.png)
Nonprofit Hub Radio
Whether starting a nonprofit or taking an existing cause to the next level, The Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast is about breaking down how nonprofits can grow. Each episode features an interview with a sector star with insight, stories, or ideas that can take your nonprofit from good to excellence. Join host Meghan Speer every week to make your good go further!
Nonprofit Hub Radio
Nonprofit Survival Guide: Making the Most of This Moment
Nonprofits are at a crossroads, facing unprecedented challenges that can threaten their very existence. In this episode, we delve deep into the operational dilemmas that many organizations encounter, shedding light on why it's crucial to streamline processes and leverage data effectively. Our discussion with Adam Huttler, the founder of MonkeyPod, highlights how nonprofits can reclaim their focus on mission-driven work by integrating all essential functions into one cohesive platform. Navigating through turbulent times requires more than just awareness of the challenges; it takes courage and strategic action. Adam emphasizes the importance of advocacy and bold leadership, especially when facing political and economic pressures that could jeopardize funding. Moreover, we explore innovative solutions to enhance operational capabilities through a unified system that addresses discrepancies in data management. This can empower nonprofits to make informed decisions and improve stakeholder engagement. With insightful anecdotes and tangible advice, this episode is packed with invaluable takeaways for anyone in the nonprofit sector. As the conversation unfolds, listeners gain perspective on optimizing relationships with donors and volunteers, creating a framework for deeper connections and commitments. This episode is a clarion call for nonprofit leaders to stand firm and lead with purpose, encouraging engagement with their communities. Don't miss out—it's time to embrace change, innovate, and lead with conviction. Subscribe today, share with your peers, and leave us a review!
Get free nonprofit professional development resources, connections to cause work peers, and more at https://nonprofithub.org
Non-profit professionals are motivated to make a difference, but the minutia of non-profit operations can get in the way of the meaningful work you set out to do. That's where MonkeyPod comes in. Monkeypod helps non-profits get back to their mission by eliminating busy work. Their all-in-one software includes a CRM, non-profit accounting, email marketing, online fundraising and grant management. Non-profit Hub listeners can get 15% off the first year of a MonkeyPod subscription by visiting monkeypodio slash nonprofithub.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to the Nonprofit Hub podcast. I'm your host, megan Spear, and joining me today is Adam Hutler, who's the founder and CEO of MonkeyPod Very excited to dig in. You may have heard MonkeyPod has been the podcast sponsor for a couple months now so you probably have heard some of their features. You may have seen them on a webinar that we did recently. Very excited to have Adam on today to dig into a little bit around nonprofit data, but also just kind of the state of nonprofit right now, which is certainly tumultuous at best. So, adam, welcome in. Glad to have you here today.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. So tell the audience a little bit about yourself. I mean, obviously we've heard a lot about MonkeyPod in the reads here on the podcast for the last couple of months, but would love to know kind of your journey, how you got to the nonprofit space and where you are. Give us a little bit of background.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure, so it's been an unusual path, I guess somewhat serendipitous in some ways. I began my career in the arts. I studied theater in college and created a nonprofit organization that ended up supporting lots of artists and arts organizations across the country, an organization called Fractured Atlas. I founded that back in 1997, ran that for the better part of 20 years and in the context of doing that I learned a lot about the kinds of practical challenges that nonprofits and kind of mission-driven organizations in general face and worked hard to develop some kind of technology-based systems and solutions for addressing some of those perennial challenges. When I left Fractured Atlas, I went on to run an impact investing fund, so I've spent a few years as a quasi VC and was happy to leave that world and get back into an operating space with MonkeyPod, which I've been doing on and off as a kind of hobby project for about five years and then as a real company with real paying customers and users since about 2020.
Speaker 2:So yeah, 2020 is an interesting time to try and launch a business.
Speaker 3:It sure was.
Speaker 2:That's a really interesting statement.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it wasn't necessarily what I would have chosen. Trying to launch a startup is always hard, but doing it in a global pandemic is not any easier. I will say, the one thing about that that maybe created an interesting opportunity for us is just that, while everyone was suddenly forced to figure out how to do this whole remote work thing that we were all doing for a while and many of us are still doing, we were in a good position to help facilitate that Because, of course, with MonkeyPod, all of your data and systems are all online and accessible from anywhere in the world. You don't have to be in a cubicle next to the other users. So I suppose that was an opportunity in a sense. But yeah, it was a challenging time for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was no small task, not when I would want to try and start something. But and I didn't plan this segue but here we are. We are also in another interesting time. We sure are Unprecedented in its own mechanisms, right? Yeah, one of the things I know that you've been thinking about that. I've been thinking about a conversation that has been happening in the space. I've seen all sorts of LinkedIn threads about this. We've seen a ton of changes and some maybe threats to funding. We have a lot of grants that have stopped. We've got nonprofits that are coming under fire for various tasks that they do and the ways that they serve. It is a really interesting season to be in the nonprofit space and maybe a very stressful season for a lot of folks.
