Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Non-profit
professionals are motivated to
make a difference, but theminutia of non-profit operations
can get in the way of themeaningful work you set out to
do.
That's where MonkeyPod comes in.
Monkeypod helps non-profits getback to their mission by
eliminating busy work.
Their all-in-one softwareincludes a CRM, non-profit
accounting, email marketing,online fundraising and grant
(00:23):
management.
Non-profit Hub listeners canget 15% off the first year of a
MonkeyPod subscription byvisiting monkeypodio slash
nonprofithub.
Welcome back to the NonprofitHub podcast.
I'm your host, megan Spear, andjoining me today is David
Waters, who is the CEO of Simpleand Engaging, and we are going
(00:44):
to talk about scalability whenit comes to nonprofits and some
of the tech solutions that areavailable in that process.
I know so many folks in ouraudience are looking to take
their organization to the nextlevel, so I'm very excited to
dig into this conversation today.
David, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Thank you so much for
having me, megan, yeah, my
pleasure.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
So, by way of
introduction, tell us a little
bit about yourself and yourjourney into the nonprofit world
, and how you got involved inthis work in the first place.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah, absolutely.
So a very brief history of time.
So I was born and raised in theUK.
After graduating I moved toAustralia where I started my
corporate career.
I've always very much been inthe kind of project management
digital transformation space, soalways kind of occupied in that
corporate career that gapbetween what does the business
(01:33):
actually want and need and howdo you kind of translate the
tech talk into what that reallylooks like.
I had a good career working fora global education company.
I moved to a small boutiqueconsulting firm based on digital
transformation, this time morearound finance and procurement,
(01:54):
automation and adoption, whichwas great.
That got me the opportunity towork with a load of different
organizations different sizes.
Had the opportunity to workwith a few nonprofits in
Australia during that process aswell.
Something that's always buggedme, though, during my corporate
career and working in thatconsultancy firm and this isn't
(02:17):
a criticism of them or anythinga common theme that I saw
organizations big and small ismaking bad technology decisions.
So spending lots of money onplatforms that are either too
big, too complicated, doesn'tactually do what they need it to
do, doesn't actually solve aproblem that they're looking to
(02:38):
solve.
So I had this idea.
I'm going to start my owncompany and I'm going to help.
I was primarily going to focuson small businesses and
nonprofits, help them makebetter technology decisions, so
very much.
We started life as a company andI started on my own as more of
kind of that digitaltransformation consultant,
software, kind of advisory piece.
The first couple of clientsthat I was fortunate to get this
(03:02):
was during COVID, so all doneremotely were non-profits and
the requirements shifted veryquickly.
They kind of explained we ranthrough some stuff to understand
what they're looking to do,what their real kind of problem
was, the real challenge thatthey were trying to solve, and
realized they didn't need a big,heavy platform.
Actually, you just need acouple of these platforms which
(03:23):
you can kind of stitch togetherto solve that problem far more
cheaply, far more accessibly.
Understandably, the responsewas that sounds great, can you
do that?
So we shifted very quickly fromthat kind of advisory to
actually doing the work, so moreof a managed services provider.
And that's kind of where we'vecontinued our journey over the
past three, four, four years,working primarily with
(03:46):
nonprofits.
We work with some smallbusinesses as well, but
primarily nonprofits, to helpthem look at how can you use
technology to manage your impactbetter.
So the kind of data collection,the data analysis and the
reporting piece, but also justin terms of being more efficient
as an organization.
Nobody likes doing lots oftypey-typey manual work.
(04:06):
There's technologies that canactually help now super
affordable, super accessible.
So that's really kind of howwe've grown as an organization
and where we are today, workingwith nonprofits in Australia,
new Zealand, the UK andhopefully the US very soon.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Fantastic.
I love that.
So to that end, let's kind ofstart with that as the framework
for today's discussion I'd loveto hear you know I know from
your background you've workedwith organizations of all sizes,
our audience specifically wehave a lot of folks who are
trying to grow theirorganization to that next level.
