The stakes are really high with advocacy messaging these days, especially for nonprofits. Effective messaging is so critical to every aspect of engaging decisionmakers. At any point in the process, no matter where you are in your relationship with them, your messaging has to work.

But we face a big problem. There's so much noise, there's so many reasons for decisionmakers not to pay attention to or engage with our messaging, that we can't afford to get it wrong. 

Today I’m focusing on the four essential elements that are absolutely at the core of high-impact advocacy messaging. If you're missing any one of these four, your messaging's not going to work. So let's take those apart and make sure you have what you need so that you can be generating high-impact messaging all the time.

In this episode, we share:

• How to lead with a single statement that captures the essence of what you do and the powerful impact of your work
• How to deal with decisionmakers who over-generalize about the problems you solve
• How to dismantle the biases and assumptions decisionmakers are making about the people you serve 
• How to weave together the four essential messaging elements in a short story that engages each decisionmaker and targets their particular aspect of “not getting it”
• Four questions to ask yourself to take your core advocacy messaging to even higher levels of effectiveness

Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, I’d be grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Your reviews help other nonprofit leaders find the podcast.  Thanks!!

Our personal growth as an advocate and as a leader is probably the single most important ingredient for our advocacy success. And yet, it’s one of the things we most often overlook. We don't give enough time and attention to it. 

There's a lot of ‘doing’ in advocacy and that's quite naturally what we tend to focus on. But at the core of it all is your growth, your strength, your capacity as a leader and as an advocate.

But how do we grow as a leader, as an engager of decisionmakers and as a powerfully influential advocate? A lot of the growth happens in the doing. But the degree of growth, the levels we reach, are determined by how intentional we are about achieving that growth.

That's what I want to talk about with you today.

In this episode, we share:

• Two indicators that it’s time to take one or more of your advocacy skills to the next level
• How to create highly effective habits that will cause you to be more powerfully influential with decisionmakers
• How to increase your ability to operate from the identity of a powerfully influential leader
• One powerful question to ask yourself to take your growth to higher levels
• The simple action that will help you stay motivated while you do the work of growing
• How to get support for your personal growth work around advocacy

Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, I’d be grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Your reviews help other nonprofit leaders find the podcast.  Thanks!!

If you’ve got great messaging and it’s still not causing decisionmakers to engage with you, chances are you’re dealing with one of the most common advocacy pitfalls that happens to a lot of nonprofit leaders:  We worry so much about what we're going to tell a decision maker, and we don't spend nearly enough time thinking about what we want to ask them. 

Questions are incredibly powerful tools, and they can really work magic in a conversation with a decisionmaker. They can create engagement. They can create an opportunity to go deep, to get information that the decisionmaker wouldn't volunteer otherwise. You can get advice. You can get all kinds of valuable intel, and at the same time build a connection with that decision maker, and have them leaning in and engaging more with you.

The magic of questions is that they engage other people's brains. We can't help it. When we're asked a question we have to engage. We have to stop and think about that question. If someone's just telling us stuff, it’s easy to lose focus, and not really hear what’s being said. But as soon as a question shows up in the conversation, our subconscious makes us pay attention. We get engaged. Decisionmakers get engaged.

But here's the thing. Not all questions are created equal. The fact is, the smarter your questions, the better your results are going to be. The trick is to come up with really smart questions that are going to yield high-level results for you. 

In this episode, we share:

• How low-value questions work against you, and how to avoid them
• The essential advance work that sets you up to ask higher-value questions of decisionmakers
• The two most important questions to ask yourself before you ever meet with a decisionmaker
• Key characteristics of high-value questions that trigger engagement
• How to turn a request for advice into an even higher-value question
• How to use AI to do advance research and craft higher-value questions
• An easy hack to boost your effectiveness as you develop this skill

Link:  Episode 67 – Three Keys to Finding the Right Decisionmaker in Any System

I'm preparing to launch a group coaching program that will focus specifically on helping you craft messaging that will shift decisionmakers’ perspectives and get them on board with sustaining and even expanding your funding. This will be a coaching opportunity for a limited number of people to come in and be part of a group. There'll be some training, but most of it will be coaching and helping you to get your messaging dialed in so that you can address this pressing need.  

What I'm seeing right now is there's nothing more important than this. If that sounds like something you'd like to be a part of, message me through the podcast website or on LinkedIn. 

When you look at who's regularly successful in having big influence with decision makers, what you'll notice is that they almost always have a strong relationship with that decision maker.  You probably know from personal experience how hard it is to influence a decision maker when you don't have a strong relationship.  So why do some nonprofit leaders seem to have tons of success at this, while others struggle?

In this episode, we’ll reveal:

• The third pillar of successful advocacy
• How one leader doubled their revenue through strategic relationships
• Secrets of an influential relationship builder
• How to avoid creating purely transactional relationships that don’t feel good
• The biggest mistake you may be making, and how to fix it
• Why vision is at the center of successful strategic relationship-building
• How to manage power imbalances in your relationships with decisionmakers
• The 3 key elements of strategic relationship-building, and how to apply them in your work

Get started leveling up your advocacy game today!  Download your free copy of the Advocacy Success Workbook here, and follow the Pillar 3 guided action.  It will help you get clear on what specific results you want from key strategic relationships, define your ideal relationship with them, and identify three actions you can take to make those relationships stronger.  

If you’re not crystal clear on the specific result you want, how can you ask a decisionmaker for it?  And how will you know whether you’ve gotten it?  In this episode I’ll show you how to drill down to the details of exactly what you want.  And then I’ll show you the specific factors that determine the right way to ask for it.  

In this episode you’ll hear:

• The second pillar of successful advocacy
• The biggest mistake you may be making, and how to fix it
• The different kinds of ask, and when to use them 
• One of the most valuable asks in any situation
• How to balance the big picture with the details when engaging a decisionmaker
• What happens when you nail it
• How to deal with decisionmakers that don’t support your cause
• How to avoid the most common self-defeating mistake in crafting an ask
• How to make a big scary ask

Get started leveling up your advocacy game today!  Download your free copy of the Advocacy Success Workbook here, and follow the Pillar 2 guided action.  It will help you drill down and get super specific on what exactly you want from the key decsionmakers in your world.    

