how it's going to show up for your organization. And it's a really nice, easy way for a giant platform company to say, all you need is an admin for our platform and everything is solved free. I really realized puppies. Can you, I wrote that. I wrote that article, Salesforce, admins, and puppies. Um, but I just liked that voice. I carry Wreck-It Ralph in my mind. I don't know why
Speaker 3 00:30:43 I'm going to wreck the industry. Um,
Speaker 1 00:30:46 But dig on this more because what this is talking, what you're talking about is a more agile nonprofit then as well.
Speaker 3 00:30:54 And the good, the, not even the good ones, the ones that will survive will be that the reality is, is that we're seeing a massive shift in leadership. That's going to be coming in the next few years. We're seeing a change in the nature of work where, where people who are insisting, you have to work at the office, especially in the fundraising side of things. You need to be out in the field. You need to be talking to donors, you need to be talking to people. So why do I have to drive all the way across here? If I could do a lot of the majority of the work, sit in a cafe, doing voice to text for my notes, things like that, right? So that's, that's, the tech is changing too, but then also, um, just even the funding structures, I think are going to change around, around this.
Speaker 3 00:31:38 There's going to be more emphasis on, um, general operation funds, and that's gonna open up ideally, and we're seeing this with Ford foundation, the work of, of them all the way down, where, where there's a critique of Western philanthropy, and we're going to see different organizational structures for money. So there's been a rise of discussion on giving circles. For instance, there's been discussions on mutual aid. The reality is, is that if we even analyze individual giving impact, things like that, who's to say like, how much is being missed when it comes to analyzing something like GoFund me analyzing something like, um, people just giving, you know, uh, prepaid visa cards to somebody on the street and saying, go, go ahead and use it. We're going to get into a generalization. I feel of, of giving where restrictions are going to be lifted. And this will ideally open the door for proper investments to technology.
Speaker 3 00:32:34 The ideal state is, and I know if it's a podcast, I'm explaining my, my, my, uh, physical motion. I am bringing my hand down and also bringing the other hand up and hopefully meeting in the middle meeting. Hopefully the technology gets more affordable at the same time, not so race to the bottom, that we're only focusing on things that are quick wins. That's my concern is that there's going to be a flurry of white papers coming out of the pandemic, saying digital is here forever. And it's like, digital has been here, but like, if you tell a small under-resourced nonprofit who can barely keep it together and pay their staff, that the thing that they need to buy is some wild wackadoodle livestream thing. And that's, what's going to make them all the money we're marketing to the 10%, 90% of organizations. They're never going to give an above $5 million in revenue. So how can we meet them in the middle and properly resource them properly, resource them, not under-resourced them and free technology in some cases does do that. Are things like Microsoft licenses for free for something like the office suite through tech soup. Great. Yeah. And I used it and it's awesome. And it's transformative to not have to worry about something like that or what Intuit's doing. See, Intuit is a really good indicator. What might be, I think the future of the nonprofit side, if, if the technology companies do it right.
Speaker 1 00:34:07 Recent acquisition of MailChimp. Yes. Okay.
Speaker 3 00:34:12 I felt that I find that a really interesting play because it gets to the heart of the original question. What is a CRM? And what we're going to see is specialized tools that work in concert with each other. That's, what's going to work really well. You have your communications module, you have your, your people management module, your, your, uh, wealth and analytics engine and artificial intelligence, like, like giving strings suggestions. These are gonna layer in and ideally flow together. And the experience though is going to be seamless, just like when you pick up your phone and you're using something like G suite, and you can quickly get into, you know, other different apps and things like that without having to leave that experience, I feel like that's my somewhat utopian vision. Is that going to happen? I don't freaking know.
Speaker 1 00:35:02 Well, what a smart, when it's like, well, we curse a lot on this podcast.