They're trying to scale, but Ifeel like sometimes it's almost
(04:47):
become a catchphrase of sortstrying to grow their
organization to that next level.
They're trying to scale, but Ifeel like sometimes it's almost
become a catchphrase of sortsright, like, we're an
organization that wants to scale.
Great, what does that mean?
What does that look like?
And if you did it well, wherewould you end up?
So I'd love to hear from youabout, maybe, either an example
that you've seen or even, asyou're talking to clients, where
do you start beyond the idea oflike?
(05:07):
Because I do think that thereare some leaders who embrace
scalability and some who arelike we're good, but when you
have that first one, the leaderwho's ready, they are bought
into the concept of scaling andgrowing an organization and
moving it forward in thatdirection.
What's the first step aftersaying like, yep, that sounds
like a good goal, I want to doit.
(05:27):
What does that look like?
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, absolutely
Great question, and it's
something that I do see veryoften.
Typically, my experience in thenonprofit world is you've got
very smart, very passionatepeople, really dedicated to the
work that they're doing, doing agreat job, working really hard
and really kind of doingwhatever they can to stay afloat
.
So it doesn't leave a lot ofspace for considering how things
(05:53):
can change, how things can bedifferent.
So there's kind of two schoolsof thought on how to approach
this as a kind of a whole.
One is okay, let's look atputting a big system in place,
something that will cover a lotof different areas, big, steep
learning curve, usually quiteexpensive, and that has its
(06:16):
merits.
In some organisations.
It kind of depends on what thekind of setup is before.
The approach that I prefer totake, and I think works a lot
better, is working directly withum, that leader who realizes
they want to change something,and sitting down and going okay,
let's try and find what takesup the most amount of time for
some of your staff, because thereal value that technology can
(06:38):
add is is freeing up time.
So it's not about replacement,it's not about, you know, kind
of people completely having tonot do any work anymore, which
would be great, but obviouslythat's not the case.
It's more about how can youfree up the limited time that
your staff have to focus onactivities that either they're
really passionate about, reallyreally good at, or require more
(07:00):
complex thinking, trying to movethem away from the kind of
repetitive activities that arethere Equally.
The other side of that coin ishow can you augment your skill
set, particularly with theadvent of artificial
intelligence now.
So unfortunately I can't mentionthe name of the nonprofit, but
we did some work with a verysmall nonprofit two or three
(07:22):
full-time employees, a bunch ofcontractors that work with.
Their biggest challenge thatthey were seeing was how
efficiently and how well theywere able to apply for grants.
So the original kind of requestwas hey, do you know anyone in
your network that is a goodgrant writer?
Through the conversations thatwe had, it became apparent well,
(07:43):
they can't really actuallyafford a grant writer.
So it wasn't that we had.
It became apparent well, theycan't really actually afford a
grant writer.
So it wasn't about just tryingto shift the work, it was how
could they do the work better?
So we did some work with themlooking at okay, well, how can
you use generative AI tools likeChatGPT or Chord or that sort
of stuff to help you draft someof the responses to your grant
application, but also use it toreview some of the responses to
(08:04):
your grant application, but alsouse it to review some of the
responses that you've written.
So how can you use technologyto improve that process overall?
So we did some workshopslooking at how to craft
effectively prompts that you canuse um and they're now starting
to see that process be moreefficient, starting to see, you
know, the quality of their grantapplications go up.
(08:24):
I haven't looked back into themyet to see if their grant
success has improved um, butthey, you know they feel a lot
more comfortable in that process.
It's they're not usingartificial intelligence just to
write it for them.
That's a terrible idea off thebat.
That's it's not about gettingit to do it for you.
It's about how can you augmentthe wealth of experience and
(08:45):
knowledge that artificialintelligence has to improve the
work that you're doing.
So it's that kind of co-work.
Together you've got someone whocan do a first draft for you.
A lot of folks like to editrather than you know.
They find you know, it's theblank page syndrome where I like
to do that first bit.
So artificial intelligence hasreally helped them with that.
So that's really quite smalland quite targeted.