If you don’t know exactly who is in charge of the thing you want, how can you influence the decisions being made?  But knowing who’s in charge is only half the battle.  You also have to know what’s going on in their head and heart so you can truly reach them.  In this episode, we get into the details of how to do that, and what kind of results you can get when you do it well.

In this episode, we reveal:  

• The first pillar of advocacy success
• Assumptions that will get you in trouble
• How to figure out who’s really in charge of a given decision
• Special tactics for knowing how federal funding decisions are really made
• What you need to know about your decisionmakers
• The two most common mistakes you may be making
• One action you can take today to start improving your advocacy results

Get started leveling up your advocacy game today!  Download your free copy of the Advocacy Success Workbook here, and follow the Pillar 1 guided action.  It will help you get much greater clarity on a key decisionmaker in your world, and what makes them tick.  

It’s time for a new conversation about non-profit advocacy.  For a bigger, bolder vision of what progressive, direct-service nonprofit leaders can achieve, and the kind of transformative results you can get when you become a powerfully influential advocate for your services, your organization and the people you serve.  In this very first episode, we dive right into that conversation.

In this episode you’ll hear:

• Why direct-service nonprofits are the key to changing critical money and policy decisionmaking 
• A new definition of advocacy
• The two most important reasons we do advocacy
• The number one key to advocacy success
• The four main pillars that are key to building powerful influence with decisionmakers

There is a lot of fear in the air, and I think it's important that we as nonprofit leaders take a hard look at that and get clear about what we're going to do with it.

The first thing is we have to acknowledge it. I've been part of a number of conversations where the fear is in the air, but it's not being talked about directly. And I think that's a mistake, because we run the risk of letting that fear guide our decision making and our actions in ways that we may not even realize or intend. And that would be a loss for everyone.

I think it's important to call it out, to acknowledge it, to say, yep, it's here. It's legitimate, and while it's real and present in our lives, we don't have to let it run our actions and our decision making. We need to be able to feel the fear, without operating from fear.

In this episode, we share:

• Two keys to navigating our own very real fears
• The essential choice we must make as leaders in times of fear
• One powerful tool for managing fear in this uniquely scary time that you can also use with your team
• Powerful evidence that we have more influence than we realize
• Two keys to helping decisionmakers get out of fear so they can make decisions that serve you

I'm preparing to launch a group coaching program that will focus specifically on helping you craft messaging that will shift decisionmakers’ perspectives and get them on board with sustaining and even expanding your funding. This will be a coaching opportunity for a limited number of people to come in and be part of a group. There'll be some training, but most of it will be coaching and helping you to get your messaging dialed in so that you can address this pressing need.  

What I'm seeing right now is there's nothing more important than this. If that sounds like something you'd like to be a part of, message me through the podcast website or on LinkedIn. 

It's time to talk about one of the most frustrating things that can get in an advocate's way: when you've got a decisionmaker that, no matter what you do or say, no matter how hard you push them, it feels like they just will never commit to anything. They either can't or won't make a decision. It can leave an advocate just about tearing their hair out in frustration.

It can turn into a huge time suck. You're trying all these different angles to try to figure out, how do I get through to this person? How do I get them off the dime and make them take an action? To do something already! I've been there and I know what it's like. 

When there's a decisionmaker who can't or won't make a decision, there's a reason behind that. But the stated reason and the real reason are often very different. We have to become detectives to figure out what's really going on. What is the actual reason?

Because here's the thing. How likely is it we're going to just luck into the right messaging or the right strategy if we don't really know what's causing them to fail to make a decision? If we want to figure out the right strategy to make them actually take an action, to move to a decision, the first thing we've got to do is understand why they're not doing that now. 

I want to share with you a process you can use to uncover what’s really going on with that decisionmaker, and how to build a strategy to get them to take action. 

In this episode, we share:

• The six most common reasons behind that indecision 
• The surprising ways fear affects a decisionmaker’s thinking
• The two best strategies to get to the bottom of what’s causing your decsiionmaker’s indecision
• How to read behavioral cues that will tell you what’s driving the decisionmaker
• Key strategies you can use to address the causes of the indecision, and move the decisionmaker to action

I'm preparing to launch a group coaching program that will focus specifically on helping you craft messaging that will shift decisionmakers’ perspectives and get them on board with sustaining and even expanding your funding. This will be a coaching opportunity for a limited number of people to come in and be part of a group. There'll be some training, but most of it will be coaching and helping you to get your messaging dialed in so that you can address this pressing need.  

What I'm seeing right now is there's nothing more important than this. If that sounds like something you'd like to be a part of, message me through the podcast website or on LinkedIn. 

There has never been a time when the influence of nonprofit leaders was more needed. In particular, we need to have influence with the money and policy decision makers that hold the power to help or harm the people we serve.

At the same time, a lot of things are happening that could leave a nonprofit leader feeling pretty vulnerable and powerless. Our challenge is to find a way to move like water and create that influence no matter what else is going on. 

One of the things I hear most frequently from nonprofit leaders I work with is some version of, we can't get XYZ critical decision maker to listen to us. We've tried everything and we can't get through to them. We either can't get them to listen, or we can't get access to them, or both. And then what happens is folks just kind of give up on those decision makers or resign themselves to not being able to have influence with them.

I get how that happens, but what's that costing you? If these are money and policy decision makers that matter, can you afford not to have influence with them? Is that really an option?     

In this episode, we share:

• The two biggest problems most nonprofit leaders have in getting access to the right decisionmakers, and how to solve them
• How past experience with decisionmakers can lead you to the wrong conclusions about influence building – and how that gets in your way
• How to train your subconscious brain to seek out and funnel influence-building opportunities to you
• How to craft messaging that will really land with a decisionmaker, and motivate them to work with you
• What it really means to speak the decisionmaker’s language, and why it makes such a huge difference
• How to know when it’s time to switch tactics and build influence another way

I'm preparing to launch a group coaching program that will focus specifically on helping you craft messaging that will shift decisionmakers’ perspectives and get them on board with sustaining and even expanding your funding. This will be a coaching opportunity for a limited number of people to come in and be part of a group. There'll be some training, but most of it will be coaching and helping you to get your messaging dialed in so that you can address this pressing need.  