Speaker 3:Yes, really kind of terrifying in a lot of ways. Yeah, absolutely Really challenging. Yeah, somewhat unprecedented.
Speaker 2:So let's start the conversation there, because, as one who started a business during global pandemic, you might understand challenging. So let's start there. One of the things I think has been interesting to watch emerge from the discussion is this idea of like almost a freeze of I don't even know what to do. Everything is changing so quickly. I don't know how to keep up. I don't know how to prove that our organization is doing what it says it's doing. I don't know how to go about like locating different funding streams. I don't. There's just so much. I'd love to hear, kind of where you are in the process and what you've been thinking about and maybe some thoughts you have for our nonprofit audience in that regard. The process and what you've been thinking about and maybe some thoughts you have for our non-profit audience in that regard.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a great question and it's a really tough time to be doing this kind of work, and especially if you're working in some of these areas that are really in the crosshairs of this administration. So, you know, we work with organizations that are involved with reproductive justice or LGBTQ youth or, you know, immigration and things like that. Right Like this is really. This is really tough for those folks I mean lots of others as well, but, but especially those it's super easy to kind of just throw your hands up and fall into despair or just kind of retreat and say I'm not going to make any waves, I'm going to be as quiet as possible, we're just going to kind of hide behind this rock here until things blow over. And I do understand that impulse. I think it's better if you can organize and if you can engage the fight.
Speaker 3:You know, I think a lot of nonprofits, you know, for not without reason, they've been trained to fear saying or doing anything at all political.
Speaker 3:They've been told that. You know, the IRS says you can't be political as a nonprofit, and there's some truth to that. But what you actually can't do is engage in what's called electioneering, which is where you actually kind of specifically interfere or intervene in an election or advocate for one specific political candidate or something like that. You can't do that as a 501c3 organization, but there is plenty that you can do. You are absolutely allowed to advocate vocally for the issues that matter to your organization, to your constituents, to your mission and, I think, as nonprofits. Honestly, in my view, we always have sort of a responsibility to speak up as experts who are in the field, working on these issues every day, who are close to the ground and understand the issues and the challenges. And understand the issues and the challenges, I think, especially in times like this. You know this is a historical moment and it's not the time to be timid or go into hiding or shut down. Some fights are worth the kind of existential risk.
Speaker 1:Now.
Speaker 3:I should also say, in fairness, this administration has demonstrated a willingness to be punitive and capricious, and so you know there are risks involved, I mean in speaking out and in taking a stand and whatever, and so you know I understand that. But I think you know, when we look back from a historical perspective on this moment, we're going to ask ourselves, did we do everything we could to try to be on the right side of this fight?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's interesting because, from a straight donor perspective right, we've always tried to walk that line. We never want to appear too much to anything because you could risk alienating half of your donors. So we've always tended to walk that line, even outside of the, you know, with the threat of losing your tax ID status or any of those things, because we don't want to alienate part of a donor base. And I think for a lot of the organizations similar, even the ones that you've been talking about, it's easy to assume that you know if someone's giving been talking about. It's easy to assume that I, you know if, if someone's giving to this organization, they must automatically think like me, right? When that is just not it's not necessarily a given.
Speaker 2:So it's. We definitely have to kind of walk a line there as well. And I think one of the things that I'm watching, I'm kind of watching nonprofits kind of go into two buckets, in that of I am going all in or I am jumping out of the fray and I'm not saying anything. I'm starting to see the two without the middle ground, which is interesting to watch.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right and it is a great point that people give for lots of reasons and sometimes you know there can be some cognitive dissonance there, right? I mean, I've certainly encountered situations where somebody has some personal connection to a particular issue, that kind of cuts counter to their overall political views or orientation or whatever. So that does that certainly happens and I can understand wanting to be sensitive to that and look, different organizations are going to. Every organization is going to have to evaluate the sort of risk reward here for themselves.
