Interview With Beth Kanter; Master Trainer, Author And Non-Profit Innovator.
Recently, I interviewed the fantastic Beth Kanter, master trainer, author and non-profit innovator. Here, Beth discusses her journey prior to becoming a master trainer consultant for charities and non-profits, the importance of wellness for staff within the charity sector and how non-profits can benefit from using artificial intelligence.
Firstly, can you tell us about your journey to becoming a non-profit master trainer? How did you get into the industry, and what have you learned?
That’s a great question! After graduating from music school trying to be a classical flutist, and noticing the lack of jobs, I looked at what I could do behind the scenes, and I got a job in fundraising at the Boston Symphony. From there I became a consultant, and I advised non-profits on marketing strategy, fundraising strategy and organisational strategic planning. I did that for 10 years as a consultant, and then I got a job at the New York Foundation of Arts, who were launching an online network called ‘Arts Wire’. This is where I was introduced to the internet and technology. That was in 1993, so my passion and my job became experimenting with technology, before turning around and teaching it to non-profits. So, in short, it was an organic progression of following things I was interested in and passionate about and having opportunities to learn while teaching others!
Agreed. And what are your wellness tips for staff within the charity sector?
When I work with well-being in the workplace, there are two paths. The first path is what can you do for yourself around self-care, building your personal resilience and having a work-life balance. The most important thing is the health triangle: getting enough sleep, exercising and healthy eating. That gives you the foundation to build on other habits, which are: reflection, spirituality, creativity, mindfulness, having a life outside of work, and other interests. The second path is your relationship with other people; how do you navigate these relationships? Some bring you joy, others don’t. So, you have to have good boundaries. Lastly, what’s your relationship with the environment in the outside world? Are you getting into nature? There’s a lot of research that shows nature hikes can also build your resilience. It’s also about your personal office space, is it chaotic? Or is it calming? And what’s your relationship with technology? I help non-profits build a self-care plan that covers setting good habits in each of these areas. There’s a relationship with yourself, with other people, with the environment, with work and with technology.
What would be your one tip for wellness in the workplace?
If I were to give one big simple tip, the most important thing that non-profit professionals can do, is to make sure that you integrate quiet time throughout the day. Having a schedule where you’re in back to back meetings, sending emails, running from task to task and not taking a break for some quiet time, isn’t good for your nervous system. According to research, one tip is to not schedule a meeting for a full 60 minutes. I schedule them for 50, and then you have 10 minutes to take a breath. Also, every 90 minutes or so, you should get up from your desk and stretch or even just walk around.
In terms of social media trends, what’s on your radar for the year ahead?
Excellent storytelling, nurturing relationships with ambassadors, and working with influencers will be important. The use of video on different channels and upping your game in terms of social advertising has to be a big part of your strategy. Increasingly, social media channels are using a pay-to-play model, so great content on its own is not enough. You need a combination of great content, an influencers programme and you need to amplify. I think overall, the most important thing is to have a consistent workflow. I work with a lot of organisations where there isn’t a full-time Social Media Manager. It’s a person doing it for a quarter of their time, and I think the big problem is not creating a consistent practice.
What are your top tips for charities in the year ahead?
Start learning, and reading, as much as you can about artificial intelligence (AI). Start to have discussions within your organisation. Maybe find a small pilot to use AI, but to begin with, just start thinking about it because it’s here! Others are already using AI, whether we know it or not. I mean, you use Netflix? Do you look at a Facebook feed? Do you buy stuff on Amazon? Okay, so you’re using AI. Your constituents are also using it, and that allows these big companies to personalise their offer — giving you the information you want, when you want it. So, we have to start thinking that way, and how we can better serve our clients, our stakeholders and our audiences with these new technologies, because commercial companies are thinking about it now. It’s going to become a consumer expectation.
How can charities overcome any GDPR risks connected to AI?
Most charities are probably already GDPR compliant, or they have put processes in place to be compliant. However, I think a lot of it will rest on the tools and platforms being used. The ethics and privacy issues are based around the platform themselves. So, is the platform transparent about how their algorithms are created or what data sets they’re using? Getting into the habit of making an ethical pledge, ensuring it is visible, and being a smart consumer in a way, will help charities overcome GDPR risks.
Do you have any specific examples of how charities can use AI? For example, if they’re trying to raise awareness of a campaign or if they want donations for a specific campaign?
Beth: There are a lot of emerging tools in fundraising where AI is used to search through databases to help charities pinpoint what donors are most likely to donate. This saves time, because the algorithms are able to look at larger amounts of data sets, generate patterns and understand the data faster than a human could. For example, a Gifts Donor Officer’s job is to find people who are ready to give large gifts. With a database of 10,000 people, it would be time consuming to go through and figure out who to meet with, whereas an algorithm can do that very quickly. It would probably take a major Gifts Donor Officer a week to do this, in comparison to an algorithm, which can do it in an hour. That frees up 39 hours a week to have donor contact, which presumably would bring in more money.
Do you have any specific tools that you’d recommend, or specific algorithms?
There’s an evolving set of tools for organisations to implement online fundraising campaigns that will allow them to customise communication at scale. This will help charities to tap into individualised email pitches, or individualised social media content for smaller target groups of one or two people versus target groups that are larger. There are great tools like Quilt.AI that charities could use.
And the major funds officer would just be able to put all of the emails into those tools and then they generate the top people to prospect?
Using Quilt.AI, here’s an example of how it would work. Let’s say this is an online fundraising campaign that has an email component and a charity is doing A/B testing. It would take the results of the A/B test, and not just tell you the results, but it would say “based on this — here’s the next A/B test of subject lines that you should try”. Another thing that it can do is analyse the social media footprint of your audience, and also help you customise your communication with them, and what they are most likely to respond to on this micro-targeted, one to one basis.
How can charities use AI to personalise consumers’ journey?
AI has the potential to personalise and customise the content to the specific user. So, for example, Philanthropy Cloud from Salesforce is a workplace-giving application. Prior to AI, the employee would log on, and would see various different elements, which can be frustrating because you can’t find what you’re interested in. But, what AI would do, is help refine one’s interests from the moment they logged on. For example, let’s say a person likes dogs, animal welfare organisations, and wants to volunteer to walk dogs at the shelter. They would be able to log on and identify a list of charities where they could volunteer to walk dogs near where they live or near their work. That’s the first step; the person ends up volunteering. Then, the programme knows that they’ve volunteered, and they send them a follow up message asking, “How was your experience on a scale of one to 10?”. If they rate it a 10, then the next messages might invite them to volunteer again.
If you want to learn more, head over to Beth’s website, where she has published links and blogs discussing non-profit technology, educational technology, adoption challenges, information.