(09:06):
But how technology can kind offill a gap, moving to something
a little bit bigger and lookingmore towards scale.
Um, so we did some work withdiversity works new zealand.
So they're a leading non-profitNew Zealand promoting diversity
, equity, inclusion practicesacross businesses in New Zealand
(09:27):
Do some fantastic work, reallylovely people.
They developed a very, verycomplex framework to assess and
analyze the maturity of thepractices that organizations had
around diversity, equity andinclusion, around diversity,
(09:48):
equity and inclusion.
Now it's like a 150 questionkind of self-assessment process
that, depending on the answersthat you have, is how many
questions that you receive.
So it's kind of iterative inthat process.
And they had this.
They developed all of this iparound this, but they had no way
to take that to market.
They were doing it manually.
The challenge with that isobviously the data collection is
a bit of a pain.
But also the whole point of aself-assessment is to be able to
(10:09):
tell you where you are andwhere you need to go next.
So there was the analysis piecethat came up, came with that.
So we were able to work withthem.
We developed out a digital toolthat firstly captured the data.
So add all the logic in aroundyou, logic in around phasing out
which questions they should seebased on the responses
previously, centralized all ofthat data collection into one
(10:31):
database.
And then we added in someautomation logic that analyzed
the response from theorganization.
It's a self-assessment to scorethem against different areas of
maturity in their DEI practices,to score them against different
areas of maturity in their DEIpractices and then automatically
generate a report that givesthem their results and some
recommendations based on wherethey are in their journey.
(10:53):
So this, this kind of, enabledthem to scale across New Zealand
infinitely.
So they'd gone from doing ahandful of assessments over the
course of months to, since thistool's launched, they've done
360 and it's all kind of beenhands-off.
So they can focus more on themembership team can focus more
on what do the results mean?
(11:13):
So you've got your results,you've got your report.
Okay, let's sit down with you,let's go through that mean.
So you've got your results,you've got your report.
Okay, let's sit down with you,let's go through that.
You know, here's some bespokeservices that you might be able
to that might be suitable foryou as an organization based on
where you are, so it's actuallyhelping to drive their financial
sustainability as well.
Uh, I, I always feel bad usingbusiness concepts in non-profit
(11:35):
world, but actually it's superimportant it.
It provides an upsell pathway,right, so their members can do
this that doesn't cost themanything off the bat, and
obviously it can scaleinfinitely across that.
Where it gets super interestingand apologies, I geek out about
this massively so obviouslythere's a huge amount of value
just in the individualassessments being done and the
(11:56):
insights that are being gatheredat an organization level.
Where it gets really cool isyou've now got all this data in
a central database, so we thenbuilt some visualizations out so
they can analyze that data tostart looking at okay, what's
going on in the industry?
What are some of the trendsthat we're seeing?
What areas are people fallingshort in the most?
Which is helping them to drive?
(12:17):
What does their servicedelivery look like in the future
?
It's kind of moving, not quitepredictive analytics, but moving
towards understanding.
Okay, if our gaps are here atthe moment, what do we need to
be developing now so that nextyear we can help raise that kind
of profile?
Equally, you're also startingto see, sorry, final point.
(12:38):
I promise, um, I told you Igeek out about this stuff.
Um, the the last point isthey're starting to be able to
in a fairly rudimentary way butable to do it track their impact
.
So they're starting to seeorganizations that they worked
with at the start where they arewhen they first did their
self-assessment one year on.
(12:59):
How do they compare?
What does that improvement looklike?
And starting to see the kind ofimpact that they're having and
being able to measure that andthen report on that more broadly
.
So, yeah, really, really coolproject.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
MonkeyPod brings
financial and people management
together into one platform.
Nonprofits can manage theiraccounting and grants from the
same software they use to sendemails, collect donations and
track donors, instead of usingthree or four different apps to
run your nonprofit.
Monkeypod brings all thosefeatures together into one
single platform, saving you timeand money.
(13:38):
Nonprofit Hub podcast listenerscan get a special 15% off
discount on the first year oftheir MonkeyPod subscription.
