Video: Listening Practice: Shifting from Compliance to Conversation | Duration: 3548s | Summary: Listening Practice: Shifting from Compliance to Conversation

Transcript for "Listening Practice: Shifting from Compliance to Conversation": Okay. Hi. Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's episode of, Blackbaud Grant Making twenty twenty five thought leadership webinar series. We're gonna get started here in just a couple moments, but, I'm gonna go over a few really quick housekeeping items while everyone is getting a chance to get logged in. First of all, the webinar audio is gonna be broadcast through your computer speakers or your headphones, if you're wearing those. So hopefully, you can all hear me. And, towards that end, to indicate that you are, if you wouldn't mind jumping over to the chat there and, dropping in maybe who you, where who you're with and where you're, tuning in from today, I would appreciate it just so we can make sure everything's kinda working. As far as the module's concerned, if you need captions, you can hover over the screen and a little CC button will pop up at the bottom, and that'll allow you to turn, captions on and off. If you encounter any audio or technical issues, like the slides freezing, usually a quick refresh of the browser is the best way to get things working again. Worst case scenario, you could sort of log out, log back in, and, and that usually will take care of about 90% of the issues you might experience. Up at the top next to the chat, you'll see, the document section as well as the q and a. So the q and a there is where you can put in questions for us, and we reserve some time to get to those, at the end. And, also those documents are some documents that we'll reference throughout today's presentation, as well as some other things we thought might be interesting to you. So you can check those out afterwards. And I always like to point out at this point that, everyone, is gonna get an email in about twenty four hours with an on demand recording of today's presentation, as well as those documents will be included in that email. So, you know, feel free to make notes as we go along today, but don't feel like you gotta write down everything you hear because you're gonna get that copy afterwards. So welcome everyone to today's presentation. My name is Ray Borkman, and I am on the marketing team here at Blackbaud. And I'll be introducing the folks you really wanna hear from shortly. I am a white person who identifies as male. I use hehim pronouns. I am 48 years old recently. I have no hair but a graying beard. And I am, for a change, I am, traveling on the road. I am in Washington DC, and I normally give a, lands acknowledgment at this point. And to be honest with you, I have no idea whose lands I'm on. So you know what? I'm gonna acknowledge the lands of my hometown, which is Charleston, South Carolina, and those are the native lands of the Etowah, Kiowa, Edisto, Santee, and Wausamasa people. So just a super fast and quick introduction, to Blackbaud, to pay the bills here. And for those of you who aren't familiar with us, Blackbaud's the world's leading cloud software company powering social good. Couple years back, we celebrated our fortieth anniversary. So we've been in this space for a minute, as the kids used to say. We serve nonprofits, educational institutions, local governments, and, entities all across the social good sector. We provide tailored solutions designed for all types of non commercial organizations. So that means we offer software, technology services, data intelligence, and, of course, our expertise across all of our solutions. And those range from financial management to fundraising and, of course, our sponsor solution for today's presentation, grant making, Blackbaud Grant making. So you may be managing your, funding efforts in a variety of ways, right? You could be, using, spreadsheets, different softwares and email systems to do a variety of tasks. The idea behind what we do is to ensure that you have sort of one source of truth where you can do all of those things in one streamlined solution and without having to have a lot of different, stakeholders asking questions amongst one another. Last but not least, before we dive in, to the meat of what we wanted to talk about, I'm gonna flash up a really quick poll here just in case anybody here is interested in learning more about Blackbaud solutions. And also, this gives you an opportunity to practice the polling here, when, we get to those later on in the presentation. So you can see those in the they popped up over in the module and they're on the screen as well. Alright? So if you have any interest in, learning more about Blackbaud solutions, we can reach out to you. And I swear that is the end of the commercial presentation here. So let me jump back to our slides. And I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce you to our two subject matter experts today and let them get started on the meat of what we're here to talk about. So Blanch, Rachel, if you wanna come on stage, join me. Hey, Rachel. Thank you, Ray. And Blanch is coming on in. It's the bottom right button, and I know that technology is not always our friend. And so thank you for being on the journey with us. Thank you. Right? We're always learning, even us techies. Yep. So Blanch and I are here today to just share a lot of knowledge. We're gonna do really short intros just so you know who we are, but we are very aware that this conversation about reporting, is really taking the sector by storm. And we had some great conversations with Philanthropy New York and Northern California grantmakers, over the last few months. And so, I call myself a technology futurist because I like to be thinking into the future, where are we going, what's happening, as far as technology and, our world, which goes all the way into things like job descriptions right now. I bring experience from local and global philanthropy, from small family foundations to international NGOs, and always with the focus on equity, access, and innovation. And that is what brings Blanch and I together. So, Blanch, if you'd like to introduce yourself. Yeah. Hi, everyone. I'm Blanch Vance, and I'm a senior manager strategic operations and grant making at the Brill Foundation, which is a spin down. So we, have about, you know, five years left before we close. But I've been in the Film Harbor space for about fifteen years. I started out working in nonprofits and had no idea what a community foundation was or a family foundation. I was just trying to raise money for my budget. So just having the opportunity to, like, be on the other side and understand, you know, what all that means after being in this in this space for over ten years. And, yeah, every day, like I mean, over the last few year four years, we've