Episode 153: Good Reads - Recommendations for Growth and Learning

Welcome to another edition of "Around with Randall" your weekly podcast on making your nonprofit more effective for your community. And here is your host the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett.

Your time is always appreciated here on this edition, in particular, of "Around with Randall". I received a couple of interesting requests that I thought might make an interesting podcast maybe to some. The questions were based on, as I have gone through my career, what are the things that I've enjoyed reading? What are the things that are, have inspired me or have meant something to me as a part of this overall process? And so I decided to take a look and figure out what are the recommendations I would have in terms of growth opportunities for you, for everyone, about things that I value in the nonprofit sector.

So there were nine different books that came up for different reasons, and I want to classify or categorize each one in those respective areas and then give you a quick thought on each book and why I think it's important. Maybe it's something that'll give you an opportunity to think about, and if you're looking for something to read, to enjoy, to grow, this might be one of those really easy ways to increase your knowledge and your thought process on where you're at and what maybe professionally you could grow into in understanding our profession. I want to start with what I think is the most important, at least the way I look at it, in my career is leadership. How do you lead? And one book overall to me speaks to leadership more than any other and I think there's some really good books out there on theory and on practice, but I actually take the one that's historical and it's by Doris Kearns Goodwin, "Team of Rivals". It's the story of Abraham Lincoln and it's not a story about the Civil War, per se, but it's a story of the fact that as a leader, and why I classify him as our greatest president, and when I say that I actually don't count George Washington. He's the father of the country and then everyone else kind of followed behind him. Abraham Lincoln, when elected, brought his cabinet together and almost all of them didn't like him, didn't respect him, didn't really want to serve, were some of whom were rivals in the presidential election of 1860. And what I think the author does is spectacularly be able to describe the way in which Lincoln's leadership, the value that he placed in sometimes propping people up, knowing who to trust, maybe sometimes saying no. We're not going to do that but bringing a group of people at maybe the one of the country's, well it's not debatable question is whether it was the country's most concerning moment in the Civil War brought all of these people that he needed together to bring the country to the end of the war and back into one Union, and it wasn't easy. And so if you're looking for a book on leadership, and the in fact you don't have to like everybody you work with, and in fact the skills and the connections and the relationships that they bring to the table, if you put everything about the mission and in Lincoln's case was about the country above what individual interests are, you can get a lot out of it Doris Kearns Goodwin. Leadership. "Team of Rivals".

Number two is where are we at in the world of philanthropy, kind of the current status. And this is one that I've talked about before. It's "The Generosity Crisis" by Nathan Chappelle and Brian Crimens. It really talks about how we've become transactional in our philanthropy, that we are so driven by the metrics of the moment and the fact that organizations need the money now that we've lost the concept of longer-term engagement, what they call radical connections. It's recent because obviously it's about the now, but I think it also addresses the issue that we're seeing an immense drop in the number of households, now below 47%, that are even philanthropic at all to any nonprofit or charity. So if you're looking for, trying to figure out where we're at in the current state, I suggest "The Generosity Crisis" by Nathan Chappelle and Brian Cremins.

If you want to understand donors I go back in a little bit in time on this and I speak a lot about this particular publication. One of my two mentors gave it to me early on my career to better understand the psychology of what prospects and donors think about when they choose to make gifts. The book is "The Seven Faces of Philanthropy" by Russ Prince and Karen File. It is a truly academic study of thousands of donors and puts them into seven categories, and more so than just the categories the authors do a tremendous job of identifying what it is that these categories of people are looking for: communication, recognition, connection, what motivates them, how does the rest of community view them, how do they view the rest of the community, I think that we sometimes don't utilize the idea that there are these patterns of donors and what they're looking for, and if we could better understand them, listen to them, we would have the opportunity to maximize gifts because we would meet them where they are are. And that's what "The Seven Faces of Philanthropy" is really all about. So I recommend that. Russ Prince. Karen File.

"Understanding Donors", 1994, if I remember correctly. It's still the best book when it comes to kind of casting a net over donors and not just seeing them as one, but seeing them in several different segments.

Historic. I've always been a fan of Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnet who sold his business to JP Morgan and then spent the rest of his life giving his money away. You might know him from the thousand libraries that he founded in different communities around the United States, but his book on the gospel of wealth is the foundation for what philanthropy is today in a time of immense wealth inequity, Andrew Carnegie spent the latter part of his life, I'm not sure I'd say guilt as much as an obligation, that giving is a responsibility that when we look at it from the standpoint that those with means as he articulated have a responsibility to make society a better place, and that in some ways nonprofits and charities closes a gap between those with and those without. And that's why there is that responsibility. Prior to Andrew Carnegie and "the Gospel of Wealth" which was written in the early part of the 20th century it's not that philanthropy didn't exist, but Andrew Carnegie created the modern day philanthropist. I don't think he gets credit for it, not that he was looking for it, to be honest. But the way in which you see the giving pledge, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, is very much in this construct it is the basis of what people who want to make a difference do make a difference. And so if you've never read it, it's a fascinating story about his life, the responsibilities he felt, why he did what he did, and I think what you'll see is the impetus for him to want to make a difference and philanthropic change lives is alive in almost every philanthropist we have today. So historically, "The Gospel of Wealth" by Andrew Carnegie.