Speaker 3:I will say, as a general principle, I think more often than not people respond positively to confident, bold people, action and confident bold language and stances and all that kind of stuff. And so, yeah, maybe you alienate one donor but you attract three others who really admire your willingness to lead at a time of crisis. So I think it's challenging to predict with any kind of accuracy or completeness what's going to happen if you take a stand on something. I will say, over the course of my career there have been a number of times where an organization that I've led or been a part of has chosen to be vocal, get out there, take a stand, and I would say it's always ended up okay. For me, even when we've lost some supporters or pissed some people off, it's tended to, in the aggregate, be a positive.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think one of the things that I think I see a lot of from folks is they don't want to say anything because they don't even know who their people are. Don't even know who their people are, right Like these guys are on my email address. I have no idea where they came from. They gave me $20 one time or you know. They've been supporting us monthly at you know $15 a month or $50 a month, whatever it is, but I don't know anything about them. I have no idea how they got here, why they're supporting us, because we haven't done the work as nonprofits to really understand who our audience and who our donors are in that regard.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're so right. That's really common and, honestly, I created MonkeyPod to address that challenge, or in large part to address that challenge Right, and I think what? I think a big part of what creates that kind of situation where you've got a lot of data but not much information.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not much intel.
Speaker 3:Or or or yeah, right, or nothing really actionable or coherent or whatever.
Speaker 3:A lot of that happens because many nonprofits find themselves in a situation where they've got you know 17 different databases that they're working with and 17 different sources of truth and they've got eight different records for Megan Spear.
Speaker 3:Two of them have the last name spelled differently and one of them has a different address and there's three different email address Like, and we're not even sure if this is all the same person, and there's no cross-referencing of all the different contexts in which you interact with somebody. When you find yourself in that kind of situation, there's a lot of opportunities that you're missing because you're unable to connect those dots. There are other more mundane problems, right, Having to do with the amount of time that your staff and your volunteers might be spending on just data entry and kind of data maintenance and whatever. So, finding a way to kind of wrangle all those different systems, wrangle all that data and kind of bring it together into a sort of single, coherent source of truth that helps you kind of organize your information on constituents, on money, on projects, on programs and put actionable information into the hands of decision makers at a strategic level, but also like your frontline people, it can be absolutely transformative for an organization monkey pod brings financial and people management together into one platform.
Speaker 1:Nonprofits can manage their accounting and grants from the same software they use to send emails, collect donations and track donors, instead of using three or four different apps to run your nonprofit. Monkey pod brings all those features together into one single platform, saving you time and money. Nonprofit Hub podcast listeners can get a special 15% off discount on the first year of their MonkeyPod subscription. Learn more by visiting monkeypodio slash nonprofit hub. Nonprofit Hub.
Speaker 2:There is an organization that I love dearly. They're based here in Pittsburgh, right in my neighborhood. They do fantastic work. I am not kidding you. I have called their development office five times in the course of the last year to be like hey, you send me four pieces of mail. Every time you do a direct mail piece.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh yeah.
Speaker 2:You have my name spelled four different ways. Sometimes Megan has an H, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes Spear has two E's. One time it has an S at the end of it. I love you. I'm going to continue to support you, but it comes across as you actually not being a good steward of the resources I'm entrusting you with when you send me four pieces every time. It's perception as well as it's costing your organization, because I have to assume I'm not the only one that's having this problem.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. So you're right. One, you kind of look foolish because clearly you don't have your act together, but also it's pretty hard to make the case that you value this relationship when you can't even figure out how many times you're sending the same piece of mail to someone. So it's a real opportunity to up your game, yes, to save money, but also to improve your reputation and your brand value and your relationships with your donors and you know, but also like I really don't want to underestimate the value of kind of being able to connect those dots. So if I can just tell a little anecdote, one of the earliest, one of our very earliest users at MonkeyPub, when we were still kind of in a beta test we only had like two or three organizations we spent a bunch of time getting their data onto the platform from I don't know.
Speaker 3:They had four or five different databases that they were using. I think they were using Donor Perfect for their fundraising in CRM and they were using QuickBooks for their accounting and they had Excel spreadsheets and other things that they were using QuickBooks for their accounting and they had Excel spreadsheets and other things that they were using for their sort of program management whatever, and they managed to migrate it all into one system and I think within 24 hours they found a case where they had somebody who had given a bunch of money like a five-figure gift, had given a bunch of money like a five-figure gift something like 10 or 15 years earlier and then had totally lost contact. And then this person's spouse, like six months ago, engaged with one of their programs because she needed help for her kid. And they had no idea even that these two people were in the same household, much less that they had these two very different but very important relationships. And so just being able to connect those dots and realize, oh my gosh, this is a huge opportunity.