Speaker 3 00:35:10 We fucking
Speaker 1 00:35:11 Do. But Tim, like everything you just said, like, I just had a conversation with a burgeoning app builder last week and they were telling me how they're going to go full stack on one platform. And I was like, why, why, why would you do that when the shape of things to come is exactly like Tim letter for letter word for word, what you just described. And that is you either have modules that are internally designed to work well with each other, or you have market businesses that are externally orchestrated to work well with each other,
Speaker 3 00:35:50 With proper standards around working together in concert. And even in forming hell, I would rather work with a company and, and who I know is going to work with another so-called competitor and give them intelligence on how to best work with a company like mine, then go, don't tell them that like, no, then you're going to screw a bunch of nonprofits because you, you, you installed things in a really weird way. And there's a concrete example of this. We were working with a partner who does stock donations, uh, overflow, fantastic company. And what you can do is it digitizes the stock transfer process. You go in, you log into your brokerage account. And I know
Speaker 1 00:36:35 They crack
Speaker 3 00:36:36 That nut. I crack that nut and they're getting the funding to support it to based out of California, San Francisco. And so love working with them. They're one of the, the, uh, you know, really, really interesting people out there when it comes to the FinTech side of things. And so they connected, it goes right in. And then what we, we talked about was get that data into the CRM. And I remember struggling with stock donations at my last job. So I was like, so this is what I would solve. Like, this is what I remember having the pain point on. And like, this is the data I would need for reporting. And then I went back and I talked to our partners in, in, um, you know, accounting, you know, people like QuickBooks made easy and, and EBC CFO and stuff like that and said, what, you know, in in fact, EBC CFO, um, uh, is, is really awesome.
Speaker 3 00:37:31 And they're nerdy too. Dan Schmidt over there, he's really nerdy. And we talked about like, how would we, what metadata would you want to have a stock Tran transaction come into the system properly? And so we went back and all we had to do is expose API, expose donation, custom fields. And then we standardized the custom fields that come in for every single install. So if we need to do support on that, if we need to do cross client reporting for impact analysis, it's the same thing every single time. And that goes back Tracy, little bit full circle. Cause we still have time. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 00:38:09 Custom objects.
Speaker 3 00:38:11 That's why I did it that way. Because if everything's a custom object, then you can't have cross-platform analysis. So
Speaker 1 00:38:19 Do you fail on cross platform analysis depending on how your actual platform is built, you fail on inner platform, joins and reporting. So unless you are a wizard of sequel, which I know those folks, the
Speaker 3 00:38:35 CQL wizards. Yeah. They get a hat. I know I got, I got the books on it over here and that's where they're sitting. I mean, the distance between sequel SQL, wizardry and necromancy are very close, very, very close warlocks and witches all around there. But one final Tim real quick, cause you've been too quiet by the way, in my opinion, Tim, behind the scenes one quiet one quick thing though on that is that when they originally talked to, to me, they said, well, how about, you know, expose this part of your API to get it on your donation form? Like, why the hell would I do that? Like, it's a stock gift. Like, well, don't you want it on your donation form? Like that's what people do credit cards for. And I was like, people don't do crypto people don't do car transfers. People don't do stock transfers. That type of donor is a diff is expecting a different experience. So you'd need to lean into that. And so it was like, don't do anything different, sell your product. Cause they had another vendor who told them that. And I was like, that's a terrible thing to do. Don't do it that way. And, and so, uh, and they did it and they've been happy and then it's easier for them to work with other CRM companies and stuff like that. So Tim, Tim,
Speaker 2 00:39:50 Yeah, no, um, I've got two to five. I mean, that's really, that is good advice. Exactly the right way to think on that. They want different, uh, experiences. One of the, one of the things you said a while ago, but I want to go back to is, uh, the raising of technology tools and the decrease and the restrictions that we see. And I don't think I'd thought of this before, but I I'm curious if you see those restrictions creating a subsidy market. And here's what I mean by that in the for-profit world, there's no customer comes in and says, here's how you can use like the revenue that I'm giving you for this product. Like that, that would be absurd, right? That does not exist. But that is literally what's happening in the nonprofit space when you have restrictions and earmarks. And I understand why they're there, you know, but that's fine.