What I'm seeing right now is there's nothing more important than this. If that sounds like something you'd like to be a part of, message me through the podcast website or on LinkedIn. 

Links:

Episode 67 -- Three Keys to FInding the Right Decisionmaker in any System

We need to talk about an emerging reality that virtually all of my clients are telling me is their number one challenge right now.  

Everyone is already dealing with multiple threats to federal funding. But now there’s the additional reality that all the chaos and uncertainty at the federal level – from budget craziness to wildly fluctuating tariff policies – is destabilizing other funding sources. State and local government funding, foundation grants and corporate funding are all affected.

As nonprofit leaders we're fighting for our federal funding, and now we’re realizing that many of our other funding  sources are facing headwinds as well.  This has some very specific implications for our advocacy strategy. We need a way to get all of our funding decisionmakers to commit to continuing their full support for our work. And we have to deal with all of that at once.

In this episode, we share:

• The number one strategic imperative in the fight for your federal funding in particular
• What’s on all funding decisionmakers’ minds right now, and why we need to shift their perspective
• The two perspective shifts we must get decisionmakers to make
• Why your usual approach to messaging is unlikely to get the job done
• The three-part messaging equation that will help you succeed with every type of funder

I'm preparing to launch a group coaching program that will focus specifically on helping you craft messaging that will shift decisionmakers’ perspectives and get them on board with sustaining and even expanding your funding. This will be a coaching opportunity for a limited number of people to come in and be part of a group. There'll be some training, but most of it will be coaching and helping you to get your messaging dialed in so that you can address this pressing need.  

What I'm seeing right now is there's nothing more important than this. If that sounds like something you'd like to be a part of, message me through the podcast website or on LinkedIn. I look forward to hearing from you!

We’re about to enter a period of opportunity to have a lot of influence over our Members of Congress. They'll be home in their districts/states twice in the next seven weeks for “district work periods” to connect with their constituents. You should expect to be seeing quite a bit of them in late April and then again in late May.  

These district work periods represent a significant opportunity for nonprofit leaders to engage substantially with your Members of Congress, and to drive home the absolutely critical messages around the impact that the administration's actions are having right now, at home in the district, in the state, on their constituents’ lives.  

It's also an opportunity to tell our Members of Congress what we expect to do about that! It's a great time to be communicating with them about both pieces at once. And there's no better place to do that than at home, on the ground, where there's an opportunity for them to see the actual impact for themselves. And we as nonprofit leaders have a key role to play in helping them make that connection.

In this episode, we share:

• Exact timing of the next two district work periods for Congress (House and Senate)
• The two most valuable strategies for engaging Members of Congress while they’re back home
• The three different types of town halls and how to make the best strategic use of each of them
• Specific messaging strategies that work best for town halls
• How to get on your Member of Congress’ schedule to visit your program while they’re home
• The key elements of a high-impact program visit
• How design a program visit that deeply engages your Member of Congress

As you participate in town halls and bring Members of Congress to your program for high-impact engagement, I would love to hear how that's worked out for you, and what kinds of key messages you were able to drive home using each of those two strategies.  

And if you've got a story you're particularly proud of, I'd love to have you on the show so we can amplify that and help other nonprofit leaders see how leaders are leveraging these opportunities to really make a huge impact!

Reach out to me on the podcast website or on LinkedIn and share your wins!

Links:

Episode 31: How to Get Maximum Results from a Decisionmaker’s Visit to Your Program

Moveon.org

Indivisible.org

We all know how valuable community building is, but we often don't understand just how powerful it is.

And right now it might just be that nonprofit leaders' superpower as community builders could be one of the keys to making sure that we are able to fight off the right wing attacks on our funding and on the work that we do and the people we serve.

In this episode, we share:

• Understanding the strategic goals of the forces of division 
• How to disrupt the forces of division through community building
• How you and your team can develop intentional community building actions
• The secret power of tapping into shared values, and how to weave that into your community building strategy
• How to integrate community building into your advocacy strategy

Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  Thanks!

This is a time when we need all hands on deck. There's so much need for nonprofits to advocate aggressively for the work that we do, and specifically for the government funding that supports our work. And nowhere is that more true than at the federal level. 

I’ve shared a lot of thoughts recently about the number of ways that federal funding for safety net services is under attack, and the importance of engaging members of Congress to get them to do the right thing.

I'm also hearing from a lot of regular podcast listeners and the folks in my coaching programs that they're feeling pretty overwhelmed. And like, could you just keep it really short and simple? Gimme some tips. Tell me what I can do that will help me be more effective right now. 

So I am answering the call. Today's quick tips are around how you can most efficiently, with a minimum of work, and a maximum of benefit and impact, engage your existing supporters to help them become effective and powerful advocates on your behalf.

In this episode, we share:

• The most effective ways to engage your supporters and ask for their help
• The simple messaging framework you can use to craft a short script for your supporters when they call their members of Congress
• The most important fact to understand about how members of Congress receive constituent calls
• The two things you must get right when engaging your supporters via text message
• How to ensure your supporters take the action you requested
• How to build your cadre of supporters who are excited about taking action 

Links:

A Comprehensive Guide to Texting for Nonprofits

This article is a very useful source of information for how to run an effective texting campaign as a nonprofit, as well as the rules that govern texting campaigns. Note: this article was created by a third-party vendor that facilitates texting campaigns.

Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  Thanks!

Nonprofit leaders have a lot going on in terms of advocacy we need to be doing with Congress. And I’m hearing from a lot of my clients and the folks in my coaching programs, saying “Just strip it down for me. What's the messaging we need to be using? Give me a framework so that I can keep this simple.”

I totally understand the need for that, and I'm right here with you. We’ve got so much coming at us all the time that sometimes the best thing is to just keep it short and sweet and simple. So I’m sharing a very simple set of elements that go in a messaging framework for just about anything you'll be advocating with Congress for in the near future. Because pretty much all eyes are on your federal funding, trying to make sure that we maintain federal funding for safety net programs, and specifically for the funding you get to do the work you do. 

You can take that five-piece framework and build 99% of your messaging to your members of Congress around that right now. This doesn't have to be complicated.