Learn more by visitingmonkeypodio slash nonprofit hub.
(14:05):
I think one of the things that Ilove about what you shared and
I love when people geek outabout stuff they're passionate
about, so I'm totally good.
But I think one of the thingsthat's so interesting and maybe
a point that we tend to glossover or not think about in the
process, that we tend to glossover or not think about in the
process right when we thinkabout technology solutions that
help us to scale part of thething that has to go along with,
kind of hand in hand with thattechnology side, is the people
(14:29):
side, because one of the thingsthat I've heard a lot of folks
say is like oh well, we have aperson whose job that is, but
what you were very clearlydescribing is a new way of
thinking of like okay, but ifthey weren't tied up in this
manual process, what could thatperson do?
What value could they bring tothe organization beyond sitting
there and just creating thesereports or doing the data entry
(14:52):
or all of those pieces?
I think one of the things thatis so fascinating to me is to
watch when organizations canembrace how both the technology
scale as well as the changingmindset of somebody's capacity
and impact as a said hand inhand.
I'd love to hear from you ifyou've seen maybe some red flags
(15:14):
before.
Like you know, we, we scaledand then then, but nothing on
the people side changed, sonothing's the impact doesn't
grow.
Or are there other red flagsthat maybe people need to think
about, as those two things kindof go hand in hand?
What does that look like?
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Yeah.
Yeah, it's a really good pointBecause far too often,
unfortunately, you do seenonprofits of all sizes spending
considerable amounts of theirbudgets on big platforms.
They've had the salespersoncome in pitch to them here's all
these things you can do.
It all sounds great and then alot of these platforms can do
these things, but obviously it'ssuch a big change to the
(15:52):
organization you've got to seethat change management piece
come through.
The approach that we try totake to help address that is,
rather than looking at changinglots of things at once, just
look at one thing so you know ifit's, you know what's causing.
Someone described it.
They played it back to me onetime.
(16:13):
They're like you know work is.
Everyone has aspects of theirjob that they don't enjoy.
It's, you know, the parts oftheir job that they have to do.
All the time they're like, oh,I need to do this and it kind of
takes them away from doing thebits that they really enjoy,
which impacts, you know,well-being in the workplace and
burnout in the nonprofit spacesis very well reported.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
So it's about how can
you take that bit out, rather
than let's find a piece oftechnology just to insert into
that and means that you mighthave to change how you do things
.
Let's have a look at actuallymapping out that process.
And this is the bit that almostevery organization, large and
small, nonprofit and for-profitdon't always do, because it's
not the most exciting of jobs todo, but it's super important.
(16:56):
You've got to understand whatproblem you're actually trying
to solve.
For.
So you know, if you're lookingat a big platform, a big CRM,
we're going to get a new CRMGreat.
What's the problem with yourexisting process that you're
trying to solve?
Do you understand where thebottlenecks are in that process?
Because what you'll startfinding is that you know you'll
(17:18):
have a process which has a fewbottlenecks in it.
That causes frustration orangst or means you can't then do
something else with it, andthere might be ways that you can
just fix those.
So, rather than, okay, how dowe change your process
completely, how do we just makeit a little bit better?
So this could be, you know, tothe examples I spoke to before
automating all of it or largeportions of it, or it might just
(17:41):
be automating a little bit ofit.
That takes the most time.
So for the end user, for thefolks in the organization, the
change isn't dramatic.
The change isn't drastic.
Folks are already busy enough.
The last thing they want to dois have to reinvent the wheel,
and people are very comfortablewith how they work.
It may not be the mostefficient, it may not be geared
to scale exactly.
(18:03):
They're very comfortable withthe processes that they're in,
so it's very much more around.
How can you, how can you, likekind of almost process by
process, start improving pieceswithin that, rather than this
dramatic, you know, top-downkind of change?
And you see this far too often.
Where organizations have paidlots of money for something,
(18:25):
either they're using half of thefunctionality because no one
really knows how to use it.
It's made a process morecomplex.