been talking about, you know, conversational reporting or alternatives to the traditional style. So, looking forward to today. So, yeah, thank you, Rachel. Pass it back to you. Yep. And so we're kicking off this thing called listening practice. It's not an easy thing to do. We are not taught in our culture how to listen reflectively. And so this is something that we are really trying to help the sector understand that this reporting conversation, is an opportunity to learn together. And so we're inviting you to turn inward with us to reflect on how reporting can become a practice of relationship and not just requirement. So moving from compliance and checkbox to an actual conversation that is gonna power learning because reporting shouldn't be a moment of dread for our grantee partners. It shouldn't be something sitting in a queue that our internal teams don't really wanna have to deal with. And so instead of adding paperwork, how can we add care? How can we collaborate on developing narrative and building stories together that are going to drive our social impact visions and dreams for the future? So today we're asking, what if grant reporting could be different? What if it reflected trust and not just a transactional practice? What if it helped us understand context and not just count outputs? And so today, we are going to hear examples, of folks who are doing this differently. We're gonna explore how conversational and relational approaches with the addition of emergent tools like AI can really help us listen. Because at the end of the day, how we report is a reflection of what and who we value. And I think with the next slide, we're gonna step into a quick poll. And this poll question is, does your review process feel like a collaborative exploration or more like a pass fail assessment? And so either you agree that it feels collaborative or you strongly disagree, and this is very much a pass fail exercise that you're currently engaged in. So this isn't about right or wrong answers. It's just a reflection. Do you feel like your process is collaborative? Then strongly agree. If you think that there's some room for improvement and you're not collaborative yet, please strongly disagree. So in this session, as you're completing, your your poll, your survey here, we're gonna have three goals. The first is to understand what is conversational reporting. What does that mean, and what values drive it. We're gonna explore why is the urgency now. Blanch and I have been talking about this since the pandemic, and I think the urgency only continues to click up. And so we're gonna share practical tools to make this shift at any scale, and you're gonna be able to get started today. So as you finish out that poll and, Ray, I'm gonna click to the next slide. So I think folks get your poll answers in nice and quick, and Blanch is gonna start taking us through some of this content. Yeah. So, you know, I think it's important to, like, kinda take a step back and recognize that we are in a unique moment. Rachel talked about some of our objectives for today, but, you know, the larger theme is, like, we are in a moment that demands more from philanthropy. And what we mean by that is not more control, but more courage and working in partnership with our grantees. I've been witnessing over the last few months that some of our grantee partners have had to shut their doors. A lot of folks are facing burnout. And, for them to be able to, like, have the conversations about where they're at in their journey and what their needs are, I think that sometimes that can't happen, in a report. And so, as nonprofits are navigating a unique political and financial, you know, landscape, We wanna make sure that our practices, whether it's application or reporting, is something that reinforces, reflection and openness and not extraction. And so, one article that I like to reflect back on and look at kind of, like, where our foundation practices came from is the philanthropy source code, and I can put that in the chat. But it talks about kind of where the culture of philanthropy began, how it a lot of our language, like program officer and due diligence and dockets come from the banking industry, loan officers instead of program officers, and, you know, we're conducting due diligence, to make sure that folks are financially sound and stable. And so, you know, we have a highly structured grant review process, which comes from the banking industry as well. And so when I think about how we can move forward, I would like to look at the past and just, recognize that, you know, some of the the things that we have in place in terms of how we operate, don't really reflect where we are today. And so, it's our chance to, you know, make decisions about who we resource and the way that we operate and interact with them that, isn't extractive and make sure that we're centering the perspective of those that are, like, most directly impacted and making sure that their voices are heard. And in order to do that, you know, conversation is key. So going to go to the next slide here. And I have this quote from the president and CEO of the Catawy Foundation, that says the future that I believe we need and deserve requires that we put the full breadth of our resources, skills, and expertise to use right now in protecting those that are most impacted and building pathways towards the future world. And so I just thought, you know, this was a important quote to include because it not only it's talking about our funding, but our policies and practices and the way that we're structured and how we, operate with our partners. And so, I had kind of, like, a scale here of working from extractive practice to more transformative and and relationship centered, and so that we are focused on working alongside our partners and not, like, you know, so they feel comfortable and not that we're judging them about how they operate. So okay. And, yeah, I'm gonna start leaning into, if you go back one slide, Blanch. Actually, I think I can. This little piece at the bottom is helping us understand moving from extractive to transformative. And so what we're trying to clarify here is what what does it look like to do conversational review? What how do we move through that journey? And it looks like using the whole breadth of our resources. It looks like being aligned with our values. And so when we use terms like accessibility, that means a lot of different things for different grantee partners. And so accessibility, if we're talking about Internet access, that makes a lot of sense in certain conversations. If we're talking about accessibility and it has to do with screen readers or visual support, that's a different kind of accessibility. And so as you're designing your reporting practice, you need to also be defining your values. What