In this episode, we share:

• The three things we need our members of Congress to understand about our work
• What belongs in your core story of your impact
• The essential dots you need to connect in your advocacy messaging
• The two sides of the investment coin that you need to communicate to your Member of Congress
• How to effectively embed critical counters to right propaganda throughout your messaging
• The two core asks to focus on with your Member of Congress

Links:

Episode 84 – How to Deal with the RIght Wing's "Waste, Fraud & Abuse" Propaganda

Questions? Reach out to me at the podcast website, or on LinkedIn   

Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  Thanks!

It can be really hard right now as a Nonprofit leader to know where to focus your attention, what to be spending your advocacy energy on and what's going to have the biggest impact.

For the vast majority of direct service nonprofits, federal dollars make up at least some part of your total funding. And for any nonprofit in that situation, most of the critical action that's going to determine the long-term wellbeing of our organizations, our programs, our services, and the people we serve is happening at the federal level. 

So even if you're not normally focused primarily on federal advocacy stuff, now is the time. That's where the biggest policy decisions are being made that are going to have massive ripple effects for years to come. 

For an immediate case in point, I'm sure you're aware that the House just passed their disastrous budget bill. There’s a lot we can do to make sure that the worst aspects of that bill get turned around, and that we protect vital safety net services.  To do that, we have to navigate a hyper-partisan environment, and find a way to engage every member of Congress. And that means using some strategies that may be new to us, but that are proving to be effective right now.  

In this episode, we share:

• How to understand the House budget bill and what it means for your services
• Where the best advocacy opportunities lie in this still-ongoing budget process
• Exciting evidence of what’s working right now to influence Congressional decisionmaking
• Best ways to get the attention of your member of Congress 
• Why your supporters are craving the opportunity to advocate on your behalf
• How to create easy advocacy action opportunities for your donors, volunteers, board members and clients
• A simple advocacy messaging framework you can use today

Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, please share it with other progressive nonprofit leaders.  Thanks!

One of the biggest frustrations that I hear from Nonprofit leaders is that much too often for comfort, decisionmakers fail to recognize or value our expertise. And when that happens, they're not listening to us in the same way. They're less inclined to take our advice and to give real weight to our assessment of what needs to be done differently. And all of that makes our advocacy work so much harder.

One of the questions I get most often is, what can I do to get decisionmakers to regard me as the expert that I know I am? How do I get them to see me as a highly expert resource that they should be relying on? 

The good news is there is a way to do this and it doesn't have to take forever.

In this episode, we share:

• The likely reasons decisionmakers aren’t realizing the value of your expertise
• One thing you must do if you want decisionmakers to take notice of your expertise
• Three common mistakes that will cause decisionmakers to overlook your expertise
• The next-level expertise most valued by decisionmakers
• How to demonstrate your expertise in a way that will grab decisionmakers’ attention
• What makes you an essential person to have in the room, from the decisionmaker’s perspective

Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, I’d be grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Your reviews help other nonprofit leaders find the podcast.  Thanks!!

The right wing's "waste, fraud, and abuse" propaganda is being used to justify massive and indiscriminate slashing of federal funding for anything and everything. That propaganda is hurting nearly every nonprofit in this country right now, and it's hurting every single community that is served by those nonprofits. 

The good news is, propaganda only succeeds when it's not being countered effectively. So we have to find ways to counter it. The problem is, all the normal messaging we use with policymakers in the normal course of advocating for our stuff? Those messaging strategies don't work against the "waste, fraud, and abuse" propaganda. 

So It's time we dealt with that. It's an urgent situation and we need strategies that are actually going to work. In this episode, we’re sharing a set of core counter-propaganda strategies that will help you craft messaging that has a solid chance of accomplishing what you need. Which is breaking, disrupting and rendering ineffective the propaganda narrative of waste, fraud, and abuse. And replacing it with a narrative that tells the real truth about federal funding of the vital services you provide. 

In this episode, we share:

• Why your regular messaging strategies with policymakers don’t work against propaganda
• How to understand the strategy behind propaganda, that shows us the keys to breaking it
• Five essential propaganda-busting strategies that you can adopt right away
• The tonal shifts that are key to countering propaganda (it’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it)
• The two most common mistakes that many leaders are making right now in their anti-propaganda messaging
• Specific messaging techniques that work against propaganda
• Where your anti-propaganda messaging needs to happen to have the greatest impact

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

Thanks!

There is so much more still to discuss about how we can defend against ongoing attacks on your federal funding.  In this week’s episode, we're focusing on the second key piece of the strategy, which is shaping public opinion and getting members of the community to start raising their voices in support of your funding. 

We need to make it deeply unpopular to cut funding for our work. To do that, we’ve got to influence public opinion about that work. We need the members of our community to grasp the full impact of our work and value it deeply. And we need them to see why federal funding is needed to make that impact possible. Once they’re with us on that, and especially when we help them raise their voices, it becomes a lot harder for the right wing to strip away that funding.

In this episode, we share:

• The two most important lessons from recent events that tell us how to win this fight
• Three things community members need to internalize about your work 
• What motivates members of the community to raise their voice against funding cuts
• How to craft messaging that triggers that motivation
• The four most important sentences to include in your messaging to the community
• Two common mistakes to avoid in your public opinion-shaping messaging
• How to offer easy but effective ways for community members to raise their voices on your behalf

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

Thanks!

We have a lot to talk about with all of the threats that are aimed at federal funding for a critical array of safety net programs. We've had quite a rollercoaster ride in the last couple of weeks, but I believe that there are some very powerful lessons available in that experience, if we are willing to pay attention to them. And if we can sift through the chaos and the stress to get clear about what actually happened and how there is a hidden message in there that is really encouraging. Plus a roadmap for how to successfully defend our federal funding.

In this episode, we share:

• The most important lesson to take from the last week’s events
• Two main avenues to pursue to defend your federal funding
• The three people in your world who have the most powerful direct influence on keeping federal funding intact
• How to be effective in a highly partisan situation while remaining nonpartisan
• Specific strategies for engaging both Democratic and Republican elected officials
• The most effective core messaging to use with your members of Congress on this issue
• Messaging elements that feel essential, but that you really need to leave out 
• How to get local and state government officials to work with you to defend your federal funding
• How to magnify your power as a local leader in this fight

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

Thanks!