Speaker 2 00:40:44 But without those in place, what you see is you see a kinked market where the market bends around what the, what the customer or what the donor thinks is most important, which, which absolutely removes the executive leadership's ability to use investment. The way that they think is best, you know, best serve. I think the longterm of that ends up being a huge difference in nonprofits that have gotten high enough in, in the amount of investment that they've got, that's unrestricted that they can choose on their investment and the ones that are just left below whatever line that is. Does that, does that make sense to you?
Speaker 3 00:41:29 It completely does. And it, and it patterns alongside that, the last part patterns along the TCC group did this great analysis on capacity building. I think we've talked about this before, but I always think about that. The chart where, where it's kind of like your evolving, non-profit your adolescent, nonprofit, your matured, nonprofit go and go and almost like a roller coaster. And then you fall off in terms of like I'm on a downswing and then I'm just dead. Now the dead side is another conversation for another day, because also there is tons of zombie nonprofits from a legal standpoint, just out there. It's a lot easy. It's easy to start a nonprofit and hell hell, hard to close a nonprofit. So the tax analysis of the 1.5 million or so nonprofits out there is a mess. And like, you know, talk to smart people like professor Elizabeth searing at the university of Dallas, for things like that.
Speaker 3 00:42:24 She wrote a paper on it by the way about zombie nonprofits. It's great. Um, so the other thing though, is what you're talking about and yeah, and I think we've seen this for years where, where the idea of mission creep, right. But I've never thought about it in relation to the tech implementation for instance, but you see mission creep for programmatic side things all the time. When I started my first job in 2008 for the San Lucas worker center, rest in peace. Um, that was a weird job. And like 2008 grant writer, like great time to be a grant writer by the way, the economy crashes. So right in the middle of metal. And I get saddled with all of these grants that they went for, like the small $5,000 grants where it's like, what am I suppose I'm, I'm supposed to do a video.
Speaker 3 00:43:18 Why am I doing a video dollar grant for $5,000 grant? I'm like, what am I doing with this? Like why did the camera that's about it? And so there's there's instances where people are chasing dollars in order to pay for four base things that they shouldn't be doing in the first place. And I think that this happens with technology as well, um, in, in weird ways, especially, especially at the smaller, the lower revenue side of the market. I think there's no better example than Amazon smile, where you have, non-profits pushing Amazon smile and telling their donors, please spend $10,000 on Amazon items and we will receive a $91 check and you see this with events on ROI. You see this with all these different things that people are chasing. Um, our CFO likes to say, Tim, not all revenue is good revenue. And that's those things really
Speaker 1 00:44:31 That small from Amazon smile like is the
Speaker 3 00:44:35 Tiny it's very nanny.
Speaker 1 00:44:39 I didn't know that I thought it was at least worth the time it took to set up.
Speaker 3 00:44:44 Oh no, it's, it's, it's a huge scam.
Speaker 2 00:44:49 Okay. Next question.
Speaker 3 00:44:53 You know, blow my house, like
Speaker 2 00:44:56 Yeah. Uh, um, well Alexa is listening in the background right here,
Speaker 3 00:44:59 So see I'm a Google house, so I don't have to worry about that.
Speaker 2 00:45:02 Um, okay. Next question on that is, um, you know, from labor historian, you know, for curiously. Yeah. Very, very interesting. And by the way that actually fits, like, I think that there's a lot there I'm I'm with you on that, but we don't talk
Speaker 3 00:45:20 On the labor in our sector enough.
Speaker 2 00:45:22 Oh gosh. I mean, it's invisible, right. As soon as somebody's salary is the end, like there's no such thing as opportunity costs. That drives me crazy. Um, okay. So my question to you is, you know, of all the things you could pick to do, I think you, you have a lot of options at the, at the level that you're at in terms of your career, you get a lot of places. Do you know? So this is where you've parked and said, this is my best contribution. And, and I'm, I'm interested in that because I think there's a case that others are making right now in the ecosystem that says non-profit technology is too centered around fundraising, which is where I I've seen you do a majority of your work and it should be more focused on participant progress or program, you know, efficacy rather than focused on being focused. So focused on donors, donor retention, et cetera. Um, so slight a slight challenge there as well as you know, okay. Of all of the things you could do. Why here? Why Nan one,
Speaker 3 00:46:27 I mean, you're getting into an identity based question that like in full disclosure, I've had a lot of soul searching that I've had to do through, especially the pandemic and, and, and, and thing is, is that I read, I read a tweet and you're probably not even going to get a straight answer on this one, but I'm just going to be authentic here. So I read a tweet where somebody said that the worst part about being the first position in your company is that there is nothing else to build from, and you have to do it all from scratch. Basically, obviously not a good tweet, I'm butchering the tweet, but that's the idea behind it when I got to my position when I came through sales. And so, and I've had other people say, like, I can't believe you're still at the company. You know, it's been 10 years.