does it mean to be accessible? What does it mean to be transparent? Because we're not just swapping from a form to a phone call. That's not structured. That's not strategic, and that's not learning together. Right? What we're actually doing is trying to codefine terms and understand together how do we storytell. So the example that just popped into my mind, Blanch, as you were chatting had to do with going to the doctor's office. Right? And you have to sit there and fill out the forms and, you know, do you have these things? Do you have those things? And it's like, I can check all the boxes, but I would rather spend five minutes with my doctor and just explain what's going on. Right? Doesn't that feel so much more, relational than doing the form? And so the form might be an important piece. It might facilitate the conversation, but the actual relationship building is not happening in that form. The relationship building is happening in that five minute conversation. Tell me what's in that form. What are you learning? What's changed? What's challenging for you right now? And so the point isn't the format. It's the posture. It's a commitment to curiosity, respect, and shared reflection. And so, Blanch, I just wanted to make that clear that as we're talking about what is conversational reporting, we're talking about a real shift in the way we think about engaging with our nonprofit partners. Yeah. That's a good point. And then one thing I'll add is, like, I know that we don't end to be prescriptive because there isn't one answer for all foundations. It may look like, you know, having an informal coffee chat with your grantees and, you know, someone's there to take notes. Or it may be that you're utilizing Zoom and, recording the conversation and sharing back the transcript. So just determining the route that works best for your organization that aligns with your values and also, your partners as well. So and then listening as a revolutionary act. Justice requires us to listen differently. To listen for stories that are not in our comfort zone, that's where liberation lives. And that's Sean Ginwright. That's another quote that, Blanch highlights for us as an important piece to attend to as we're understanding the stance that we're taking, that we're listening across differences, that we need to be honest about our limitations and strategic in the changes that we can make. We're not gonna boil the ocean. We're not gonna shift process overnight. But we can start taking those small steps because as that text says, this is a moral and political stance. There is no room to fill out forms. We need to learn, and we need to act, and we need to be doing it together. Blanch, is there anything you wanted to add to this one? Yeah. Just that, you know, sometimes, like, you have to just, like, sit in the discomfort, you know, when you're trying a new process or testing out new ways of engaging with your partners. And, you know, and asking questions like, how is there anything that I missed or didn't understand correctly? Or how can we make sure that, you know, I don't know what I don't know. And so, you know, what can what do you wanna share? Did you follow the plan? Did your plans change? Sometimes grantees are afraid to share that, you know, they didn't their their, plans with the general operating support, you know, budget didn't go the way that they thought it would or they may need extra time. And so just making sure that it's, like, open and not punitive is something that's really important. And there seems to be a perception that I've heard that, like, there's idea that, you know, it's it's softer, easier, more lenient, when you're aging in a conversational style, and that's not the case. I mean, in some ways, this can be, like, a little bit more challenging or difficult and requires you to spend more time with your partners, but, it's something that's really important. So And I think the challenging more difficult I'm just gonna give a colorful example, Blanch, of, like, the missteps. One of the early pilots back in, like, 2020, we didn't give enough guidance to our grantee partner. And they showed up with, like, a two hour PowerPoint presentation instead of a thirty minute conversation. Right? So we're gonna get it wrong. But I think what was really exciting in that learning was the nonprofit really wanted to share with us. I think they really wanted to make sure that we understood what was happening in their ecosystem. And so, again, we don't have two hours to get into all of the Nuance, but that there was that appetite for sharing, for learning together. And I think that's the space that we want to be moving into. And that is what this slide is illustrating. Right, Blanch? Yeah. I mean, I imported a included a quote here from, the co executive director of New Mexico Dream Team, which is one of growth grant grantees. And so, Eduardo talked about how there's, like, a power balance, in terms of engaging with funders. And, you know, sometimes funders can be unaware of it. And so building that trusting relationship where they can be open and honest, is something that, you know, is really important. And, I was just thinking about another example of when a grant team mentioned that they had a c three and a c four, but, a funder agreed to support their grant making system building it out for them for the c three. And they didn't want to know about the multi entity organization that they were, you know, actually, working in. And so it made, like, the real conversations about, how they're interacting with the community more difficult. And so just, yeah, allowing that partnership is really important because it allows the the power to be shifted and more balanced and, the relational accountability can go to both ways. And so, you know, that can look like we conduct the CEP survey every few years and get feedback from our partners about what how we can change, you know, do better even though we are engaged in a race relational approach. It's always something that you're coming back to and figuring out ways to to improve. So Yes. Then, Blanch, I think the next slide, you're gonna walk us through a few of these cases. And I just wanna remind folks that this is coming on five years worth of learning at this point, and so we're not gonna be able to touch on everything that we've, you know, discussed, explored, and, you know, folks who've shared with us. But these are some recent, you know, really wonderful cases. And so, Blanch, thank you so much. Yeah. So I'm sorry. I'll start with growth since I work there. But before there was, like, the trust based network, Karen The Grove Foundation and Eva The Grove Foundation was really important to them to have, like, a customer service approach to interacting with grantees. And so we have a menu of options that we provide our partners