Last week, threshold.world hosted its first ever, CDM Solutions Webcast. Thanks to our guests for the lively discussion and updates from around the CDM for Nonprofits world. Special thanks to Erik Arnold, Global CTO of Microsoft Philanthropies and Tech for Social Impact as he gave us an in-depth look at the recently announced Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit.
Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit the next step in the evolution of Microsoft's work in the nonprofit space and threshold.world is proud to be a launch partner in this effort. You can learn more about on our previous post and here on Microsoft's website.
We'd also like to thank our other guests:
Suzanne Holmberg, Program Manager at TIST
Marnie Webb, Chief Impact Officer at TechSoup
Erin McHugh Saif, Global Director of Product Management at Tech for Social Impact
Ryan Ozimek, CEO and Co-Founder at PicNet/Soapbox Engage
Tim Lockie, CEO and Founder at Now It Matters
Our next Webcast is coming up on May 11, 2021. Click the image below for more information.
March Webcast A.I. Generated Transcript with Timecode
00:03:04:24 - 00:03:37:20
Hey, everybody, happy Friday. I hope you've had a great week. Good morning to you. From Puerto Rico, I'm Dan Lammot CEO and co-founder of Threshold World, and I'm excited to be your host for this scaling impact webcast. Today, we're going to have a highly interactive conversation, perhaps even a debate or two, both with the guests as well as those of you who are sharing your time with us on this Friday. So please tell us where you're joining in from the chat and share your questions and comments throughout the webcast.
00:03:38:03 - 00:04:10:25
Challenge us on anything you hear if you see fit. And let's do our best to make this time a showcase of human interoperability. So here's how the rest of the webcast is going to roll. I'll get started with some context around our theme for the day. Then you'll meet each of our guests. They'll be a common data model, Aline's Solutions Showcase. Then a new status update from our Redmann desk, followed by a special guest appearance and discussion with Eric Arnold from Microsoft. Another news, this update from the CDM community.
00:04:10:27 - 00:04:41:06
And finally, an open panel discussion with Marnie Webb from Tech Soup and Suzanne Holmberg from artist to close us out. There's a lot to get to in forty five minutes or so, so let's get rolling. But I do feel that as we get started, compelled to acknowledge the loss of so many lives over the past year due to covid, as well as the gratitude I feel for the scientific and medical workers on the front lines, sacrificing so much to keep us as safe as possible in the face of tremendous adversity.
00:04:41:29 - 00:04:46:09
And second, to recognize that March is Women's History Month.
00:04:46:11 - 00:05:21:14
And this coming Monday is International Women's Day. It's an important time to acknowledge the challenge of the work that remains and the critical role each of us must play. On a personal note, I remain hopeful when I walk alongside my daughter Sophia, my co-founder Lena, my three sisters, my mom and all the female threshold. So thank you to each of you for your voice and your inspiration. Now, our topic today is scaling impact. How Common Data model align program design will power the future of nonprofit impact.
00:05:21:23 - 00:05:55:09
It's a mouthful, but it's a bold statement. And that's the sector to find. Common data model for nonprofits just shy of two and a half years old will power the future of impact. Our goal is to make a case for this in this session is a call to action for the sector. And I'm looking forward to hearing what you in the audience and today's guests think about this. So thank you to everybody in the audience for taking the time to be part of the discussion today. If you're a member of a nonprofit program team or work in support of monitoring, evaluation, research and learning, this webcast is for you.
00:05:55:11 - 00:06:28:01
If you work for a technology or data company supporting nonprofits, this event is also for you and welcome to all. I'd also like to offer a very special thanks to the three people who I admire for agreeing to be here today. Each of these extraordinary humans has a unique role to play in nonprofit program success that motivates me to continue aligning Threshold's investments to the KVM for non-profits. So I'd like the each of them to introduce themselves.
00:06:28:09 - 00:06:34:12
And I think I'll start off with Suzanne. So, Suzanne, would you be able to welcome and introduce yourself?
00:06:35:06 - 00:06:46:28
Yes. Thank you so much for that kind introduction, Dan. My name is Suzanne Holmburg. I work for Test, which stands for the International Small Group in Tree Planting Program, which is also a mouthful.
00:06:47:22 - 00:07:24:00
My background is in data and analytics, working for traditionally manufacturing companies and I now have the opportunity to work for test. And as a program manager, I help. I serve farmers, subsistence farmers across the entire world as they plant trees that impacts not only their livelihoods but their communities. And in honor of Women's History Month, one of the things that I'm most passionate about and the work that we do is that we strive for gender equality and 50 percent of our leadership and all of our operating countries are women.
00:07:26:09 - 00:07:32:26
Thank you very much for being here, Suzanne. It's awesome to get to spend a little bit of time with you and Marnie, would you be able to jump in next?
00:07:34:21 - 00:07:35:26
Absolutely.
00:07:35:28 - 00:07:58:19
Hi, I'm Marnie Webb and I work for Texas Tech Soup is a non-profit organization that works with civil society in countries all around the world to help build their capacity to be able to better use technology to achieve their own goals. And we do that by partnering with other capacity building organizations so that we're able to provide services and support
00:08:00:12 - 00:08:16:27
with a strong degree of local contacts, not just language, but what it's actually like to use technology in those countries. I'm also lucky to be able to work with communities on the ground to build solutions to help them meet some of their most pressing issues.
00:08:17:15 - 00:08:20:21
And I'm super happy to be in this conversation today.
00:08:21:24 - 00:08:34:01
Awesome. Thanks so much. More to talk about. We'll definitely get to that during the course of the discussion today. And last but certainly not least, my good friend Eric Arnold. And Eric, would you say hi to everybody, please?
00:08:34:22 - 00:09:07:09
Hi, everybody. So my name is Eric Arnold and I am lucky enough to be the global CTO for the team at Microsoft called Tech for Social Impact. Tech for Social Impact is the organization within Microsoft Corporation that is focused on the nonprofit sector. We work with over two hundred thousand nonprofits globally. Microsoft is quietly one of the largest corporate philanthropies out there. We donate over two billion dollars in software and services every year to over two hundred and forty thousand nonprofits all around the world.
00:09:08:06 - 00:09:39:18
In my role in tech for social impact, I lead software engineering. So the product strategy and software that we have that we create for nonprofits for United Nations, as well as a few of our philanthropy programs, our online software donation programs at all the capacity building that goes around it, the digital enablement skilling certifications. We don't just think about the the bits and toss bits over the wall. We also think about how we can help nonprofits be successful, adopting technology, incorporating technology into mission, into operations.
00:09:40:10 - 00:10:06:20
My background, I have over twenty five years in technology, primarily in software engineering and software engineering leadership roles, but spent the last ten years prior to Microsoft in the nonprofit sector working in global health at Path as their international CIO. So have done a lot of work implementing digital technology into an international organization and making technology work where electricity doesn't.
00:10:08:26 - 00:10:45:04
And that's where we got to meet each other, right? Way back, it seems like so long ago the world was a little bit black and white and a lifetime ago, it seems to us. Well, thank you, Suzanne and Eric, for agreeing to be part of this webcast today and for giving us a chance to talk a little bit about this concept of scaling impact in the context of the common data model, which begs the question, what is a common data model? I think it makes a lot of sense to start there. So we're going to spend just a minute or two talking about what a common data model is and working our way towards the rest of the segment.