It feels like we're having a crisis about every 20 seconds, and this week is no exception. Just at the beginning of the week we had another sudden, chaos-inducing announcement from the new administration that they were going to suspend all federal grant money for unspecified things for an unspecified period of time. 

I noticed that a number of nonprofit leaders started posting to social media almost immediately when this announcement was made, and they used words like “panic,” “terrified,” “this is doom.” There’s no question that it's bad. It is objectively, verifiably terrible. But the critical thing to understand is that the fear and the panic and the uncertainty are part of the strategy. 

The strategy is to create chaos as much as possible all the time. That strategy has multiple purposes. First and foremost it's designed to disorient, to demoralize, and to disable the opposition. 

It’s time for us to realize that this is going to be the daily reality for the foreseeable future. So one of the most strategic things we can do is to stop being surprised by this behavior!  Expect chaos, expect disorder, expect disruption, expect outrageous behavior. Understand that fear and panic and worry and stress are the goal.

The other thing we can do is become far more strategic and adept at responding to crisis. The truth is, a lot of times we focus on the wrong things when crisis strikes. There are three main things we need to do first, if we want the rest of our response to go well. 

In this episode, we share:

• What to do first when you get blindsided by a crisis situation
• The single most important decision we make as leaders when faced with a crisis
• The critical messages you’re sending to your team (and to the opposition), with your response to crisis
• How to identify your default modes of crisis response, and shift any that aren’t serving you
• Keys to leading your team effectively through a crisis
• How getting good at responding to crisis gives you a strategic advantage

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

Thanks!

If it wasn’t clear before this week, we now know that the entire suite of government-funded safety net programs is in the right wing’s cross hairs. The ambition to dismantle these programs isn't new. What is new is the level of aggressiveness and determination that seems to be accompanying this round.

If your organization is like many direct service nonprofits, a chunk of your funding comes from government sources. And in a lot of cases that originates at the federal level. Even if you don't have federal funding, the ripple effects down through state and local funding could be substantial. 

The messaging piece of this problem is particularly important. I believe that public opinion will matter in this fight. And right now, the right wing’s messaging is dominating the conversation.

If we're going to effectively counter all the messaging that’s persistently and aggressively attacking any sort of safety net program funding, we have to understand what strategies the right is using, and get a lot better at creating and broadcasting effective messaging of our own. 

Let’s talk about how we do that!

 
In this episode, we share:

• The elements of the right’s message that most endanger your funding
• The critical knowledge gap that helps the right’s messaging work so effectively
• Why public opinion is critical to winning this fight
• Two reasons right wing messaging is infiltrating public opinion, and how we can disrupt that
• Three tactics of the right wing that we should emulate (while we reject many others)
• The messaging super power nonprofits can tap to move public opinion
• First steps for you and your team to start building more powerful messaging

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

Thanks!

Confidence is one of those things that so many people struggle with, and others seem to have no problem with. And neither group understands the other one very well. So I want to get into where does confidence come from, and how do we get more of it, more consistently? 

Where do you feel least confident? Is it public speaking? Is it in front of a powerful decision maker? Is it when the stakes are especially high and the consequences of error seem kind of terrifying? Is it when you're worried that the audience, whether it's one person or a thousand, will be unfriendly or even hostile? Is it when you're doing something brand new for the first time? 

I hear from a lot of clients that they want to be more confident in an area that’s a little or a lot outside their comfort zone. Public speaking is one of the things that comes up most often. Another popular desire is wanting to be more confident in going one-on-one with a powerful money or policy decision maker. 

Often we're operating under the mistaken belief that confidence is something that we have to obtain.  It's something that is out of our grasp and we have to go get it. And that's not really true.

In this episode, we share:

• How to generate confidence from within
• The three key sources of inner confidence
• How perfection and mastery can be a trap that keeps you from generating confidence
• How the intentions you set can boost or block your confidence
• Proven techniques for taming your fears
• How to operate with confidence in the face of a big power imbalance
• Key questions to help you coach yourself to greater confidence

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

Thanks!

There's a really big problem out there that chances are you're experiencing: Too many money and policy decisionmakers just aren't getting your core message. What I want to help you do today is shift what you're doing just a little bit, so that you can start to change that. 

You probably already know from painful experience that getting the attention of, and engaging and building a relationship with a money or policy decisionmaker that's new to you or relatively new, is tougher than ever. And there are some real reasons for that. The biggest one is that attention spans are shorter than ever. 

You know from your own experience that everything's a fire hose. There's so much input coming at you all the time that you can't possibly deal with it all. You've got to filter out as much as you can so that you don't get overwhelmed, and so you can stay focused on the stuff you really need to pay attention to. 

What we sometimes don't realize is that while we're all doing that, the decisionmakers are doing that, too. So more than ever, it becomes essential that we engage them from the very beginning. Because if we don't, they're already filtering us out.

In this episode, we share:

• What generates engagement, and what doesn’t
• How your standard opening dialogue with decisionmakers may be impeding engagement
• The most important shift to make in your messaging to ensure immediate engagement 
• Which part of your messaging to focus on for greatest impact
• One highly underrated opening that almost always triggers engagement
• How to recognize engagement when it comes in an unconventional package
• Three keys to sharing factual information in a way that engages

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

Thanks!

What makes intention setting so powerful is that it is more about the being than about the doing. If we fail to attend to our intentions, we risk not only missing our goals, but missing out on the experience we want to have while we pursue them.

I'm sure that your organization has plans and goals for the year. And I expect you to have some for yourself as well. We need those things. We need goals. We need plans. Or stuff would have trouble getting done. 

But the piece that we often overlook or don't give enough attention to is the idea of setting intentions. The truth is we set intentions all the time. We just may not be aware of it. We may also not be aware of how incredibly powerful those intentions can be in governing how we operate in the world. And crucially, governing whether or not we're able to reach those goals and fulfill on those plans that we set for ourselves. 

In this episode, we share:

• How the intentions we set (consciously or unconsciously) affect how we show up and the actions we take
• The key to setting powerful intentions that will serve you well
• How to avoid the hazard of setting unconscious intentions that do not serve you 
• The difference between resolutions and intentions, and why it matters
• How to set intentions that will support new habits you’re trying to develop
• How to keep your actions aligned with the intentions you’ve set

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

Thanks!