Speaker 3 00:47:14 And, and so for me, it's because I just love the potential of what a, a unified ecosystem actually can look like. And I feel like we can deliver on that better than other people. That's why I'm. But, but to get there has been hard. And that's because one, you know, it's very easy to be like, you work in sales, but partnerships and ecosystem building it's. So you go to conferences. I remember going to conferences and, and, and even at things like NTC, where it would be like, this is the land of, of people coming together, but you get into the vendor side. It's like, what do you want, Tim?
Speaker 3 00:47:59 And I had to work hard, hard to say, I'm not trying to fuck you. I'm just, I just, I'm not, there's no agenda here. How are you doing? And I, and I would even say, I know you're going to say, when I ask you how things are going, you're going to say good. Cause that's what you're conditioned to say. Oh, things are great. Sales are up dah, dah, dah. And then two months later, I see that you went out of business, right? Like a hockey stick until it's not. And so for me, when I entered into the position, because I was the first remote employee, about five years ago, my, my wife got pregnant with twins. We're living in Chicago. I have a baby. I'm not living in Chicago with three kids. No. So we moved to upstate New York and they're like, we don't want to lose you.
Speaker 3 00:48:49 What do you want to do? And I'm like partnerships like sales and partnerships. And like, so, so, but that didn't exist in the industry. Nobody had like channel structure, nobody had any of that type of stuff. At least for the nonprofit space I had to go outside. I had to look at Salesforce from a tech standpoint. I totally looked at Salesforce. Uh, Microsoft wasn't really there. Blackbaud was doing whatever Blackbaud was doing, but I would never hear anything positive about the experience. So I said, okay, what can I do different? But the reality is is that that can be lonely. Cause what, what it can turn into is that I don't want to deal with it. It's a third party. So I'm going to dump it on somebody else. And so for me, that became a very, like, let's just give it to Tim thing because I was like, I want to figure out consultants.
Speaker 3 00:49:37 I want to figure out research. I want to figure out integrations. But during the pandemic, especially, it was a lot harder to feel like I'm an extrovert. I want to talk to people. Right. I would go to a co-working space. I would get some of that energy out. Then I would go back and answer API tickets for people. Right. Like that. I didn't have that. So luckily just even a few weeks ago, my, my CEO, new, new CEO, Steve Kreider, I was like, what are you going to do with me, man? Like, I am getting burned out. Like, what are you going to do with me? Cause they wouldn't have an answer would be just like, oh, we're, we'll figure it out. And it's like, I don't want to do sales. Like negotiating contracts is the last thing that I actually want to be doing at this point. So, so I'm in marketing now, what does that mean? And for me, and for them, it's like, just tell our story,
Speaker 3 00:50:27 Just go, go tell our story and then help that story, help other people. And that that's what matters. Now, Tim, to your point, um, I am concerned about the undo focused on fundraising technology in of itself. I am. And if we look at the landscape of the tech out there, um, we have a client, a client case management solution item called uh, uh, you know, CCM used to be from CiviCore one of the companies that we acquired. But after that it's like social solutions, maybe apricots, I think I'm done, you know, and then you've got Microsoft, right. But in terms of SAS replication, and obviously somebody thinks that that's a good idea because, uh, uh, whatever private equity firm that just bought every action and social solutions and cyber grants, they think there's some money in that. But even if you look through the money, it's like, that's not the highest revenue thing that they acquired for that deal.