Speaker 3:They made an appeal on the basis of hey, there's a window here, they know about our work, they're actively engaging with it, they're seeing the value that we provide. And they got another five-figure gift that they never would have even known to ask for if not for the ability to tie that stuff together. So I really think it's a missed opportunity to raise more money, to increase your impact, to save money on operations, to look better. All of that stuff can come from the simple act of organizing your data. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I agree Because you're right, it does speak to the trust a donor puts into your organization.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:Right If I am giving regularly and I have, in this case, called you five times to say hey, could you please merge these donor records?
Speaker 3:and just send me one piece of mail. That's the worst part.
Speaker 2:Right. I feel like every time I pick up the phone to tell them this it is just eroding the trust that I have in the organization to actually do what they say they're going to do. But I ran across a similar situation to what you're talking about not too long ago, where spouse records had not been matched right and so somebody got approached. The wife got approached for a significant gift in a capital campaign without any frame of reference that her husband had already committed right. So now again you just look foolish. Your reputation suffers in there and that is once trust is lost.
Speaker 2:That is a hard relationship to rebuild and get back.
Speaker 3:Yes, it is.
Speaker 3:There's also the issue of impact and kind of understanding and analyzing and assessing your impact.
Speaker 3:I think when you're running a nonprofit, it's very easy, without realizing it, to spend your time doing things that feel good for you, for your staff, that feel like they're making an impact, that give you that feeling of accomplishment, which I get it.
Speaker 3:I want that too, but there sometimes is a difference between the things that feel good and the things that are actually making an impact and actually making a difference and you have, I think, a real responsibility as a steward of charitable dollars and as an organization dedicated to making the world a better place and all the rest. You have to ask yourself that tough question of are these things that we're doing actually working? Are there other things we could be doing that would work better, that would have a bigger impact, that would help us take the limited resources we have and do more with it? And you can't even ask those questions if you don't have good data in the first place on what you're spending money on, on what kind of results you're achieving. Nonprofits are, or should be, data-driven organizations, and a lot of them are not. A lot of them are not in practice.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that goes back to our original point. I think a lot of times nonprofits look at themselves as having some sort of pass right. Nonprofit, all it is is a tax ID status right. It doesn't mean that you can't still run it like a business. In fact, you need to run it like a business so that that impact can continue. And so I think there's a lot of times where you talk to folks and they're like oh, data or marketing or any of these things become like almost taboo words that we want to avoid because it feels to the organization like that takes away, or it's too much overhead, or it takes away from the mission or whatever it is when the mission is not going to exist without those things.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I would say one of the most powerful things that a nonprofit can do and I don't want to suggest that this is easy or even possible for all nonprofits, but to the greatest extent possible, if you can find ways of aligning your mission objectives and your business objectives, so your business model and your theory of change are overlapping to such a degree that if you accomplish your mission, then you're also going to accomplish your business and financial objectives, or our business and financial objectives are a useful proxy for assessing our mission impact. That can be incredibly powerful because it gets everyone in the organization really clear eyed and focused on the things that matter, and whether you're working on the money stuff or on the mission stuff, you're helping both.
Speaker 3:Now, again, I realize that this is a I'm oversimplifying a little bit. Right, this is much easier for some organizations than than others. If you're doing animal rescue thing, You're not going to get the dogs and cats to pay you for your services. I get it, it's not always easy or even doable, but to whatever extent that's possible that you can find ways of aligning those two things and of thinking of the constituents that you serve, as for lack of a better term customers right. That can really unlock a lot of opportunities and it can really get a sort of flywheel positive, you know, virtuous cycle going for your organizational model.
Speaker 2:So tell me a little bit from your opinion then, if we look at it through that framework right where all of the things are working together, I think the other piece that a lot of folks overlook is your volunteer base.
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 2:Right, so you have this whole. You know we have a donor database and we might have an Excel spreadsheet somewhere of the people who volunteer their time, but there's very few organizations that I see that are overlapping those pieces of data as well to really understand somebody's depth of connection to the organization the donor team might be going oh yeah, they give us a little bit of money every year. It's not a giant priority, but they're also giving you 10 hours a week or 10 hours a month. I think that's the other piece I see missed a lot in the data is really understanding, yes, your constituents and your donors, but also anyone else who's involved that way.