Between the waning light and the kind of tucking in that happens around the solstice, and the anticipation of closing one year and opening a new one. It's the perfect time to do some reflection on how the year has gone for us, what it's meant for us. And to think about ways that we can carry our most valuable lessons into the new year. 

This year, maybe more than most, there's a lot to reflect on. For most of us in the progressive world, it's been a pretty mixed bag. You know, we had this election that was pretty consequential. Fortunately a lot of good things happened at the state and local level. But at the national level it was a tough election. We did not get the outcomes we wanted. And that obviously has massive implications for us going into the new year. 

When really big, dramatic events like that happen, either positive or negative, they tend to pull all of our attention, and cause us to lose sight of the less dramatic events in our world. It would be a shame if we let that happen. Because while that was monumental and has a lot of implications, so are all the things that you did during the year. Some of the things that you worked on were probably huge successes. Some of them, maybe they were more of a lesson than a success. Some of them may have you saying, oh my goodness, I'll never do that again. Even that is valuable. 

I'd like to invite you to join me in a practice that I do at the end of each year. I’m sharing with you how I'm recapitulating the year in a way that allows me to identify the most important lessons, and decide what I want to pull forward with me into the next year's work.

 
In this episode, we share:

• The key questions that will help you uncover your most important lessons from the year
• Where to start and what to ask first to set you up for success
• How to avoid the common pitfalls that prevent us from finding those lessons 
• Why we often find it easier to recall the negative experiences, and minimize the positive ones
• The hidden factor that likely had an outsize effect on how things went for you this year
• How to stay in curiosity and avoid self-recrimination when reflecting on things that didn’t go well
• How to carry your most important lessons into the new year

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

Thanks!

One of the most problematic tropes that gets emphasized over and over again for nonprofit leaders can wind up absolutely wrecking your ability to really connect with decision makers. That’s the belief that you must be ultra-professional in your approach when dealing with decision-makers, especially the higher up ones. The more powerful and influential the decision maker, the more you're supposed to show up in your super-professional approach. 

There's a big problem with that. Because what that does, when we come in all buttoned up and professional, is that we strip most – or all – of the emotion out of our voice. And it's that emotion that actually causes connection. So when we take it out, what do you think happens? Nothing good. 

But we've been told so many times, over and over, by bosses and higher ups and maybe other people in our lives. We've been told you’ve got to be professional. The problem is nobody took the time to kind of take that apart and say, what does that mean? And what does that specifically mean in the context of trying to engage a decision maker? So we're taking all that apart, and putting it back together again in a way that's actually going to work for you.

In this episode, we share:

• How professionalism has been used against many of us, and caused us to walk a much narrower path 
• The roots of self-suppression, and why it can be difficult to break free of that
• Two critical shifts away from “professionalism” that will cause you to be much more effective in engaging decisionmakers
• How to avoid excessively technical language, while still demonstrating your mastery of technical details 
• How to begin to bring a fuller range of self-expression into interactions with decisionmakers, without it getting too scary

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

Thanks!

Here’s an uncomfortable truth:  Money and policy decisionmakers do not care about your services. 

This uncomfortable truth is a source of frustration for so many Nonprofit leaders, and it doesn't have to be. But we have to understand it and learn how to work with it in order for it to be okay.

You’ve probably had this experience. You're talking to a decision maker and you get the feeling that they really don't care about your services. It's because they don't. But that doesn't mean they don't care about what you do. It just means that for them, the services themselves are the least important detail. 

The secret to engaging messaging is understanding what the important details are, from their perspective. And to focus your messaging on that.

In this episode, we share:

• What decisionmakers really care about with respect to your work
• The biggest messaging mistake we tend to make, other than focusing on our services
• How to break the most problematic messaging habits we’ve all developed
• Two layers of messaging elements that will transform your messaging’s effectiveness
• How to distinguish yourself from the competition (particularly for-profit competitors) in terms that matter to decisionmakers
• How to train your brain to use the new messaging under pressure, without role play

Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, I’d be grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Your reviews help other nonprofit leaders find the podcast.  Thanks!!

As nonprofit leaders, one of the many roles we have is that we are marketers. And if that's not part of the way you think about your role, or if that creates a little resistance for you, hang in there for a minute. Because this is a secret to success in engaging decisionmakers that is absolutely a critical core skill.

It doesn't matter what context we're in. We're always marketing something when we're engaging a decision maker. Whether we're talking to funders or foundations, to contracting partners, to government agencies, elected officials, whoever it is. In effect we're selling them something.  

Marketing and selling can be one of the toughest skill areas for nonprofit leaders to get comfortable with and to use effectively. And yet, when you're able to do that, it absolutely will transform your ability to engage decision makers and move them along faster toward the thing that you're trying to get them to do for you. And there are two marketing secrets in particular that will have an outsize impact on getting decisionmakers to yes.

In this episode, we share:

• What we’re really selling to decisionmakers
• Why selling is serving
• The biggest mistake many leaders make when they’re selling to decisionmakers, and what to do instead
• Our biggest blindspot and how to correct for it
• The two most common types of objections you’ll encounter with decisionmakers
• How to master a key part of the mental game of selling

If this is brand new to you, give these two secrets a try and let me know how it goes. If you have questions, I'm happy to respond to those as well. If you've already been applying these principles and you're going to take them to the next level, tell me what you're up to! 

Reach out to me on LinkedIn, or on the podcast website. I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

It's Thanksgiving time and we're all reflecting on things that we're thankful for. I think that can be particularly challenging at this moment in time when we're dealing with a lot of challenges in terms of the political environment, and what that's going to mean for nonprofits, and for nonprofit leaders and the work ahead. 

And I think actually that it's during these times when things look most challenging and most worrisome, that the practice of gratitude, and finding gratitude, is more important than ever. So I want to share some of the things that I'm feeling particularly thankful for. And I also want to share a little bit about the practice of gratitude and how that can look. And how it helps me show up in the world in a way that not only is better for the people around me, but is also what I believe is part of the secret to being more effective in the world. And Lord knows we need to be as effective as possible, because a lot is going to be asked of us in the coming couple of years.