00:10:45:28 - 00:11:25:28
So a common data model is a shared data language for business and analytical applications to use. It's a set of standardized, extensible tables, fields, metadata and relationships. But it's not a finished app or a user facing product that's ready to go out of the box. It's a design. It's this common language that allows these applications to communicate with each other. And the output of leveraging CDMs is that data and its meaning are shared across applications, which makes it simpler to create them, simpler to aggregate data and analytics and drive decision support.
00:11:26:20 - 00:11:58:23
And the outcome of that effort is the time and expense are saved for the users and the organizations. Adopt CDMS, interoperability of systems, sustainability of tech investment and user morale and decision support are improved, which is a really compelling use case from from where I sit, which then also leads us to if that's a common data model, what is the common data model for nonprofits? The common data model for nonprofits is a shared data language for nonprofit business and analytical applications to use.
00:11:58:25 - 00:12:45:02
Here's a picture of it down in the right hand corner, which shows you the over 90 standardized extensible designs for tables, fields, metadata, relationships specific to the full lifecycle of nonprofit operations and engagement is going to show you a lot more about this concept later today, which brings it home to this idea for today's webcast, which is why does it matter at all if a program delivery solution is aligned to the common data model for non-profits? And what is a common data model aligned program design solution? It is program delivery solution based on or connected to the common data model for nonprofits.
00:12:45:15 - 00:13:28:17
And the core components of that design are listed here. On the right hand side, it includes things like the highest level organizational priorities, strategies and goals, the units of work programs, projects and activities, budgets. Because it's so important to understand where the funds are coming from and where they're going to. Something called the result, which is a container, represents the changes in context, including outcomes, outputs and impacts, indicators to describe what's going to be measured as evidence of the result of the change in context indicator values that are point in time and point and location, qualitative and quantitative measurements themselves.
00:13:28:29 - 00:14:00:23
And finally, and probably most importantly, this association between all of that construct and the participants who are engaged in this capacity building and improvement of agency within the world. So when we look at a common data model and then we understand what accommodator model for nonprofits is, hopefully this provides a reasonable basis for how solutions can be. And then our opinion ought to be aligned to accommodate a model for nonprofits.
00:14:01:13 - 00:14:39:00
So as will be the case with all of these webcasts, the next thing on the agenda is going to be a solution showcase. Today, we're actually going to show you something that we've been working on, a threshold world. But in the future, we're going to be bringing in gas from other organizations to demonstrate the work that they've been doing in the marketplace. So if you have any recommendations or if you personally or your team would like to be in this next segment for the Solutions Showcase for next webcast, please feel free to reach out to us or post in the comments because we want to make sure this is a great space to be able to show off all those different solutions.
00:14:39:25 - 00:15:19:23
So to get started with that, what are we going to do is we're going to give you a walk through of this solution that is aligned to the common data model for nonprofits called Beat Out. World and Beat on World is a program design and storytelling application for a nonprofit program teams. It allows program teams to go from strategy to story by bringing together the core components of the work that they do every day, which include things like program design, project management and data tracking and importantly, the communication that goes along with all of the great work that they do.
00:15:20:09 - 00:15:23:28
So let's go ahead and jump in to the application itself and take a look.
00:15:29:24 - 00:15:35:11
Here we go, great on my screen. Back up. Sorry about that, folks.
00:15:35:13 - 00:16:05:23
Here we go, so beat our world is true SACE application from top to bottom. It all happens to run in Microsoft Technologies. But again, every component of the application is directly aligned to the common data model for profits in the program design capabilities that we looked at in other parts of the application or in the slide that we just saw before. The way you get to the world is through a browser. I'm sure that's not a shocker to anybody and it's a project based system.
00:16:05:25 - 00:16:55:00
So when you enter the application, you see cards that are related to all of those delivery frameworks or activities that your organization might be engaged in. If you want to see things that are related to health or to water, you can search based on those and ultimately the ability to come in and really easily create new projects and programs with embedded guidance all the way throughout the application to try to make this type of application really accessible to organizations across the spectrum, from large to small. To take a quick look at an example project, this is from one of our team members, Alex Robinson, who was part of a literacy project in Ghana and has a number of colleagues that were actually engaged in attempting to find causal pathways for improving literacy within the country.
00:16:55:18 - 00:17:15:27
So the project itself has an overview. It dates and locations. You can define things like the challenge statement, what your proposed solution is to try to improve literacy. And you can also include all of the stakeholders that you engage with, with kind of ifone simple details about those individuals, organizations.
00:17:16:05 - 00:17:31:07
And if you're focused on environmental cause, you might see things down here at the bottom, something like a grove of trees, like in Suzanne's case with test, for example, to define the strategy piece in that part of the project process.
00:17:31:09 - 00:18:04:23
That's at the beginning with ideation and or in the concept, the program adaptation. The world includes this ability to actually create a whiteboard, your results framework and or your theory of change, and in the near future, multiple versions of these. So if I zoom in, you can actually see that in this case, our ultimate goal is to improve early grade literacy. And there's a number of objectives that lead to that, like ensuring primary school teachers deliver everyday evidence based literacy pedagogy.
00:18:05:11 - 00:18:35:14
There's community engagement through family support, and then there's also expanding reading opportunities through reading clubs. And each of those has a one or multiple activities that lead to those objectives and of course, the ability to track indicators. One thing you might notice on the right hand side is this. As you build this, it actually helps you develop your logic model or training for you. And if you were to click the button at the bottom of the screen, it actually would go create a full log frame for you. I've already done that in the interest of time.
00:18:35:16 - 00:19:10:27
That will jump over and take a quick look on the log frame to see how this comes together. Inside of the log frame, you can see all the detail around your goals, objectives, activities and indicators, you can create new indicators that are aligned to standards like the Sustainable Development Goals, if you like, and you're able to come into each of those indicators and track all the way down to the real data details, including things like tracking the data collection methodology, the frequency percentages and a high differential model around dimensions and disaggregate.
00:19:10:29 - 00:19:27:00
So you can really get to a specific level of detail around your program delivery. The world also includes things like tasks for the micro work management within the program, and you can come in and create tasks and notify team members and drag that work around the screen,
00:19:28:21 - 00:20:15:00
just like the common data model for nonprofits and includes the budget capability so that you can see, for example, where the funds are coming from and going to. In this case, we've just got some samples around the teacher fees that are included for training. And then last but not least on the storytelling side, one of the challenges that we learned from a lot of the program teams that we spoke with was that they have these jobs because they love the work. They're passionate about engaging with participants. In this case, it might be the teachers and they have a real challenge in being able to share the incremental results of that work, as well as the overall programmatic output outcome and impact with the broader world, whether that's for learning or for informing donors and funders, et cetera.
00:20:15:17 - 00:20:19:06
So the world has this ability to come in and create a story
00:20:20:21 - 00:20:55:01
according to one of to five different models, where the user actually is guided through the process of putting together narrative data and images which provide the most memorable construct for storytelling. Here's a quick view of one that we created just for demonstration purposes, where I can actually see a big banner across the top and corp of images and maps. The narrative that comes along with the storytelling itself, data tables that are important, like these results to date and so on and so forth.