in terms of, reporting and applications. We're, at this point, not accepting new grantees since we're spending down, but, just as, you know, it's around the time for grants to be renewed. We allow our grantees to just check-in, give them approximate, like, date, like, check with with us around the spring. And so that could look like providing a a written report if that's what works best for them or having a conversation and, you know, sharing updates with, their program leads. So just being open to what route works for them. And, the Tolli Foundation has shared that they do, calls instead of reports, and they utilize those conversations just to shape their larger strategy, and put a real emphasis on, the relationship with their partners and, their portfolios. And, Liberty Hill is an organization that, you know, was early to utilizing, community based approaches to philanthropy and participatory models, but they also are, you know, evolving as well. And so, they are utilizing ongoing conversations with the participatory initiatives to, allow their movement partners to develop tools and, interact together and ensure that their learning is, reflective and collaborative. So, though that's just something I wanted to mention. And then, you know, we recently provided, a survey to some of the folks that have attended our reporting sessions to kinda get feedback about, what the landscape looks like. And we're still kind of processing the data, but I did notice a few trends that I thought I wanted, to mention that there was an and definitely an interest from those that completed the survey and dialogue. So they, you know, there was comments about wanting to be conversational and timely. And sometimes with the written report, you know, you might be a a step behind or a few months behind what's going on with your grantees. And so having, the conversation offer offers an opportunity, for that, like, timely and open open interaction. And, some of grant our grantees are spending more than twenty to thirty hours per grant, on reporting and applications. And so recognizing that it is a a significant amount of time burden, as well. So, yeah, one that one size doesn't fit all. Like, there was some frustration expressed with, you know, templates that can be manipulated and and changed. And so, you know, it doesn't kind of reflect the complexity of the climb the climate at which our grantees are, living in and engaging on a daily basis when they have to, like, spend their time filling out a form or a template that, they could probably just with your example, Rachel, just, you know, share, with their program officer instead. So, yeah. And then I think that, you know, I just kinda mapped out what it could look like, the initial contact or conversation to make sure that there's alignment if you have an open application process, and then, you know, using midpoint check ins, you know, in a year or two years depending on, the life cycle of your grants and just allowing for those feedback loops throughout. So, yeah, those are some of the the pieces there. That's fantastic. And I think while we're on this slide, I'm gonna sit with Carrie's question. How do you prepare your grantees for the shift to conversational reporting or adjust the two hour PowerPoint you experienced? And so, again, in the initial exploration of updating a reporting process, and to Blanch's kind of initial contact midpoint. So in the initial contact, what we did is in the grant agreement letter, instead of saying you will submit your final report into the grantee portal blah blah blah, instead, we left room in the language to say, we may have you go into the portal, right, or we may have you do this alternate way of engaging with us. And so we didn't give a lot of guidance in that initial, contact. We just said, you know, we're gonna try some different reporting approaches. Then we selected a couple grantees that were actually going to move through this different reporting approach. However, in the initial contact, we didn't give much guidance. Right? We just said it might be this other format. We invited the grantee, scheduled the call, and said we're gonna chat. And this is where I I my saying is clarity is kindness. And that goes with everything. Right? You just need to explain your approach, make sure the other side feels comfortable, you're good to go. We didn't do a good job of explaining our approach. Right? And so there's always going to be learning moments. And so what we did is we got more clear. Right? So from the grant agreement letter, what kind of reporting will you be expected to engage in? Let's clear that up. Let's not leave it so vague. We did that purposefully for the pilot so we could decide. But going forward, we realized we needed to get better at clarifying who was going to be eligible for this alternative reporting process. And then the next piece is, you know, appreciating that there will be failures. Right? So how do we prepare? We got more clear and more explicit, but we also understood that there was appetite. Right? If somebody's going to spend two hours explaining to us and Blanch just pointed out and they're usually spending twenty to thirty hours on the form, it feels like a fair conversation to have. So we needed to course correct. We needed to make sure that we are much more clear and explicit. And I think this also segues beautifully into some of the AI conversation that we'll move into later that you have to be clear. You have to be explicit. And so whatever shifts you're making, this is why you go slow. You need to get internal consensus. You need to write it into a grant agreement letter or into some kind of documentation very clearly. And then you need to make sure that your nonprofit partner is okay with whatever internal changes you've gotten approved. So there's a lot of steps that you have to go through, a lot of room for learning about process, a lot of room for learning about your nonprofit partners. And I think don't shy away from those learning moments because they're not failures. They're just part of the journey to change. Okay. So we're at about the halfway point. We're gonna give you a chance to reflect again. We have another poll, and we'd like to know what word comes to mind when you think of relational grant making. And so if you could select an option about what is your organization's biggest barrier to more relational practices and drop into the chat the word that comes to mind. So we're trying to tie these two things together. Right? There's some knee jerk response when you hear the words relational grant making. And then you're like, right. And here's the barrier to making that happen. And the knee jerk to relational should be like, oh, wow. That sounds really cool. It sounds like a nice beautiful place to to set up and and have a cup of tea together. Right? That's