Speaker 3 00:51:26 So, um, I feel like there's a criminal under investment on program analysis and technology. And I remember mapping out with one of the, we had a, uh, uh, a guy who had a PhD in systems, animal analysis. He would do it for hospital networks where he would analyze every single piece of technology and supply chain for them. And he had a PhD in this and I was working with his wife and he just like was like, Hey, do you want to like talk about this for the non-profit space and him and I just took, took, uh, we mapped it out on, we had kind of that fishbowl room thing and we wrote it the entire thing out from, from donation to impact. I want, I'll try to find the photos, Donald Saron guy. He's a genius. Right. So I actually did, I did do an X mind afterwards, so I can send you that. But we mapped, what is the entirety of like where all of this comes together for an individual organization? So I that's where my end game is, is that at neon? I I'm going to try, you know, but no matter what, it doesn't matter if it's, it's, it's who I'm working for. That's what we all need to work for because people get hurt otherwise. And that's what drives me
Speaker 2 00:52:48 Well, and I do think, uh, I think we're seeing a shift because of the ESG focus that's happening. And I think part of the private equity shift that you're seeing is that a double bottom line is becoming the new norm and figuring out how to do that is starting. Like, you know, I think this is the industry that's been doing. Not the longest
Speaker 3 00:53:11 I'll push back a little bit on that. Do you think the average organization making half a million dollars a year even knows what the, what the hell ESG?
Speaker 2 00:53:19 I don't, I don't think that that's. I think that is why private equity is getting involved
Speaker 3 00:53:24 Because
Speaker 2 00:53:25 For domino, like, you know, that's one of the reasons, but there's 18, right. But you know, for dominoes later that does help, you know, that half male organization. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3 00:53:37 Think of the money that's going in. I know we're almost at time and this is probably part two of a podcast, just privately acquainted non-profits, but I'll, I'll end on this folks. Let's, let's spill some tea there because like, you know, the reality here is the, the biggest publicly traded company, not that is solely dedicated to our space. I'm not talking to Salesforce and I'm not talking to Microsoft. I'm not talking to HubSpot. I'm not talking anything like that. I'm talking about, this is our thing, right. Is Blackbaud. And it's still not a billion dollar company at this point. Let's, let's put that in perspective. And so it's huge. It employs a lot of people. It does a lot of good. I want to make that very clear that there's a lot of, of good that, that that company does. But in the grand scheme of monetary capitalization, we're seeing valuations for other companies that just came out that are double the amount of revenue that largest company has ever gotten. The market is insane right now in terms of its valuations. And that concerns me because I feel like where's the money going to go and what's going to happen. And who's going to get hurt because typically clients do not benefit from mergers and acquisitions.
Speaker 1 00:55:02 That's David crumb law 1 0 1. That's what he taught me. He was like, listen, kid it's 2008. Non-profits always benefit from competition, never acquisition. Like that's what he told me 13, 14 years ago. And it's still true. Yeah. Yep.
Speaker 3 00:55:21 Well, this
Speaker 2 00:55:22 Has been fascinating. I am,
Speaker 1 00:55:24 I love,
Speaker 2 00:55:26 And you alluded to some of the conversations we've had in the background, but I just want to thank you for being someone that is in the ecosystem. You know? Um, I think I dubbed you Mr. Universe, where the, uh, the, the channel never stops the system. <inaudible> Really both parts of Mr. Universe there, but yeah, I appreciate that. That's your perspective. And,
Speaker 3 00:55:54 Well, thank you for giving me a platform and, and you know, anybody out there who, who wants to talk about this type of stuff, I'm an open book and here to help you. So
Speaker 1 00:56:04 Thanks, Tim. That was amazing. Thank you.
Speaker 3 00:56:08 Awesome.
Speaker 2 00:56:10 I'm lucky.
Speaker 1 00:56:11 I'm Tracy. Crohn's Zach and you've been listening to why it matters.
Speaker 2 00:56:15 Um, what matters is a thought leadership project of now it matters the strategic services from offering, advising and guiding to nonprofit and social impact organizations.
Speaker 1 00:56:24 If you like what you've heard, please subscribe, check out our playlists and visit us at now. It matters.com to learn more about us.