00:20:55:12 - 00:21:44:17
And then the users will actually have the ability, once they gain consent to publish that story. And our world provides the ability to copy that link, paste that into any other social network or online feed, and then be able to produce those results in a really great format for people to be able to consume or whatever the context might be. So that's a quick run through of CBM saline solution. Hopefully got a flavor of how the logic model and the strategy definition within this tool set allows for interoperability with any other system that an organization might use, whether it's a Microsoft developed technology from an organization like Salesforce, Neons, CRM Flock's or any others that might be aligned to the common data model for non-profits.
00:21:45:05 - 00:21:50:29
So I think we might have a question from the audience.
00:21:52:22 - 00:21:54:23
And, Suzanne.
00:21:56:25 - 00:22:18:01
We've got a question for you, which is related to given that you and the team that test have been such great partners in helping us test the hypothesis that we brought in to be the world in the initial phases, realizing that we had so much of it wrong and needed to continue to tune the application. And obviously there's a long way to go.
00:22:18:20 - 00:22:37:15
But the question is great to understand how how has this capability and the alignment around the common data model for nonprofits in this idea of outcomes, outputs and impacts and baseline actual and targets, health tests, perhaps? Think about the way that you engage with your constituents and get the work done.
00:22:38:13 - 00:23:51:18
Sure. Thank you for that question. I am. When we first heard about the world and I can imagine it's been over six months at this point, we thought, great, we are going to track everything tested. So many great things with farmers. We do conservation, farming, training, we do HIV AIDS training, we plant trees. Let's go track everything that we do. And working with the world, and especially the white board function that was mentioned made us take a step back and say what's actually important and what do we want to measure and what story do we want to tell? And so working on our theory of change through the whiteboard, we started to look at what are the key impacts that we want to clamantis and working backwards from that, what are the activities that we are doing today? What are the outputs of those activities and what are the behavioral change that makes that impact level change that we want to see at test and tell that story? And so it's really allowed us to focus in on what's important and tell a better story ultimately, which Dan so aptly called Alba, that a lot of us in this world aren't the best storytellers.
00:23:52:13 - 00:23:58:01
We want to work with the participants and on the program. And so it's much needed help from our end.
00:23:59:12 - 00:24:04:08
That's awesome. So then where do you think the this technology aside?
00:24:04:10 - 00:24:07:00
Right. Because the technology should be the smallest piece of this.
00:24:07:02 - 00:24:18:23
It's really about taking the opportunity to think about the work and improve efficacy and really engage participants, which is why we're all here in the first place.
00:24:19:21 - 00:24:26:11
Do you see any future for the participants to be able to leverage capabilities like this for their own storyteller?
00:24:27:05 - 00:24:44:04
Absolutely. Our first goal, once we work out all of the ins and outs of the tool, is to get it in the hands of our own country teams. We want them to be able to manage their programs and tell their own stories. So that's critical to the latest works.
00:24:46:01 - 00:25:11:12
Well, thanks to that, we have a lot to do in the product to earn the right to be part of that expansion with you all, continue to do our best to get there with you and the team that. So thank you for your partnership or look forward to chatting more a little bit in a little while. So we're going to jump to the next segment, which is cutting from our good friend Aaron McHugh Save the global director of product development at Microsoft Tech for Social Impact.
00:25:11:26 - 00:25:36:13
Aaron's been supporting the development of nonprofit focused tech innovations for years. She's a friend. She's somebody I look up to. She's blazing a new trail driving Microsoft's solution strategy around the common data model, as Eric will tell you later, is the first best customer. And Aaron is coming to us from the Redmond desk to share the latest news and upcoming highlights from Microsoft Tech for social impact. Aaron, over to you.
00:25:39:25 - 00:26:14:21
Hi, I'm Aaron McCue, safe from the Microsoft Tech for Social Impact Team, reporting on all the Microsoft nonprofit product news. You need to know in about 60 seconds or less for a little bit more. So February went out like a lion and March rolled in like a lion, as Satya and Melissa Taylor announced Microsoft Cloud for non profit on February 24th. We hope you've caught a glimpse of aragonite deep dive on Microsoft Cloud for non profit this week. If not, never fear. Take advantage of your next opportunity to deep dive and see the latest features during our March 30th Tech for Social Impact webinar.
00:26:15:01 - 00:26:45:16
Follow the link on your screen to register. Speaking of fundraising and engagement, if you're a new customer, welcome. We're currently serving nonprofits and over twenty seven countries worldwide. We are hard at work at our next release, so expect lots of goodness coming in the areas of donation management, LinkedIn integration, Lubetkin encouragement, profiles and proactive data enrichment. We also want to make sure that you're aware of our five frisee, four dynamic 365 sales enterprise to supercharge your way into fundraising and engagement.
00:26:45:28 - 00:27:26:12
We also offer 10 free users on our platform to leverage all of our non-profit apps. I also want to give a big shout out and kudos to the Soapbox Engage Partner team for breaking new ground and integrating their donation pages with fundraising and engagement. Delighting nonprofits everywhere. Soapbox Threshold's World and dozens of other partners are now collaborating as part of the nonprofit Common Data Model Community. You should join them today. For those of you leveraging one of our ten nonprofit accelerator apps, be sure to check out our December twenty twenty assessment management, volunteer management and frontline humanitarian logistics enhancements that come as part of version three.
00:27:26:14 - 00:27:56:28
Oh, I also hope you've had a chance to check out an amazing story this week that hit your local news in 60 markets across the country. It highlights the incredible work of Team Rubicon and their front line volunteer efforts to operationalize vaccine distribution around the US. They are also leveraging Microsoft Cloud for nonprofit to do this. And speaking of impressive, we are now partnering with over 600 nonprofits who are participating in our tech acceleration for Black and African-American Communities program.
00:27:57:11 - 00:28:29:20
If you lead or work for a nonprofit organization that would like to get involved, please reach out to us today. And finally, in the midst of all this news, we have a big responsibility to help our nonprofit community skilled on how to use the technology at your fingertips. Check out our training courses via the Digital Skills Center for Nonprofits through the end of March. You can also earn a free exam voucher by completing a learning path as part of the night conference. That's it for me this month. I'm Aaron and I look forward to giving you an update next time.
00:28:32:02 - 00:28:43:13
Laughlin, thank you, Erin, for being here today, Erin is going to be reporting from the Redmen Desk and all of the future webcast, so look forward to hearing more from her and every time we have an opportunity to speak with you.
00:28:43:15 - 00:29:24:05
So let's take a moment to try to get our head around all the full extent of what Microsoft's enterprise could look like focusing on serving nonprofits. This is why I'm so excited to turn it over today to our featured guest and my good friend, Eric Arnold, the global CTO of Tech for Social Impact. Eric, I look up to you. I appreciate your friendship and your guidance and your relentlessness in attempting to get both the Microsoft enterprise and the rest of us around the world incorporated into this movement around the CDM.
00:29:24:07 - 00:29:27:12
So thank you for being here. The floor is yours now, right?
00:29:27:22 - 00:29:30:07
What got you down? We couldn't have done it without you and the surgical team.
00:29:31:27 - 00:29:44:07
So I work at Microsoft, so I can't speak without slides. So I'm going to bring some slides up and go through these. But but hopefully get a little bit of a dialogue going between the two of us.
00:29:45:10 - 00:30:27:08
So me, who I am, where did we start this journey? And so back in twenty seventeen when we started look for social impact, one of the first things we recognized and knew we needed to do is the nonprofit sector is very, very wide. It is essentially a tax code inside that tax code. There are many different types of organizations of child sponsorship. Organization from a mission perspective, operates and does things very differently than, say, a conservation organization. But at its core, there are common scenarios and capabilities that most nonprofits share around constituents and fundraising and using constituents very deliberately.