my hope. Is that in the chat, we're gonna see some of these beautiful relational grant making words. And then in this survey, we're gonna see some of these incredible challenges, which are looking like internal culture, staff capacity. Yes. That is a huge one. Blanch, I don't know if you wanna speak to that. And then rigid definitions of impact, which to me means you have to check the boxes to get the numbers to roll them up to tell the story. Right? AI can make that work with qualitative data in addition to quantitative. We'll get there. We're not there yet. Right now, I think we need to start dealing with the staff capacity piece. Blanch, do you wanna speak to the staff capacity obstacle a little? Oops. Did we lose sound? It's okay. Audio there. But, staff capacity is probably one of the larger ones that we've heard, in our conversations with, you know, on previous oral recording, sessions. And we've noticed that there's been a need to either hire additional staff or maybe even change your job description because of the nature of the work and role, shifts a bit. So, you know, sometimes the portfolios for program officers and grant offers officers need to be reduced. Right? Because you're spending more time interacting with your your partners and, you know, like, making sure you're collecting the information that you're hearing in these conversations and either, like, you know, putting that in your system. So just like the flow, has shifted, and that's why, you know, Rachel talked about kind of, like, piloting and testing first. Because sometimes that's easier to make the case for additional support, within your organization. I've heard yeah. At my own organization, we hired additional staff in order to make sure that there was space for relational grant making. And so, I personally went through into that, but then I know that that's something that we've heard, yeah, across the space. So Yep. And this, again, where AI kinda gets exciting for me because where capacity is a challenge, often the tool can help. It's not a panacea. It's not going to be the silver bullet to solve all problems. But some of that capacity limitation can be mitigated by using the tool. Blanch and I have actually been working on an article that explains how to use AI tools and keep equity in the center for these type of reporting conversations. And so that's emergent work that we're thinking about because we know that you all are up against that capacity issue as our our nonprofit partners. And so we're gonna give you some ideas on how to take some small steps forward. So, Blanch, do you wanna kick this one off? Oh, yeah. Sure. So, I'll talk a little bit about the small steps that you can take. You know, you can invite grantees to a reflection conversation. I know when I was first, kind of testing out, you know, changing our process a little bit, there was one program officer who like, you can use my portfolio as a testing ground. So just, you know, seeing how folks felt about us changing the grant agreement language and a lot inviting them to conversations to reflect about the process, what are their insights, how are they feeling, what would make the interactions more useful for them? And, you know, like, another way is to kind of test and see, give them the option to do a check-in versus a written report and see if they're responsive to that. And in peak grant making, we talk a lot about, courage and practice. And so this is kind of like, you know, this in action and making sure that you are being brave and sharing these suggestions with your team, you know, getting your allies within your organization on board, across departments to, come up with the strategy that, you know, works well internally and, fulfills, you know, the need that your board requires and also, you know, your different departments like finance and program staff and just everybody that's involved in making sure that that's, fulfilled. So, Rachel, I don't know if you have anything to add there. Yeah. I think light touch on the AI conversation. Again, we have to move carefully and slowly. We heard the misstep of the two hour conversation that should have been more like thirty minutes. And so as we add AI, we need to have that same level of attention, care, and caution as we start building in that functionality to support reporting. So first and foremost, AI cannot replace you in relationship building. It can do the background work. It can get you ready for the conversation. It can prepare documents. It can help set tone. It can do a lot of things. You can practice. You can role play with your your AI tools. It cannot build a relationship for you. So as you explore alternative reporting practices, it's really important to remember that you are the driver. You are the one who is practicing clarity as kindness. You are the one defining the values for the organization and how they show up in your work. So you can use AI to summarize grantee reflection. Be really careful not to lose nuance, tone, cultural context. Like, all of those are really important things, and you have to be careful that AI doesn't do what I call flattening. Right? And so that's when you've seen AI content where it reads like it's written by a robot. Right? It's not colorful. It doesn't have flavor. It doesn't have any of the things that make it human. It sounds flat and robotic. So as we are summarizing information, we need to be careful that the AI tool, the large language model, doesn't start to flatten some of that sentiment. AI should never be a black box. You should understand what's happening inside that tool. And so if you are using a large language model, you need to understand that that large language model was built on data from the Internet. That data is biased. And so you're using a tool that has bias baked in. Right? You can't pull the blueberries out of the blueberry muffin. It's in there. What you can do is be aware of it and mitigate for it. So, for example, if you're working with a certain population, if you're working with a certain community, if you're working with a certain language group, group, you can prime your tool, your large language model, to understand this is the community I'm working with. This is the way we need to approach it. Right? You're in the driver's seat, and you're helping the AI kinda come along and understand the context that you're operating in. We also need to be thinking about consent. We haven't considered that much previously. We accept the report. We take the data. We funders do what we need with that data. We generally don't close that feedback loop. We generally don't ask for any kind of consent for what we do with the data afterwards. AI is going to accelerate and make it even more critical that we have these conversations or the trust will break down even faster. I'll give an