In this episode, we share:

• How a daily practice of gratitude has made a big difference for me
• Why building community may be the key to creating the progressive change we seek
• How community supports and strengthens us
• One powerful and unlikely question to ask yourself when things are going sideways
• How an unwanted obstacle can yield a bigger breakthrough 

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

Thanks!

Let me ask you this:  When you’re in meetings with decisionmakers, what are you most focused on? If you’re like most advocates, you got a lot going on in your head. You’re thinking about your framing, and making sure it resonates with that decisionmaker. You're wanting to make sure you get your messaging delivered, that you cover the things you want to cover.  

All of that’s important. But it carries the potential danger of creating a huge blind spot that can cost you. We can get so busy in our head with what we're going to say, that listening kind of gets shoved to the background.

So I want to ask you to think about maybe doing a reset on that. And try on the idea that maybe, even more important than telling them what you have to tell them, is listening for what they're telling you. 

The truth is, every time a decision-maker opens their mouth, they’re telling you something of value that you can use to make your engagement of them more effective and more powerful. Which in turn, will move you towards your goal faster. 

In any encounter with a decision maker, no matter what's going on. One of the most valuable and effective things you can do is become a next-level, ninja-level listener. 

In this episode, we share:

• What makes deep listening so powerful as a tool to engage decisionmakers
• The three things that get in the way of deep listening
• Three mindset shifts that will empower you to listen more deeply
• Practical techniques you can start using today that will take your listening skills to the next level
• How to open a conversation to get immediate engagement from a decisionmaker
• How to avoid misinterpreting tone and body language

Give these mindset shifts and strategies a try, and let me know how it goes! Reach out to me on the podcast website, or on LinkedIn. I look forward to hearing about your results! 

We have a lot to talk about in this time following the elections. I understand that everyone is still processing, myself included. And yet, it is time to begin turning our attention to: What do we do now? 

There is some clarity that is beginning to emerge around that. And I wanted to share three things that I see emerging as top imperatives for nonprofit leaders as we enter a new threat environment. 

As it becomes clear that there will now be complete Republican control of the White House, the House and the Senate (albeit by a very slim margin in the House). That means that they will have the power to move their agenda. And we should expect that they will plan to do that with haste. 

Without a doubt, there's some ugly stuff coming our way, and we need to be clear-eyed about that. At the same time, it's absolutely critical that we don't curl up in a ball and act like there's nothing we can do. Because there is a great deal that we can do. And very specifically, there's a great deal we can do on behalf of the organizations that we lead, and on behalf of the people that we serve. Not to mention to help keep the democratic system alive.

In this episode, we share:

• Three key things to know about where we stand
• Three imperatives for action by nonprofit leaders
• How to manage the firehose of harmful policies and actions, identify the greatest threats and focus your advocacy energy
• The unique superpower that nonprofit leaders have, and how to use it to fight against the most harmful policies coming our way
• How to leverage our greatest source of power

 
Link:
Indivisible is a tremendous resource at the national and local level. Connect to all their resources and find out about your local Indivisible group here: www.indivisible.org

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

Thanks!

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

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

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

In this episode, we share:

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

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

Thanks!

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

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

In this episode, we share:

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

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

Thanks!

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

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

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

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

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

In this episode, we share:

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

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

Thanks!

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

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

In this episode, we share:

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

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

Thanks!

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

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

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

In this episode, we share:

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

Link to Ballotready.org 

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

Thanks!

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

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

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

In this episode, we share:

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

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

Thanks!

The potential for massive cuts to Medicaid and SNAP moved one step closer to reality when the Senate voted its version of the big ugly bill out of committee. The good news is there are still quite a few hurdles to clear before those terrible policies have a chance of becoming law. Which means there are that many more opportunities to defeat them. 

Nonprofit leaders have a critical role to play in defeating these proposals. We are definitely not alone in this work. But we do have some unique abilities and opportunities to have a significant impact on the outcome. 

We’ve also learned more over the last few months about what works in this particular environment. Our challenge now is to take those lessons and apply them to our advocacy work going forward, so that we can prevail in this fight.

In this episode, we share:

• The two keys to defeating the big ugly bills that would slash Medicaid and SNAP
• What our opponents are counting on, and how we can wreck their core strategy
• The top tactical maneuver we must anticipate and be ready to counter
• The biggest mistake we’re likely to make, and how to prevent it
• How to create a steady stream of high-impact advocacy messaging without devoting tons of time to it
• How to leverage the unique advantages you have as a nonprofit leader to build vocal opposition to these bills

Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, I’d be grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Your reviews help other nonprofit leaders find the podcast.  Thanks!!

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

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

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

In this episode, we share:

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

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

Thanks!

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

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

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

In this episode, we share:

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

Links:

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

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

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

Thanks!

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

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

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

In this episode, we share:

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

Links to valuable resources mentioned in this episode:

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks!

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

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

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

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

In this episode, we share:

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

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

Thanks!

What if one or two changes in your leadership behavior could transform the way you feel about the work, inspire your team, and achieve new levels of success?

I spend a lot of time with nonprofit leaders of all different sizes of organizations in all different niches. And what I've noticed is that there are very specific leadership behaviors that tend to produce extraordinary results. And then there are other leadership behaviors that tend to hold organizations back. And what's fascinating is that a lot of the time, the behaviors that are holding organizations back are the ones the leaders don't even realize they're doing. 

So I think it's time to take a look under the hood and examine the behaviors that make a huge difference in one direction or another. I'm flagging five behaviors to lean into and five to leave behind. There just might be one or two that will be the key to taking your leadership and results to the next level.

In this episode, we share:

• Leadership behaviors that attract exceptional players to your team (and behaviors that repel them)
• The brain science behind why certain leadership behaviors are so effective
• High-value expectations to set for your leadership team
• One behavioral key to ensuring innovation within your organization
• Two common productivity-sapping behaviors that can be hard to give up, and how to leave them behind
• How to get everyone on the leadership team operating in their “zone of genius” as close to 100% of the time as possible

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

Thanks!