00:30:27:10 - 00:30:47:13
There, an individual could play multiple roles within an organization that could be a donor, a volunteer, a board member and even sometimes a beneficiary. And so having a single individual and an easy way to track all of those different roles was was a core concept. And how we thought about this program delivery, the delivery of mission and mission based services,
00:30:49:19 - 00:31:41:02
whether that is to a person, a puppy or a beach. Most nonprofits deliver services in the course of their mission. And this is where this whole thing started. We wanted that that mission component, the program delivery component at the core of of the common data model. And I think Dan and I together, when we started this nonsense, we're most excited about that option. And financials at the end of the day, like it or not, nonprofits also have to run as businesses and be good stewards of donor funds. And that means that in tracking from a program perspective, the grants and all the different kinds of grants that come in, whether they're individual donations, gifting, kind of recurring giving, corporate grants, major grants from from private philanthropies or institutional donors of all of those have to flow into a system that designations have to happen across the different programs.
00:31:41:04 - 00:32:19:16
And in the financial system. You have to book those transactions and and show compliance. And then finally, Insight's an impact threshold has done a great job in taking this area and moving forward with it around the world. But this is all about how you measure the impact of of the programs themselves. So to create this map that that tries to articulate where is the uniqueness in the nonprofit sector and what is the common denominator across most nonprofit organizations? We started with the NGO reference model, a body of work done primarily by a group of NetApp members that sought to describe the sector.
00:32:20:06 - 00:32:53:20
And in that way, we we don't pretend at Microsoft that we know how nonprofits operate. We know that traditionally this has been an underserved community. And what can we do to bring that community together, to bring a cross-sector group of individuals together that can help us understand what the what the best practices are in nonprofit? And so we formed a group consisting of nonprofits, large and small private foundations and institutional donors, together with tech sector partners that have been working in the nonprofit space.
00:32:53:22 - 00:33:27:13
Folks like Dan to help us then take this model and start to steward the common data model for nonprofit. And from the very beginning, the intent of this was to represent in entities and attributes and relationships those best practices for the nonprofit sector and have that be a platform agnostic that anybody can use that can serve as a Rosetta Stone across different technology applications, but also be a place where tech sector partners can start to reflect those best practices.
00:33:27:15 - 00:33:36:23
Then in software, take some of the cost out of the equation for organizations that want to innovate in the nonprofit sector and for nonprofits.
00:33:37:03 - 00:33:51:27
Rest assured that this representation reflects those best practices. And as passionate as I am and as sexy as I think it is to talk about data models on stage, it really doesn't come to life until you put software on top of it.
00:33:52:07 - 00:34:24:23
And so what? The first step, there was something that we call the nonprofit accelerator. So if you think about the common data model as that platform agnostic representation of best practices, now that here's where Microsoft starts to come in as a customer of that data on the first representation of that was the nonprofit accelerator. You heard Erin talk about that. We've got ten sample applications that are out there today. These aren't finished turnkey applications. These are more shows the power of the common data model as represented in software for some key workflows.
00:34:25:06 - 00:35:03:10
And the idea here is that the US, as anybody works, you know, you don't think about using Salesforce or dynamic's or razor's edge or power platform or word or excel like those are applications, how those applications come together to solve for senario. To solve for workflows, that's the magic, and so the accommodator model and the interoperability that it introduces is critically important. And so as we start to layer software on top of it, we want to reflect that that interoperability and that utilization of the model to encourage innovation and encourage the aggregation of data.
00:35:03:12 - 00:36:00:06
So we break down data silos that have traditionally existed between programs and different operational areas from there. Last year we published the first first party application on top of the Common Data model. This is a Microsoft application that we did in partnership with Mission CRM Technology ISP serving nonprofits based out of Toronto, Canada. And this is focused on constituents and fundraising, all the different things you need to do to manage your base of donors, work with those donors to drive fundraising, to manage the stewardship of funds, to allocate those into program budgets and then show the responsibility in the Stewardship Act to your donors in the donor reporting and transaction processing from their last week, as Erin mentioned, we announced the Microsoft cloud for profit.
00:36:00:08 - 00:36:34:11
So fundraising and engagement, that's the first application that is part of a cloud strategy for Microsoft, where we look across LinkedIn, all of our productivity applications that exist in office and work, all of the business applications that exist in dynamics and empower platform and all of the advanced analytics that exist in Azure. And now we're building a suite of modular applications left to right that start to really bring to life this value map and bring to life the common data model on Microsoft technology, again, with interoperability in mind.
00:36:35:05 - 00:37:11:09
So as we think about what the future looks like and what the vision is for Microsoft, for non-profits starting at 12 o'clock here, with that fundraising and engagement application as the first piece of Microsoft cloud for nonprofit puzzle, we start to focus on knowing donors and knowing supporters driving that constituent engagement, that constituent management and driving, fundraising, all the different kinds of fundraising and the fund accounting that goes along with it, that fuel programs then into all of the complex staffing models that that many nonprofits work with, particularly with volunteers.
00:37:11:11 - 00:37:51:24
How you manage volunteers from a headquarters perspective and help on board them, make sure they've got the right training and certifications to work in the areas you need them to work, how you exit them gracefully and how you help them engage and connect with with mission going forward. From a volunteer perspective, how the volunteers engage with your organization, how can they understand what opportunities exist and see around them? Who else is volunteering and start to form some volunteer communities and start to to fuel that and fuel the mission through increased volunteerism, then getting into program delivery? This is square towards the heart of where the accommodator model started.
00:37:52:00 - 00:38:26:00
This is all around great program design, great analytics, great impact measurement. World's a great example of an application there. Unified Data. This is now starting to use a piece of technology in Microsoft called data versus where we bring all the data together across all the different Microsoft applications through data versus. So you've got a single point of entry into Microsoft through the CD-ROM and can now move the data seamlessly between between teams and work applications, between dynamics and power platform and in Azure.
00:38:26:07 - 00:39:06:15
So you start to break down the silos and start to get more access to insights, insights to operations to drive efficiency, insights into program to drive program efficacy. All of that then completing the circle feeds into constituent analytics and personalized engagement, understanding donor propensity, lifetime donor value, and how you can understand your donors and who you are. Your donors influence through some of the LinkedIn integration, completing the circle then to constituent management. We do this as part of an overall Microsoft strategy where we are committing more and more to different industry verticals.
00:39:06:26 - 00:39:37:28
And with the announcement last week, we're signaling that nonprofit is a priority industry for Microsoft, one of a very few priority industries for Microsoft. We have published industry clouds for health care, for retail, for financial services and for now, non. It is an integrated experience across all of our different Microsoft properties, as I said, through data verson, through all of the integrations. And so we do that for you. You don't have to build that yourself.
00:39:38:00 - 00:39:48:04
That comes along with the Microsoft cloud. It's also modular. You don't have to pick up all the different. And different pieces that I'm talking about. We can meet you where you are.
00:39:50:21 - 00:40:20:22
If you want to use power ups for managing volunteers, great use a couple of power apps for managing your volunteers. If that grows into now how you want to extend that into CRM and manage those volunteers as constituents, you can pick up fundraising and engagement. You can have teams as your pane of glass. You can have the LinkedIn Sales Navigator integration. So it is all there ready for you and you can pick up the different pieces and integrate those pieces into your workflow. Recognizing that it's a multiplatform world that organizations use multiple applications.