illustration. Again, you've gone through all your internal checks and balances. You've got the all clear to use some sort of a transcription service. There's granola. There's Zoom, transcription. There's Otter. There are so many out there. So your organization has given you all clear to use the Zoom transcription. You show up to that reporting call, and you tell your nonprofit partner you're going to record it. How is that going to land on your nonprofit partner? Did you get consent? Did you give them a heads up? Or did you just show up expecting to hit the record button and get the outputs that you need to do your job? So this is the kind of thinking that we need to bring to the conversation at large, but also specifically when we're adding this new tool and this new technology that we're still figuring out. And so AI can be used ethically. It can be used responsibly, and it can help us listen at scale. We have to be really careful to do that without losing the human nuance, without creating access barriers, and without causing harm, which is one of the biggest pieces that we could accidentally do by taking data, summarizing it, and making generalizations about entire populations and then funding those generalizations. So we just need to be really careful that we don't let AI flatten, that we use it to help lift up and give voice where otherwise we may not have had it. It helps us listen at scale. Alright. I'm sure there's gonna be questions on that front, but, we can open it up to questions and answers now. One of the most exciting things, Blanch, I think we've done over the last year is develop our reporting resource hub. Do you wanna speak to some of these resources? Yeah. So you'll see if you take a look at the the reporting hub, some examples of questions that, folks have been kind enough to share with us about how they interact and some of the the templates and and articles that we have now useful in building this practice. One of the examples I've included was, Borealis, and so they developed a tool with their grantee partners that they utilize. And so, yeah, that that's there for, you to look at. And then, yeah, they have the what they call the movement defined learning project, where the movement leaders decided how you know, what evaluation would look like for them. And so, that's something that's still in process and then we're finding the journey, but it's a good place to, you know, look at some of the the different models that are there that are more participatory and, interactive and see how folks have come along, in the journey. So yeah. And I think the biggest takeaway from this conversation is you can start small. You don't have to overhaul everything, but we have been collecting knowledge in the reporting resource hub. We have shared many of these sources on the hub here on the slide deck. Figure out what your entry point is and just try it, because the learning moment is now and the urgency is quite real. And so if we can listen better, if we can learn together, and if we can come up with ideas, innovations, ways to do the work and drive the mission in collaboration, it's gonna be so much more powerful than doing it in our own silos. And I think this is a moment where we really need to be focused on collaborating and driving narrative and changing the direction we seem to be trending in at the moment. Alright. Right. I think we have some questions. Will this recording and links be shared with us after the event? I can jump on quickly. Yes. Go right ahead, Rachel. To do it since I know the answer to that. Yes. The the, deck is in the doc section, over there where the chat is and the QA already. You can, click that. And, yes. The you will receive the recording link in about twenty four hours in an email, and that will include links to the resources you see here. Thank you, Rachel. Yes. Alright. We can open it up to questions. If anybody has other questions, we are here for those. Perfect. I will begin displaying some. Oh, look. One for me. Oh, that's such a good one. I think probably, Rachel, are there tools or frameworks you recommend for tracking qualitative outcomes from these conversations? My sense is these are probably in development, and probably relatively unique to the mission, vision, and learning goals of individual organizations. Blanch, do you know of any frameworks that might help with qualitative digestion? I'm not sure. Yeah. I'll see what I have. So yeah. We'll have to develop it. Right. Thank you for the question because I think Alright. Especially with AI. Right? Like, we're gonna need frameworks to say. Like, how do we take this information and start to, you know, assess and and count? I will do a little shout out to ImpactMapper because I think they've been working on this for a while. It's how do we take the qualitative data and pivot it into information that is really actionable. And I think that has been a challenge for our sector. I'm hoping AI helps us overcome it because we're able to consume so much more information faster. And so qualitative data, the challenge has been it's really manual. You have to sit down and read it. You have to tag the transcript. This is stuff I actually did this in college. Right? Like, giant Excel spreadsheets where you have these interviews, and you have to figure out, like, what what are the patterns? What are the words? What are the the sentiments? And you have to start plugging it into an Excel spreadsheet. Not fun. I'm sure AI can help. Alright. New one up there. Oh, Blanch, we lost your sound again. Sorry. I'm not I think that's really important about, dealing with persistence is making sure that you get folks on board as early on in the process as possible. I find that when people are able to help develop, you know, what the what the model will look like, then they are less likely to register but not entirely. Right? So there there are still those points where it comes up. And I always find, like, resistance as an opportunity to, like, think of, the process from a different perspective and see, you know, like, honor the fact that they, you know, it's resistance is something that's, like, normal. Like, I'm somebody that likes to move really fast, and I know that that's not the case for everyone. And so, like, just yeah. I'm making sure that they're involved in the process and engaged. I think that this is something that has to be done cross departmentally to be successful. And so, figuring out, you know, where issues lies and just, like, yeah, to help it really does help get people on board. So I don't know if you have anything to add there. Yeah. I think the cross departmental caught my ear because I'm advocating for that a lot with AI practice. Right? Have a cross departmental team. And so maybe you have a couple. Again, we're lean small organizations often. Right? So we wear a lot