None of us has gotten where we are alone. And none of us are going to get where we're going alone. We always have others who are helping and supporting us, whether we realize and acknowledge it or not. Whether it's a formal arrangement or not. 

We all just had the wonderful experience of watching the Paris summer Olympics. If you've ever wanted clear convincing evidence of the power of coaching, all you have to do is look at and listen to these extraordinary athletes. Who will be the very first to tell you that they could not be where they are, they could not have achieved what they have achieved without the guidance and the support of their coaches. Of course they have to put in the work. Our coaches can't do our pushups for us. But they can show us the most powerful, most effective ways to get to that next level, whatever that is for us.  

I've gotten increasingly clear about the power of coaching as I have deepened my commitment to seek out the coaches who are the best fit for me to take me to my next level. 

 In this episode, we share:

• The hallmarks of great coaches, and what separates them from the rest
• Where resistance comes from, and how to get to the bottom of it
• How your rational brain will argue for your limitations
• Why your desire for more credentials may actually be blocking your success
• Using the power of silence and connection to uncover the answers that are already within you
• How a community of peers can help you grow faster
• How to practice mudita (sympathetic  joy) to elevate the culture of any group

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

Thanks!

The energy you bring to an encounter with a decisionmaker has a huge impact on your ability to engage and influence them. You can be as prepared as you want to be with all your facts and messaging. But if you don't bring an energy that engages, you're likely to be disappointed in the outcome. 

The problem most of us face is that our energetic frequency fluctuates throughout the day. And often we find ourselves in an energetic state that does not serve us. If something happens that pulls us into a low-frequency negative energy state right before we talk to a decision maker, we're liable to bring that into that encounter and wind up pushing them away. 

The good news is it doesn't have to be that way. We can do a lot to determine what our energetic state will be. And we can actually cultivate an energetic frequency that consistently serves us.

In this episode, we share:

• The four types of energy that influence your energetic frequency
• The most common energy depleting habits that may be costing you more than you realize
• The critical role internal dialog plays in influencing your mental and emotional energy
• How and why much of your internal dialog is running on autopilot without you realizing it – and the problems it may be causing
• How to rewrite key elements of internal dialog that will shift your energy to a much higher frequency 
• Three perspective shifting questions you can use to elevate your energetic state
• How to create a consistent practice that will keep your energetic frequency where you want it

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

Thanks!

Tell me if this sounds familiar. You have some key pieces of data that you know should speak to your decision maker. It's obvious to you that these data points basically scream, our stuff solves your problem, and it solves it in a big way with a big impact. But then you share it with the decision maker and they don't really see those connections. They don't see the significance. They don't connect it to their problems and concerns. And you're left wondering why they can't see the obvious. Maybe they just don't care. 

The problem you're up against is that statistics and data are typically the least compelling way to convey important information. All the experts who've been telling you that you have to have [00:02:00] data aren't wrong. They just left out a really important detail, which is your data won't help you if you don't communicate it in a way that engages and compels.

In this episode, we share:

• Why decisionmakers rarely perceive the significance of most data you show them
• The one common mistake that could be causing you to communicate your data ineffectively
• Why less is more when it comes to data
• How to take your big impressive numbers and bring them down to human scale so decisionmakers can easily visualize and understand the meaning
• How to “do the math” for decisionmakers so they can see how your data mean something important to them
• How to connect your data directly to the decisionmaker’s most pressing problems, and show how you solve those problems

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

Thanks!

One of the frustrations I often hear from nonprofit leaders is, yeah, we got a handful of great allies and champions, but we can't seem to grow the bench. We'd love to build even more of those powerfully influential relationships, but we simply haven't got the bandwidth. 

I'm already devoting 60% of my time to this, and I still have to run the organization, and there's only so much of me to go around. I hired a policy person or a contracting person, and between the two of us, we're able to get a lot done, but it's not enough and I can't afford to hire more people right now.

There's a solution that’s hiding in plain sight. There is a resource that is very seldom used, and yet when it's used correctly, it can 5 to 10 X your relationship building capacity.

In this episode, we share:

• What’s stopping potential relationship builders on your team from stepping up to take on that work 
• The three most important beliefs that develop an organizational culture that centers strategic relationship building 
• The four most common hidden obstacles to expanding your strategic relationship building team 
• How to up-level your leadership team’s role in growing your strategic relationships
• How to engage and support your mid-level staff in taking on strategic relationship building responsibilities that align with their other work
• The easiest and most efficient way to accelerate any team member’s strategic relationship building skills

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

Thanks!

One of the biggest challenges nonprofit leaders face is engaging decision makers around the information and data that we know make a compelling case for the policy or money decision we're asking for. But we know from experience that simply presenting that data and information and explaining why and how it supports our argument rarely leads to a decision maker leaning in and saying, tell me more. Much less having them say, you're right. This is a no brainer. 

One of the best techniques for translating data and information into something that's engaging and compelling is the use of vivid parallel or contrasting imagery. There are plenty of other tools in the messaging  toolbox. But this one is especially effective -- once you learn how to use it.

In this episode, we share:

• Why your most compelling data and information often don’t get through to decisionmakers 
• What makes imagery “sticky” and memorable
• The two most powerful types of imagery that will shift decisionmakers’ perspective
• How to combine imagery with story to make the biggest impact on decisionmakers’ thinking
• The hidden obstacle you must overcome to make your imagery work with decisionmakers
• How to take your image-creation skills to the next level  

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

Thanks!

I have a really important question I want to ask you. How satisfied are you, really, with the advocacy results that you're currently getting? 

Chances are, you're frustrated with at least one of the money or policy decision makers in your world. And there could be a lot of reasons for that frustration.

But here's something you may not have considered. That frustration could be the biggest thing getting in the way of the results you want. In this week’s episode, we're diving into two powerful ways to shorten the distance to those results.

In this episode, we share:

• The number one secret to getting the advocacy results you want
• How to uncover the hidden sources of much of your frustration with decisionmakers, and why it matters
• The critical piece of advocacy strategy most nonprofit leaders are missing
• How to turn our frustrations with decisionmakers into part of a winning strategy
• The four key questions to ask when developing your advocacy plan, and whenever you hit a roadblock 

Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, I’d be grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Your reviews help other nonprofit leaders find the podcast.  Thanks!!