So either folks are doubling upthey've got their own
spreadsheet somewhere that theystill use because they don't
like using the system.
That's there, um or it's justmaking the, the process, uh,
more complicated than than itwas, and that's.
That's not the point oftechnology and that's not the
(18:47):
best way to use it.
Technology isn't an answer initself.
It's an enabler to achievesomething, um, but it's all
about how do you apply differenttechnologies to different
problems in a smart and targetedway.
That also helps withunderstanding whether you're
actually going to receive anybenefits from it as well.
So you know, if you're lookingat something, that, if you're
(19:09):
looking at a process that takesyou three hours a week, if
you're going to spend $100,000on a technology solution that
solves that, three hours a week.
Probably not worth it, yeah,unless you've got some very,
very well-paid staff.
So it all starts withunderstanding what you're doing
now and what kind of challengesyou're trying to face.
(19:29):
So you're really clear on that.
So when you're then speaking tosoftware companies, speaking to
the salesperson, you can lookpast that.
Look at all the shiny things.
Look at all the bells andwhistles, yeah exactly too okay,
we needed to do this.
Specifically, having that inyour back pocket means that
you're far more armed to be ableto have those conversations,
(19:49):
because they're very, very, verysmart and talented technology
sales folks out there desperateto try and help organizations
solve their problems and also,you know, kind of increase the
awareness and adoption of theirproducts as well.
So it's just trying to kind ofbalance that a little bit.
So very much you got to startwith the challenge that you're
(20:10):
trying to solve.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
I love that Mostly.
I love it because, one, itgives us a framework in which to
start, which is always helpfulto me, but two, it's a good
reminder to me.
I think so often we get caughtup in the nonprofit sector of
you know we're doing good, we'rea nonprofit.
It's a different mindsetsomehow when it comes to the
(20:33):
operations side.
But I think this wholeconversation is a really good
callback to this.
Nonprofit is literally nothingbut a tax status.
Right, it's still anorganization.
It still has to run like abusiness.
And for some reason, I feellike for a very long time we've
kind of looked at like oh, wedon't do things like businesses
do, as some sort of badge ofhonor, and I'm sure that it has
(20:54):
led to a lot of inefficiency.
Right, it's led to a system wedon't need.
It's led to not making soundchoices that say, hey, if this
is going to cost you $100,000,but it only frees up three hours
of someone's time, that is nota smart economical decision or a
good use of your funds.
And so I appreciate the kind ofcall back to the root there of
(21:19):
like no, we still need to makesound decisions in the business
process if we're going to scaleeffectively, regardless of our
tax status as a nonprofit entity.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Yeah, absolutely, and
it's typically what I see,
particularly with founder-lednonprofits.
You know they've grown fromusually a one-person operation.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
One person who's
passionate about a thing but may
not have that businessbackground or business skillset.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Absolutely and been
successful to grow to the point
that they're at.
But it's kind of that whateverything that you've done that
got you here isn't necessarilygoing to get you to do.
You know, kind of that nextlevel If that's where you're
wanting to go is to scale thatout.
Technology is drasticallydifferent today than it was, you
know, 10, 15 years ago.
(22:08):
So that, yes, the the way thatI see, there's been three kind
of big changes in in this spacethat have meant that you can
kind of throw out a lot of yourold assumptions.
So the first is around cloudhosting.
So you've got organizationslike Amazon, Google, Microsoft.
They've built huge, great bigdata centers all over the world
(22:28):
and you can now set up somesoftware in there very cheaply,
very accessibly.
You don't have to manage thephysical server, you don't have
to hire people to keep an eye onit, all of that sort of stuff.
So it's made everything farcheaper to do.
Now this benefits nonprofitsbecause you're starting to see
and you've started to see overthe past seven or eight years
software as a service, the ideaof freemium models as well.
(22:50):
Organizations can afford to dothis because hosting is so cheap
.
So now you've got platformsthat you can use and you don't
even have to pay anything for.
You're limited on volumeusually, but if you've got a
very specific problem and youcan find a free tool that solves
that problem, that's a greatwin.