of hats. And so if you're building a cross departmental team to deal with some of these conversations, like, make a list of priorities. Like, we need to talk about AI this month. We need to talk about reporting practices next month. Right? What is this cross departmental team exploring, and how can these different pieces of process or tool adoption get built in so that the team has things to be exploring and talking about and learning for the organization. So I love that thought, Blanch, that there should be, like, dedicated staff that isn't necessarily senior leadership only, but really, like, cross levels, cross departments so you can start to explore from different angles, what might a solution look like. Alright. This one's a little bit longer. So I'm gonna give you a second to read it because you're gonna have to digest this. So while y'all are looking at that, I'll remind everyone that you will get a link in about twenty four hours with an a recording of today's session on demand as well as all the resources that we've shared and links, and an opportunity for you to ask any additional questions that you might have. Wow. This is a great question. I can start then. Yeah. I can speak from the perspective of The Grove Foundation. So, we have monthly check ins with our board, and so we kind of, like, rotate at a certain point in the year people providing program updates about their specific areas. And so, it's like yeah. The program leads are responsible for kind of sharing what's going on in, you know, their program landscape, what their grantees are seeing. And so, we're conversational of from the, yeah, the top upper bottom down to both ways, making sure that, that's how, yeah, we share back to the board. And so, yeah, we recently built or it's been a few years now, a card in flux where we, you know, folks have that question, we decided on four or five. And so that way, you know, program officers are adding their responses in the system and so that they are there. And if there's, you know, trends that they wanna highlight, like, it's in the database, as well. So, yeah, that's how we kinda manage that. And then I hope you have anything to add, Rachel. Yeah. I mean, having literally tagged transcripts twenty years ago, I can say today, it's never been easier to consume lots of different data streams and have AI help you pivot it into usable, consistent information. Again, the thing you have to be careful about is the flattening, the outliers. Right? You don't wanna lose all of that information, but large language models are really, right now, very adept at taking different pieces of information and being able to weave it together. One of my favorite tools for doing that is Perplexity. Perplexity is able to take, or not Perplexity, NotebookLM. Sorry. NotebookLM is the tool where you can digest videos. You can create your own little, podcast based on articles and information that you pull together. So if you wanted to use a large language model in, a more sensitive situation. Right? You have grantee transcripts. You have written reports. You have, like, a little video clip, and you wanna be able to put it into NotebookLM. I would do the heavy lift of redacting as much of the personal information as you can. So if it's a nonprofit organization whose name you don't need sprayed all over the Internet with all of their conversational information, just take their name out. Right? Take that personal information out, upload the transcript, and say, can you help me find themes? Can you help me, develop learning questions for our next conversation? Can you help me answer the board's question about what did this portfolio of grantees accomplish over the last twelve months? And with something like notebook LM, you can pull in all kinds of different, multimodal data to start digesting it and summarizing it. And, again, you have to be careful. I'm not gonna put any of this out there without saying please be careful because there is serious risk right now. I had the privilege of training someone in Human Rights Watch and had the privilege of explaining to them how important it is to be protective of your data because you may not be a target, but you work at an organization that may be under threat right now. So please be careful what information you are putting in the equivalent of the social media moment. I said, if you're putting a picture on social media, you basically just post it in Times Square. It's the same thing with large language models. If you take data and stick it in a large language model, you may have well just, you know, put a message in a bottle and sent it out into the entire world. You have to be careful about the data you're putting into these tools. And so that's my my PSA for today as we move on to the next question. I can answer this one. I mean, I think that, we've talked about a little bit just ensuring that your grantees are, a part of a part of the process, especially as you're transitioning. So making sure that they're engaged upfront and, ensuring that, you know, they have insight into how the process will shift and change and be able to, shape it alongside you. I think that that, helps prevent that from happening. I always like checking in whether it's a third party, you know, survey, so it's anonymous. We're allowing your grantees to constantly, you know, give updates about how things are going and how they like to shift. So that, yeah, they know that, you know, it's not a one-sided relationship. And, obviously, this takes time. It's not gonna happen maybe in the first cycle, or second cycle. So just being open to, you know, allowing the process to to continue to grow and, yeah, get those get those feedback loops. I mean, major underscore on it's about the trust. Right? If you don't have that trust established, it's going to just be uncomfortable. And that's any conversation between two people who don't trust each other. So as you build the trust, that starts to go away. I also you know, one very natural power imbalance is between parent and child. Right? And so I started thinking about, like, well, how do I get my children to communicate with me honestly? Like, what am I do? I talk about too late communication. And, again, because I'm the mom and there is an irrevocable power imbalance, I still get to say no. Right? I still get to say, thank you for sharing your thoughts and feelings. I appreciate that. No. But I help them learn that two way communication helps me understand what's going on. Why are you freaking out? Why are you asking for another hour of TV? Let's talk about it. Right? Like, maybe there's something I can't see that you can help me understand by engaging. And I just And I think that goes back to practice. Right? Go ahead, Blanch. Oh, I was just gonna say, like, also be be open and vulnerable with your grantees as well