00:40:20:28 - 00:40:49:14
We don't force the whole Microsoft platform on you. You can use and but the different components as it makes sense for your organization. And then finally and most importantly, it is focused squarely on nonprofit. And we are listening hard to non-profit organizations, making sure that we understand the workflows, that we understand those best practices, and that they reflect how nonprofits work and how mission is delivered and wants to deliver the solutions that really like that authentic noise, the system,
00:40:51:12 - 00:41:26:17
the fundraising and engagement piece. Just in the interest of time, I won't spend too much time here. I already talked about how it helps you manage constituents, the opportunity management donations or current gifts. It is a fully featured CRM and fundraising solution designed specifically for the sector. And instead, I'll talk about how important it is to have partnerships like you're hearing about in the context of this webcast. We can't do this alone, as Microsoft and Microsoft has always been a partner led company. And so with these investments into non-profits, specifically, nonprofit has been traditionally underserved.
00:41:26:19 - 00:42:05:08
And so with Microsoft looking at that common denominators, we've defined it in that value map and with the common data model now we can build solutions as Microsoft to that common level that then partners can extend and drive increased innovation for the nonprofit sector, more turnkey solutions deeper down into workflows. Health and Human Services is a great example. Health and Human Services is enormously complex. These are some of the smallest nonprofit organizations exist and the solutions that exist for for health and Human Services are really varied from mental health services and homelessness.
00:42:05:28 - 00:42:29:14
It is sometimes challenging to find easy to use turnkey solutions in those areas. And we've got now a partner community that's really engaging with us to take the investments that Microsoft is making and make it possible to build into some of that white space. So now we have over 50 partners that are working with us that are adopting the common data model that are adopting the Microsoft cloud for profit and extending solutions on top of them
00:42:31:08 - 00:42:36:03
to learn more, a few links here. Microsoft Cloud for nonprofit
00:42:37:22 - 00:43:09:15
MSG, Microsoft Cloud for nonprofit webinar for the March 30th webinar that Aaron mentioned. And then we've got some specific information around fundraising and engagement. And you can even go out today. It's available today and pick it up off test-Drive. One important thing to mention here, everything I talked about, all of these sector investments and the Purpose-built technology that Microsoft creates, we don't charge a premium for that. We have standard non profit discounts across all of our different core product sets and the code and products that that we deliver into the sector as nonprofit.
00:43:09:17 - 00:43:37:16
There's not an additional charge for those. So picking up fundraising and engagement and test driving it today gives you an easy way to learn about the application. And then we offer the free licenses if you want to pick it up and think about incorporating it into your organization. I blog regularly about this and post regularly about this on LinkedIn. So if you want to follow along and understand where we're going with this and keep up to date with our investments, please connect with me on LinkedIn.
00:43:38:18 - 00:43:49:20
Eric does killer. Thank you for running through years of work and just a few minutes or so in and obviously a massive vision to to to go forward. I have a question for you.
00:43:50:17 - 00:43:59:09
If you pick this one entity or one take in the CDN, that's your favorite above all others, what will it be and why?
00:44:00:21 - 00:44:49:22
It's program management. So I think within program management, the work that we did, thinking about incorporating theory of change and how to build out the results framework, that was a lot of fun. We we built this working with Iot tag, the International Aid Transparency Initiative, a technology group, and working with the data architects and information architects that were part of that steering team and thinking about how do we incorporate from an institutional donor perspective how you want to the traceability of the money going all the way through the system and from a nonprofit and a program officer perspective, how do you construct a good program and understand the the the outputs, the outcomes, the the impact on.
00:44:49:29 - 00:45:06:06
Sure, some baselines that you need to incorporate the story from a program and then communicate it back to the functor and connecting all of those dots allowed us to trace the money from donation down into the programs, into donation services and back to reporting to the donors.
00:45:06:16 - 00:45:12:23
It was the you could hear the puzzle piece click when we did that, that piece of work.
00:45:13:19 - 00:45:24:05
Do you think that all the collaborators got it right or mostly right? What's your confidence level in that corridor? Because we don't have gap or external standards.
00:45:24:07 - 00:45:42:21
And that's been one of the questions I've thought about as one of them is, is it did the team get this right? And is it going to stand the test of time, at least for long enough for people to meet the promise of kind of today's discussion, which is likely the more we can do to connect the data and the information and really, most importantly, the people that do the work, the better.
00:45:42:23 - 00:45:49:18
So so what's here? If you had to put it on a scale of one to one hundred, how how what's your confidence on on the rightness of that core construct?
00:45:49:20 - 00:46:24:07
Yeah, I'm I'm pretty confident about it and also recognize everything evolves. Like we we have the advantage. When we brought together this team, we had the advantage of going latest in in a string of individual organizations that that were developing their own data models for their own application purposes. We got to see how that was being implemented all around the sector and see some of the challenges for having these data silos all around the sector and then thinking about how to build something that that would be that Rosetta Stone.
00:46:25:24 - 00:46:59:24
What what would we need to pay attention to recognizing that these other models exist and that there are other standards that exist. So we did quite a bit of work to iterate and make sure that we had the right level of abstraction on all the data entities themselves and tested on how it would be reflected in different kinds of organizations with different kinds of missions, with different technology companies, with different platforms, solving different scenarios. So I've got a lot of confidence that it will stand the test of time.
00:46:59:26 - 00:47:15:27
I also recognize it is a living, breathing model. Microsoft, we hope, steward it, but it's owned by the community. And I imagine as we get through this and as it is in increasing use, we will get great feedback on how it can continue to be tuned and improved.
00:47:16:27 - 00:47:19:04
Also right there with our network.
00:47:19:06 - 00:47:19:21
And I think
00:47:21:10 - 00:47:31:08
we had the benefit of being in the room for at least a reasonable number of those discussions with so many incredibly brilliant practitioners from all walks of life and different causal areas.
00:47:31:10 - 00:47:53:12
And I wish everybody could have heard those discussions and debates because I think they drive the point home that that everybody's working really hard to figure out that core normalized construct while at the same time leaving plenty of room for the necessary flexibility that's it's out there. So I could go on with you forever and I would. But I want to make sure we've got time to get to the panel, too.
00:47:53:14 - 00:47:58:11
So speaking of contributions from the community, Eric, thank you for that.
00:47:58:13 - 00:48:23:12
And we're going to take a quick transition now to hear from a couple of people who are leading a new engagement center online called the nonprofit CDM Community with support and stewardship for Microsoft. Ryan Wozniak from TechNet and Similac now matters are going to join us in all future webcast as well from the community to ask to share the latest. So Ryan and Tim, over to you guys.
00:48:26:05 - 00:48:36:17
Welcome to the nonprofit common data model Community Wrap Up, where we take you around the nonprofit world in two minutes and try to stay on topic.
00:48:37:00 - 00:48:39:29
I'm Ryan Ozbek. And I'm Jim Lockie.
00:48:40:29 - 00:49:04:18
And this edition of the Community News. The nonprofit CTM community welcome its 100 member this week for fear of needing to hand out a prize they don't have. The identity of the winner was not announced. I'm sure the lucky community member was hoping for a big publisher clearinghouse style party. What a shame, writes Jim.