And you can find a free toolthat solves that problem, that's
(23:11):
a great win.
The second piece is kind offallen off the back of this
proliferation of cloud computingand cloud hosting is the
interoperability I hate thatword, but I always have to say
it Between platforms, becauseeverything's built in the cloud.
Now it makes much more sense,it's cheaper and it's easier for
software developers to createways in which other platforms
(23:34):
can talk to them, so everythingcan integrate a little bit
easier.
So they create these APIs, orbasically just doors into their
platform which allow otherplatforms to say hey, I need you
to do this, I need you to dothis, I need you to do this,
which makes that automationpiece far easier.
So you've now got platformsthat can talk to each other far
easier than before.
(23:54):
Before it was hiring a big team, a lot of work, you had much
more closed ecosystems.
So you've got cheaper platforms.
You've got platforms that cantalk to each other far easier.
And then the third piece iswhat's on everyone's tongue
these days is artificialintelligence.
Now I look at this a little bitdifferently than the kind of
(24:18):
mainstream.
It's great for content creationand marketing and stuff like
that.
Sure, of course, that's a validuse case.
What I see in nonprofits inparticular is very hardworking,
very smart, very passionatesubject matter experts.
So they are experts in theirparticular field.
What artificial intelligencegives them is access to someone
(24:38):
who knows a lot sometimes quitea lot about everything.
So suddenly you've got thisgeneralist that you can call on
and a lot of these platforms arefree to use as well.
You've got this generalist thatyou can call on and a lot of
these platforms are free to useas well.
You've got these generaliststhat you can call upon to help
with things.
So, particularly you know.
Going back to the point around,you know nonprofits not running
(25:02):
like a business.
If there's a financial conceptyou don't quite understand, you
can ask ChatGPT or Claude.
Sure, there's no judgment intheir response.
There's no.
Oh, you should do this and youget an answer.
And if you don't understand it,you can ask more questions.
It's available 24 hours a day,seven days a week.
So suddenly you've got accessto this knowledge that you
(25:23):
didn't have before, and it canhelp you to apply it in your
specific situation.
So, even around process mapping,as we were talking earlier, AI
can help you with the rightprompt, with the right questions
and a bit of information aboutyour organization, it can help
you work out where thebottlenecks might be.
So you've suddenly got accessto this fantastic assistant that
(25:44):
has no judgment when you ask it.
Quote unquote, stupid questions.
Yeah the silly question.
But in reality there's no suchthing as a stupid question.
It's great that you're askingit in the first place.
So yeah, they're kind of thebig three trends that have
changed over the past 10, 15years.
So the result is software ischeaper, more accessible, easier
(26:05):
to use and you know, you've nowgot this kind of virtual
assistant you can call onwhenever you need.
So it's dramatically changedthe landscape of this.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Yeah, that's great,
david.
We only have a couple moreminutes, but if somebody wanted
to connect with you they wantedto learn more about your company
or there, maybe have somequestions or follow up how would
we find you?
What's the best way to reachout and connect?
Speaker 2 (26:28):
LinkedIn.
So I post two, three times aweek on LinkedIn sharing lots of
different tools, insights,frameworks to try and approach
technology in nonprofits.
Very, very happy to chat withfolks.
I'm not a great salesperson, tobe honest with you, so it's not
something that, if we do have achat if I can add value, great.
(26:48):
If we can then work together,fantastic.
If not, but I can add value,that's even better.
So, yeah, I see our role assupporting folks trying to make
the world a little bit better,so whatever role we can play,
that's great, fantastic.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
I love it.
Well, david, thank you so much.
This has been a fascinatingconversation.
I'm really excited to givefolks some practical ways to
evaluate solutions to take theirorganizations forward, so it's
super helpful.
I really appreciate all of yourinsights.
Again, my guest has been DavidWaters.
Definitely go connect with himon LinkedIn.
We're excited to have him onthe podcast today.
This has been another episodeof the Nonprofit Hub Radio
(27:27):
Podcast.
My name is Megan Spear and Iwill see you next time.