about what's going on within your organization, you know, where the challenges lie, as well. And just I think that that makes a lot of difference too because it's like, if you're willing to open up, then, you know, maybe they will reciprocate as well. So, that's something that, you know, has been helpful or having a question for them, like, you know, about the process or just getting their feedback because they have a lot of insight. They're the ones that are, like, the experts in terms of, you know, the subjects and areas out there they're working in. So, I think that that's key as well. How do you balance the need for accountability with the desire to reduce reporting burden? This is the work. This is it. And I think it's it's getting a better definition of what does it mean to be accountable. I think in philanthropy, we talk about being good stewards. Right? We don't just throw money out the window onto Fifth Avenue. We actually you know, we're we're thoughtful. We're kind. We're clear as we can be. And so I think the accountability piece is is building on the trust, starting with trust. I trust you, and we just need to share some information. And that's where I would love to see this work go, is how do we balance accountability with the need to share information is we're on a bedrock of trust. We know that we're both trying to get to the same place. We're trying to mitigate homelessness. We're trying to improve education outcomes. We're try we're all working for that same outcome. How can we exchange information in a way that isn't just pure accountability? It's about the learning. Yeah. I just have, like, you know, accountability can mean different things, but our organization, like, we consider the foundation to be accountable to our grantees. So, you know, they're not the ones that are accountable to us. They're accountable to their members, if they're, you know, member organizations or the communities that they serve. So just like, you know, I always try to put that, like, back on, our leadership or, you know, at the board or whoever. Like, if this is something that we value, our grantees and accountability, then making sure that, you know, we are flipping that mirror around and making sure that we're doing what we said we would do, to support them. So I love the way you said that, Blanch. Like, flipping that mirror around. Right? Like, we need to see ourselves with that same accountability burden. Right? Like, the capacity conversation. Okay. So how do we adjust our capacity so that we can reduce burden? Right? Like, how how do we make it work instead of just getting stuck in the problem? Yeah. So because that that's, like, real balance. Right? Because your account, it's not one side accountability. It's, you know, that's actual balance. Yeah. I like that. I think some of the early engineers I mean, I've just seen hearing about different capacity needs that maybe we hadn't heard before and that's, you know, across port portfolios. So being able to you know, if there's a new there's been a leadership transition, and somebody's able to ask for executive coach and we're able to help, you know, partner with or find one for them or, you know, provide additional funding support. Just there's been a lot of doors that have opened in different ways. One example is, like, one of our we have a cohort of grantees in Arizona, and there were a lot of women led organizations. And they decided that they wanted to have, like, this women's collective so they could come together as folks that are women and non binary and just meet on a quarterly basis and talk about the challenges that they face and, you know, what they wanna keep together outside of their organization structure. And so that's something we were able to, fund be the first to fund, and we, got another foundation to partner alongside us. And that's been going on for a few years, and just I don't think that would have happened if we, didn't have conversations with our grantees and have that, relationship built on trust. So that they could say that this is something that, you know, is unique and that they wanna test and it hasn't been done before. And so, just that yeah. That's something that I think is a lot of there's Rachel. No. And I think, again, the trust goes both ways. Right? So how do how do we know that we're trusted partners? How do they know that they're trusted partners? And I think to Blanch point, it's that comfortability in asking and sharing and, you know, meeting each other where you are instead of really sitting in that power dynamic. Right? Like, I can't ask for that or, I don't feel comfortable sharing that. And so the funder finds out some other way. Right? Then you know that the trust isn't there. You're not sharing the information directly with each other in safe spaces. And so I think the more that that happens, the more that your grantees are asking, the more that they're sharing, I think those are good indicators that the trust is growing. Excellent. Alright. Well, I think we are butting right up to the end. If anyone is still frantically typing a question, don't stop because I will still get a copy of that question, and we can get back to you with an email response to it. So keep going. But, I wanna thank everyone for joining us today. As I've mentioned previously, if you're interested in learning more about Blackbaud, you can respond to the email that you're gonna get in about twenty four hours, which will also include the on demand recording of today's presentation as well as the documents that we've shared. I have added many of the links that Rachel and Blanch referenced, today or that they dropped in the chat to, that email as we've gone along as well. So you'll be able to find all that new information too. And, Rachel, Blanch, is there anything you'd like to say in summation? Just yeah. Thank you everyone for joining today. And, if you have any follow-up questions, I was happy to connect and answer and yeah. We're here. Yes. Check out the reporting resource hub. It's fabulous. It's got five years worth of research. The CEP survey results on grantee, reporting work is coming out. We will be sharing those very soon. And, last piece is I did I I talked a bit about AI. You need somewhere to go to make sure that you're you're getting on board with that conversation. The n ten AI resource hub. Right? Another link for you to find. The n ten AI resource hub is fabulous, and they're, working on developing in partnership with Tagg additional training for specifically for grantmakers and funders. And so please do check out those resources, and get up to speed with AI because it's changing our world fast. Absolutely. Alright. Rachel, Blanch, thank you so much. This was great. I appreciate it. Everyone, have a great day. Have a great rest of your week, and thank you so much. Thank you.