00:49:05:25 - 00:49:37:27
Tommy Spann, the newest member of the mission CRM team and longtime community advocate, raised this question in the Yammer community. Hey, Microsoft, TSA folks, why no industry categories for nonprofits is buried under other public sector industries next to forest and fishing. We represent more than six percent of the U.S. GDP. Surely that alone is reason to justify nonprofits as a top level industry category. Greg from Microsoft reported there is on the backlog list from the storefront team.
00:49:38:17 - 00:49:55:28
This news desk was impressed that Greg was polite enough not to say what all of us were thinking, which is that everyone knows that the one point four 70 trillion dollar contribution from the nonprofit sector is only five point six of the U.S. GDP and not the six percent that Tommy reported.
00:49:56:12 - 00:49:56:27
Bryan,
00:49:58:12 - 00:50:10:19
absolutely shocking statistics. Thanks to him on March 18th, the nonprofit CDPR Community will host a webinar titled Advancing Impact and Equity with the nonprofit CDM.
00:50:11:08 - 00:50:24:18
Tracy Transactive of Now It Matters will be leading a panel of nonprofit leaders, including Aimee Semple Ward of N10, Leon Wilson of the Cleveland Foundation and Daryl Booker of Microsoft Live.
00:50:25:18 - 00:50:39:00
This event will be virtual, even though the pandemic was only scheduled for two weeks over a year ago last March. You can learn more about the event on the nonprofit CVN website w w w dot nonprofit.
00:50:39:26 - 00:50:41:07
Dr. Tim,
00:50:42:26 - 00:51:15:04
in our last event and attendee asked this question Is the goal of this contribution to expand access and knowledge of the Microsoft incident, or is this to move to a platform agnostic data model that Microsoft, Salesforce, Oracle and others can all move to within their own products to make data collecting and impact measurements a common language so that nonprofits can choose their platform but contribute the data for the global goal are true. The answer to this is the second thing.
00:51:16:02 - 00:51:17:02
Ryan, back to you.
00:51:18:15 - 00:51:46:05
Always so succinct. Thanks, Tim. Well, that's all for your A.M. community wrap up for more great information about the community and answers to questions like why is Tim's camera in black and white? Tune in to our 24 hour broadcast at W w w nonprofit morgue. Actually, it's not a broadcast. It's just a website, but it's a great Web site. See you next time.
00:51:49:23 - 00:51:53:14
Thanks, guys, that was fun and true to character for both of you.
00:51:53:16 - 00:52:03:05
It's no surprise that you've been able to develop great community efforts all around these types of efforts and the common days for nonprofits as well as other ecosystems.
00:52:03:07 - 00:52:32:22
So grateful for your participation. I'd like to welcome Suzanne and Marnie and Eric back for a discussion to dig into things. And I'd love to start with you, if that's all right. You know, we've been talking about this CDM thing and how it's going to help us interoperate and improve capacity and scale it back. Just an incredible amount of visibility to what's going on with your own personal work, as well as with tech support. What's your what's your take on this from where you sit?
00:52:33:15 - 00:53:15:04
Yeah, it's super interesting. I was excited to hear about the idea of the unified data that you were talking about, Eric. And I was thinking a lot about the Know We Help ATEX, who we supported, getting donations of products including Microsoft to roughly two hundred and seventy thousand organizations and two hundred and thirty six countries last year. So the idea that we could be helping those small grassroots organizations access those donated and discounted products to be able to use tools developed on top of the common data model is exciting, not just in the way it lowers their cost and ability to connect the technology and make decisions.
00:53:15:18 - 00:53:58:06
But the idea that we start having a pool of unified data and we can talk about issue areas. Right, because that's the other side effect of the CDA, is that you start having all of these organizations collecting common data elements and we can start saying, well, what does Hungar look like in communities around the world? And we can do it without burdening these small organizations with constant reporting. Right. So for me, that's that that's the promise of a tool like this and the ability to deliver it to these grassroots organizations that may not have a lot of resources, can't afford some of the larger commercial partnerships, and they still have an opportunity to benefit from these kinds of things.
00:53:59:06 - 00:54:47:27
That's great insight, . And Marnie, one of the things I didn't talk about, everything around Microsoft called for nonprofit. There's there's a lot of operational components in there about how nonprofits fundraise, how you steward the donorship funds, how you design great programs. It's that delivery of services and how you use information to to do the research to make better informed decisions. And what could we do to help aggregate sources of data around common topic areas? It's an obvious one and it is driven a lot of innovation and a lot of openness now around how to look at the disease morbidity, look at vaccine availability, look at distribution and equitable, equitable distribution in emerging markets.
00:54:48:13 - 00:55:04:19
And that is now driving organizations, institutional, Igbos and academia to think about how to collaborate and aggregate that data. Now, what do you need in terms of data sharing agreements? What do you need in terms of
00:55:06:09 - 00:55:33:17
the insights and templates on top of that, taking that the opportunity, unfortunately, with covid. Right. And extending that model out and thinking now about sustainability, thinking about conservation, thinking about hunger. I'm hopeful that the collaboration that we're seeing cross-sector now with covid, well, we'll start to see replicated and repeated with some of the other critical need areas.
00:55:34:06 - 00:55:47:06
Suzanne, do you think that will play out with with test and also historically of have what are the biggest barriers been to adopting technology both within the teams and potentially the participants?
00:55:47:08 - 00:55:52:16
And any of that changed in the last year for you and the hundred thousand farmers that test?
00:55:54:09 - 00:56:03:24
Yeah, absolutely. I think both of you I could have gotten along the entire time because that's exactly what we're dealing with as a small grassroots organization.
00:56:05:14 - 00:56:39:25
You mentioned the reporting requirements. I think funders are now asking for more data than ever and they're asking for how we are measuring it. And so the requirements put on these organizations is greater than ever. And so having easy ways to understand our impact and measure that against other organizations is critical so that we can be out there supporting these hundred thousand farmers and working with them versus continuing to build bespoke systems and reporting and be able to reuse any of it.
00:56:40:29 - 00:57:14:08
It's one of the biggest challenges, isn't it, with with different donors having different reporting requirements when from a nonprofit perspective you've got. A program and an issue you're trying to solve that may have multiple donors and you have to report differently to each one of those donors and it creates a lot of overhead, a lot of noise, and often the donors don't fund that component. And, you know, really what's useful from a Problem-Solving perspective is using that aggregated data and having common indicators so that you're reporting efficiently and tracking consistently across different donors.
00:57:15:00 - 00:57:19:21
Couldn't agree with you more. That's been my life for the last couple of months, filling out all of our annual reports. And
00:57:21:08 - 00:57:26:27
that is something we absolutely struggle with and would like to find a better solution to manage.
00:57:27:15 - 00:57:28:00
Yeah,
00:57:29:11 - 00:57:36:24
we've got a question from Jeff is asking for some more information around the road map for cloud for nonprofits.
00:57:36:26 - 00:57:43:27
Eric, is there a way to to encapsulate that and then also bring that back to this discussion that we're having around scale and impact?
00:57:44:11 - 00:57:56:01
Yeah, so I talked a lot about kind of where we are today with with Microsoft for a nonprofit. The next releases, we're doing a release in April that will focus on LinkedIn sales navigator integration. It will include some
00:57:58:02 - 00:58:30:26
workflow, enhanced privacy and security, taking advantage of everything Microsoft invests there, as well as customer card integration with customer insights. As we convert customer insights into donor insights as we look ahead, then we're focusing on volunteer management, volunteer engagement. And so that will be then the next launch. After April, we'll focus on volunteering and how to light up a community of volunteers going forward. We will continue to be transparent, particularly with our partners, about where we're going with Microsoft Cloud.