Speaker 3:You're exactly right, and that's another case of the value and the opportunity in kind of consolidating your systems and your databases. Almost every nonprofit has some kind of donor database. They might also have a system for managing their membership, another system for managing their volunteers, another system for managing their vendors right, and getting that all together into a CRM like the one that's part of MonkeyPod where you're able to see all of the different ways in which you connect to a given person or organization or constituent or whatever really is a cool opportunity. I mean, your example of volunteers and donors is probably the best single example you could come up with. Right, because your donors are great candidates to volunteer and your volunteers are great candidates to donate.
Speaker 3:And if you've got donors who've never volunteered and you can get them to volunteer and kind of see, on a more personal, grassroots level, the kind of work that you're doing, the kind of people that you're serving, the impact that you're having in the world, that's going to result in them deepening their connection to the organization. They're going to feel like they're more a part of it. They've got some more skin in the game because they've gotten their hands dirty, so that's likely to increase their giving if you can get them to volunteer, and likewise your volunteers, who better to understand what it is that you're doing and why it matters than the people who are already giving their time and already helping you do the work, should be an easy case for support to ask those folks to throw in a few bucks as well. So yeah, no brainer.
Speaker 2:So, with all of that, talk to us a little bit about MonkeyPod, right? If somebody is like, okay, you keep mentioning this, what does it even do? How do I find it? What would I use it for? Etc, give us kind of the overview of the platform itself and then how folks could connect with you if they're interested in that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely so. Monkeypod is a kind of true all-in-one platform for managing all aspects of a nonprofit's operations. So a lot of folks say we're all-in-one and what they mean is like, well, we do donor management and we can do an online fundraising page or something like that. I think, to a greater degree than almost anybody else, monkeypod really is an all-in-one right. It's got true full-featured nonprofit fund accounting so you can get rid of QuickBooks, which does not support nonprofit accounting, by the way. It's got a real robust CRM and it's going to help you track your donors, your volunteers, your members, your institutional funders, all of the different kinds of relationships that you have. Get them all into one place and view them through whatever lenses make sense based on the ways that you interact with that person Everything from budgets, fundraising, grant management, email marketing, right.
Speaker 3:So you don't need MailChimp or Constant Contact anymore. You can kind of and, by the way, just having your email marketing and your CRM in the same place so that you're not having to do this export import dance every time you want to send something. That's huge and a big time saver and a big, big opportunity. So, yeah, it's a real like nonprofit in a box, like you get your stuff onto monkey pod, and that's the one place where everybody on your team can go to access the information they need to do their jobs and to, to you know, get a better handle on the organization's work. You find us at monkeypodcom. And, yeah, we're only for nonprofits. We don't. We're not like a small business platform that pretends to have a nonprofit edition, like we only work with nonprofit organizations and so it's going to be like nonprofit concepts and terminology throughout.
Speaker 2:I love that. Give us the web address one more time, specific to our Nonprofit Hub audience as well.
Speaker 3:Ah, yes, yeah, so it's monkeypodcom slash Nonprofit Hub.
Speaker 2:Fair enough, fantastic, well, good. So, adam, before we wrap up, I want to ask one question, and that is, given all the things that we've discussed, given where we are at this particular juncture of history, if you were going to give one kind of encouragement or takeaway or piece of advice to the nonprofit leader who is listening right now, what are your kind of words of wisdom in this particular moment, which I realize is a big question?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But if you could sum it up into one word, like one piece of advice or word of wisdom or encouragement, what would that look like?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a good question. I think I would just say, like, hang in there and find your courage right. You're a leader. This is the time to lead. Yeah, you're a leader. This is the time to lead. Um, uh, this is not a time to be overly cautious or to be afraid of making waves, or, you know, leaders lead in in times of crisis and in in these sort of critical historical moments. Um and and. At the sector level, that's what we need, and at the organizational level, I promise you, that's what you need. Your people need it, your team needs it, your constituents need it, the community you serve needs it. They need you to step up and lead.
Speaker 2:I love it. Fantastic encouragement in there, Adam. Thank you so much for joining me. This has been a really interesting discussion. Hopefully it's helpful and encouraging to folks in this season as well. So I really appreciate all your wisdom.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. Really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you.
Speaker 2:My pleasure, this has been another episode of the Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast. I'm your host, megan Spear, and we'll see you next time. Bye.