00:58:30:28 - 00:59:11:09
For a nonprofit, you can expect us to invest in the areas I talked about around the wheel with program delivery, with unified data and continued work around that constituent and donor management. There's work around this whole conversation that we're doing as well that feeds into a Microsoft cloud for a nonprofit as an operational tool, but also how we can use Microsoft and our influence and some of the partnerships that we have to help the conversation get started and get traction around some of those industry data workbenches or data sharing templates or common indicator sets.
00:59:11:11 - 00:59:31:00
And that's those are all areas where I think where we're really keenly interested. How can we learn some of what we do in Microsoft Philanthropies and Tech for social impact as a partner with nonprofits, with funders to help make it easier to access aggregated data sets and report on results.
00:59:34:27 - 00:59:38:09
I've got a question for for money and Suzanne,
00:59:39:26 - 00:59:51:13
if let's say I were a genie or I could grant you one wish or not, but sometimes I wish I would. And it can't be that you get an infinite number of additional wishes, which is the answer that that I would hope you would get.
00:59:51:26 - 00:59:59:06
But if there is one wish that that could be granted to you related to technology and program design, what would be?
01:00:03:26 - 01:00:44:22
You can jump in first if you want to. Sure, I think that's a great question. I think for me it would really be that we have sort of dedicated groups of developers that try to make technology use more seamless for the organizations and and to reduce the friction so that they can spend time doing the hard work in the field that they need to do, you know, and not trying to make commercial products fit their needs and so that we're just better able to fill the gap between our commercial products, leave off and the front line needs of the organization start.
01:00:44:29 - 01:00:52:15
And I think things like the common data model help move us there when people really start embracing it and applying it to the technology solutions.
01:00:55:12 - 01:01:15:10
How about you, Suzanne, great, I'm going to answer this question probably a bit more selfishly. And Dan, I know you've heard this before, but for me, it's the seamless flow of data from the field into management tools and reports that we can help the data in real time, make decisions and become more agile as an organization.
01:01:16:21 - 01:01:22:15
The more time that we wait to see our impact, the more time we lose to make more impact.
01:01:23:22 - 01:01:48:23
I love that. Love both answers. And then we've had some recent conversations around some of those those tools that are in the fields like Comcare and Karbo, DHEA and others, like what's the opportunity to work with survey tools, with the data tools that are being used across the sector in the field? And how can those be connected now into some of the research and analytics platforms?
01:01:49:21 - 01:02:19:27
Yeah, and to be able to do that kind of once in such a way that we don't have to build it up to build it, the that an ecosystem around Salesforce doesn't have to build it, et cetera, to provide those mappings using the CDM kind of as the core construct, but then allow for that that flexibility that these tools offer because everybody can use them differently, but that that core information is going to flow effectively to the same entities. I know this is a core topic that's at play inside the EDM community right now, too.
01:02:19:29 - 01:02:54:11
So, Suzanne, I hear you loud and clear once again. And for those that are listening, the core of this is that for for artists to be able to really use an app like the world, it has to have like an automatic connection to the data collection tool sets that they use. And if it doesn't have that and this goes back to your point, Marnie just isn't going to invest in that. They have better things to do with their funds. So we have to do that or somebody in the market has to do that and we need to make it available. And otherwise, the system's not going to be viable to them. It's just going to be one more data island, which is certainly not what we're after.
01:02:54:18 - 01:03:02:28
And it's definitely not what the spirit of the CPM is. So saying saying here in front of everybody, even though you've heard me say it before, it's coming soon.
01:03:03:20 - 01:03:04:17
I have no doubt.
01:03:05:12 - 01:03:06:23
Well played, though, my friend.
01:03:06:25 - 01:03:07:17
Well played in
01:03:09:26 - 01:03:10:11
there.
01:03:11:00 - 01:03:34:00
So we're going to take maybe I know her well over time and I'm happy to stay if others can stay as long as they'd like. But if it's OK with folks, we'll take a couple more questions from from the audience and then we'll wrap up from there. Naomi's got a question here about what impact do you envision the CDM having on moving the needle on the SDG indicators?
01:03:34:25 - 01:03:36:11
Anybody can take that question.
01:03:39:28 - 01:04:11:05
I'll jump in here a little bit. I think one of the things that it can do is start to, you know, right now when we look at the SDG indicators, we mostly are looking at government or business data and organizations help all the people that by definition aren't getting support from governments or businesses, you know, and they collect data that can help us hold businesses and governments accountable. So the ability to enhance those data sets with a true grassroots view of what's happening on the ground is tremendous.
01:04:11:09 - 01:04:26:06
It may not feel like an advance at first, I suspect, in some parts of the world, but it will give us a more complete understanding so that we can we can see what all parts of our community are experiencing and what that that change needs to look like.
01:04:27:22 - 01:05:01:12
Yeah, and super tactically that the dogs are available as an indicator set in the CDM model, and so if you look at tools like Beat Up World that take advantage of that theory of change and the program and program delivery and insights components, it is a layer on top of that. And you can use your own indicator sets. You can subscribe to standard indicator sets and use as a standard indicator set can be now directly tied easily to to really any program, any organization that adopts the model,
01:05:03:01 - 01:05:06:28
I think for the other providers out there.
01:05:07:00 - 01:05:24:29
We didn't have to figure that design out. We were able to inherit that from the CDM Incorporated into the product, interpret it the way that we want it to, and then have that alignment just carry through, which is a huge time saver. And I think testimony to how these types of initiatives can lower the barrier for our
01:05:27:14 - 01:05:27:29
efforts.
01:05:28:01 - 01:06:04:19
So if you would ask me what my wish was, that's my work. My one of the questing BS in the sector, I think are around standard indicators. How could we align around indicators around specific areas that are a great start? But imagine having standard indicators, sets that could be loaded and connected to something like common data model that then tech sector partners like Microsoft and others could adopt into tools that the non-profits can use. And together with donors that also use the same indicator sets really, really simplifies donor reporting.
01:06:05:01 - 01:06:11:14
That's a huge dream of mine. Super complex problem, but let's try it.
01:06:12:24 - 01:07:06:07
I think Leona Thomas, who is a friend from Philadelphia and an amazing human being, if you don't know the owner, you need to meet the owner has a question I think is a really important one, which is about most of the funding only focuses on the programs themselves and not what it takes to maintain or needed to run things specifically to you. What's Microsoft doing on this front? And then I'd love if Suzanne or anyone like what what are what are you hearing from and or saying to funders about the need for infrastructure investments and our capacity support that isn't purely restricted to the program delivery side of the House, but really is there to help sustain these types of investments which which need to go through the adaptive programming cycle that your organizations are working to, especially like those we've seen recently.
01:07:06:27 - 01:07:25:16
Yeah, the most valuable funding you can give any non-profit organization is unrestricted and allow the organization to use it where it most needs to be used. When I was a path, I worked in an organization that was overwhelmingly funded by restricted grants and while
01:07:28:03 - 01:07:59:21
really targeted and focused and helps critical work get done, what it doesn't do is help the the all the information, all the insights gained within the context of that grant. There typically isn't funding for how to take that information and compare it to everything that came before it and what might come after it. And, Suzanne, to your point around, you know, donors are asking increasingly complex questions and really data driven and asking how nonprofits are answering those questions and how they're utilizing data.
01:07:59:29 - 01:08:30:09
Where are the grants to fund that to to get the insights, aggregate the data across programs across those restricted grant areas. And so from a Microsoft perspective, we do a couple of things. One is from from a software and services perspective, we try to make as much available as possible for free to non-profits so that they can adopt digital technology and what isn't free. We have amazing discounts across the whole product set.
01:08:30:15 - 01:08:54:23
So and then combine that with all the capacity building, digital enablement, digital transformation, skills training, together with partners like Texas to to provide the most services we can to the smallest nonprofits that don't have the funding to spend on themselves, and hopefully in that way make it easier for for organizations to at least have the the tools and capabilities to use those tools.
01:08:55:14 - 01:09:17:12
We also use our voice to talk about the importance of of this problem and in thinking about measuring nonprofits based on their impact, not on their overhead rate. And using overhead rate as a proxy for nonprofit efficacy has been a problem in the sector for decades. And it's it's a race to the bottom.
01:09:17:29 - 01:09:48:25
And I don't know about you guys, but I don't know when I'm looking at my own retirement funds. I don't invest money in organizations that are only investing one to three percent. And R&D and how to improve and be better organizations looking for organizations that are innovating, that are thinking ahead, also about efficiency and also about what they're delivering. But we don't ask that of nonprofit organizations. We we think it's most efficient to drive all the money possible into the mission, that that really puts blinders on organizations.
01:09:48:27 - 01:10:14:27
And while in the context of a specific tactical engagement on on a mission task, you have the funding to do it and operate. And that's fantastic. What it doesn't do is allow the organization to to maybe rise up and use data strategically and think about how it could most effectively operationalize itself and innovate itself and use data more strategically and make those kinds of investments. And so we use our voice to help tell that story as well.
01:10:19:03 - 01:10:21:05
Suzanne, any reaction to that from where you sit?
01:10:21:15 - 01:10:57:02
Yeah, I mean, this hits to a core of a lot of problems that we face that test. The idea that it's OK that we're running off of a 20 12 database that needs some serious upgrading. And it is still a hard conversation to have to explain the importance of why we need to invest in those, even though it does in the short term, take away from potentially what we get back to the farmers. But I do think Microsoft has made it pretty easy to start somewhere.
01:10:57:04 - 01:11:30:17
I will say on top of our 20 told database, had our twenty twelve email server that we helped managed and me without very much of a tech background, was able to migrate us over into Microsoft three sixty five now and prevent or help us stay protected from attacks. And you know, looking at those small wins are really big ones. In the scheme of things, it's easy to use and we can continue to add on piece by piece.
01:11:30:19 - 01:11:32:06
We don't to do everything at once.
01:11:35:11 - 01:11:51:25
Also, there's a great question from Sammy which I want to take a really short reaction to, because I think we're we're maybe an example of how we'd love to see other people play this out. But it's about engagement strategy for emerging markets in Africa regarding cloud for non-profits.
01:11:51:27 - 01:12:23:03
And we have one of our team members is Alex Robinson. Alexander Robinson, in a vision that she has for how we develop technologies to try to incorporate the local context and the experts in the field in that area that know the people into the use of the application through means like video, through developing community in a local context, of course, respecting data privacy and ethics and allowing for that opt in access. But our intent is to leverage the system.
01:12:23:05 - 01:12:27:10
Is the core contract for that so that you have transference from one organization to another.
01:12:27:12 - 01:12:48:14
Imagine if you're running a project or a program using a tool like the world in a small rural area, in a particular country, in a place like Africa, there are people there who know far more than anyone in our team will ever know about the true reality of what it's like to try to make progress there in whatever light.
01:12:48:28 - 01:13:14:00
And so part of our strategy is to actually create the technology in such a way that it can be completely changed at the local level and that the real life humans that actually know what's going on in that context, whether it's down the street in Philadelphia, which I also don't know anything about, or all the way halfway around the world in some specific place, is it's going to be the way to go about it.
01:13:14:02 - 01:13:21:26
But I don't know if Eric or Barney, from your perspective, from the enablement side, what your energy that you all have.
01:13:22:04 - 01:13:52:27
Yeah, it's a huge topic for us. And we have a specific investment within Microsoft Philanthropies around emerging market and and what we can do with clients, with partners, with nonprofits that are operating and local to the global south. I also say so from a tech for a social impact perspective. We're we're so committed to this that as we think about capacity building and how we we make our nonprofit partners successful using technology, we started a client success team.
01:13:53:07 - 01:14:04:12
We started that team in Nairobi. And so it's it's based out of Nairobi. And we're providing services first to organizations that are have the most need and have the most
01:14:08:24 - 01:14:10:23
technology mission connection.
01:14:15:03 - 01:14:25:17
Mind you, this does the topic of accessibility to technology and in Africa specifically come into today's tech soupçon, enormous partner for us in that emerging market strategy?
01:14:26:00 - 01:14:28:05
Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Yeah.
01:14:28:08 - 01:15:06:25
And and that's that's courtesy of the Texas Global Network, of course, because we're working with organizations on the ground in Kenya, West Africa, South Africa, but also from the perspective of the global south and Colombia and Brazil. And and and that's that that's a part of localizing the contacts so that they're getting training in the way that meets the needs of the community and doesn't just meet the needs of the technology or the product. Right. And that the connective tissue that those organizations can provide because it is their community is, I think, vital to to part of what's required for people to be able to embrace and take it on.
01:15:09:00 - 01:15:12:17
Suzanne, I understand you have some thoughts on this as well.
01:15:12:23 - 01:15:42:05
I mean, we live and breathe this every day. The majority of our farmers are in East Africa, and that's the conversation we're constantly having. How do we get them the tools that they need with the limitations that they have, no service, no smartphones? And how do we continue to up skill them? And that's a really hard question. And it's something that we'll continue to iterate and make improvements where we can.
01:15:45:28 - 01:15:53:25
Wonderful. Well, I think we've blown the clock way out of the water, so we better better move on and start to wrap things up.
01:15:54:26 - 01:16:17:25
Team, thank you so much for the time you've made my week, my month and made this Friday wonderful. For me personally, I hope that the people that were able to participate in that a great time and are able to take something away from this and about us as individuals and our individual commitments to this work, but also where we hope to go and how much work lies ahead.
01:16:19:06 - 01:16:52:22
Thanks to Aaron from the Redmann desk and Ryan and Tim for the community desk for jumping in. Quick reminder that the next webcast is going to be on May 25th. We're going to talk about Participants' Center in case management and how it's made possible and the common data model for non-profits so completely different. On a show for that. And also stay tuned for the public launch of The World on April seven. This show is produced by our creative director, John Wise, with support from our operations lead.
01:16:52:24 - 01:16:58:28
Maureen Kerns, thank you to both of you for making that happen. That's it for today, folks.
01:16:59:08 - 01:17:03:20
Stay safe and healthy and take good care of one another.
01:17:03:22 - 01:17:12:21
Thanks for sharing this time with us. I hope you have a great weekend. And just an outpouring of gratitude from all of us here. You are wonderful. So take care of.
01:17:14:17 - 01:17:16:27
Thank you.
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