Traditional, or excuse me, inspirational. Moving off of traditional, inspirational ,I believe that this is one that goes a little bit out of the construct, but inspirational to me is always about trust. Our industry is absolutely defined by the trust that our organizations have with our donors, our organizations have with the community, and how individuals in those organizations, gift officers, build trust with individual philanthropists. To me, Stephen Covey wrote the book although it wasn't in the nonprofit construct or thought process was written for business, but I think that the immense number of pieces that come out of his book "Trust and Inspire" is really about the idea of what we should be doing in the nonprofit world. The book is really about leadership and that when we build an organization or we build a group that there's kind of two major philosophies. One is to be authoritative and to just, you know, dictate. Or do you inspire and build trust so people will follow you? The book that I wrote, "Vibrant Vulnerability" is really based on this concept that I think the whole in CEOs in Healthcare and in the C-Suite, as we're driving through these terrible challenges in healthcare finances that it's become more autocratic. There's no inspiration, and there's still a few out there. I had one here recently where I was with a CEO and he was doing some things I thought this is the coolest thing I'd come and help you raise money for this personally because it was inspirational. The takeaway here is is that "Trust and Inspiration" by Covey is all about how leaders can inspire one person or a group, that's the gift officer, who inspires the donors in the relationship that so much as possible with their gift to the organizations as a whole, and the CEO driving that about what the organization can do to make the community a better place. It is a little bit out of context, but I think the the strands or the threads that go through the book lend itself to our industry in so many different ways that it's one I recommend from an inspirational standpoint because it's about trust. At the end of the day that's what we live and breathe in nonprofit work.

The idea of building wealth from a basics perspective, I have used this book I can't tell you with how many people from my sisters to employees that I've had the privilege of leading and mentoring, to friends where I have said go get this book and read a chapter and we'll talk about it. And it's how they built their base of knowledge about how they can control their money, not allowing their money to control them. The book is "The Wealthy Barber" by David Chilton. It's a narrative story about a brother and sister going home and me getting their haircut and the barber is rich. Didn't inherit it. Made it. And it's about how he did it and it's so, it walks them through the time-value of money and investments and starting early about insurance, about planning, about strategy. The reason I love this book is because I think there's an assumption that every body understands finances and money. My best pupil in this journey is my wife. She is the best person I've ever met but she doesn't like to deal with money just as a subject. We would read as we were engaged and we'd be going home more likely than not for football games, to Nebraska from Kansas City, she'd read a chapter, we talk about it on the way home. It did two things. Number one and this is very similar for a lot of different people that I've maybe worked through with this book in the context of understanding money, number one I got to teach and at the end of the day that's what I am as I'm a teacher, so there's great value in that for me. But it was a non punitive way of allowing someone to learn about something they really didn't understand. The book is written in a very simple form with very simple concepts but that are the foundation for any individual or family to generate independence in their wealth. And so I recommend David Chilton and "The Wealthy Barber" for kind of the basic concepts of money and wealth.

Tactically what is it that I think of when I think of the Tactical aspects of asking for money? And I go back to someone that I had the privilege of listening to quite often and that was Gerald Panas and the book is "Asking: A 59-Minute Guide to Everything Board Members, Volunteers, and Staff Must Know to Secure the Gift", in particular and their ability to build relationships and ask for that gift. The book is really a step-by-step guide that allows people who aren't in the thralls of in a profession like myself in feeling comfortable about asking for money, and that it really breaks down the concept that we're really not asking for money as we are offering invitations for people to join us in this journey. So if you're a gift officer and you're apprehensive, it's a great book because the concepts, while written for board members, are perfectly applicable to the work you do in building relationships and inviting others to join you in the organization, its pursuits of making a difference in the community. I think the other thing it does is really meet people who are apprehensive about asking for money in a place that's universal and saying it's okay to feel this way. Sometimes I think people are apprehensive about asking for money because they feel like they're alone or, this is just me, most people don't like to do it and it's perfectly fine. But the relationships you have and that that you build are based on this. Back to where we just were a few minutes ago about trust, and I think the book does a fabulous job of helping and breaking down some of the basics in that relationship process so tactically in our profession the idea of soliciting and asking Gerald Panas in the, in his book, asking that he wrote several years ago many years ago decision-making it's always kind of a conundrum to me. We seem to be paralyzed a lot of times.

My favorite book maybe you haven't heard of is "Nudge". "Nudge" is by Richard Taylor and Cass Sunstein which is a book really about economics and decision-making, but it's really about the fact that it's cost. Most decisions are based on cost benefit and the fact that when they wrote it they were talking about how lazy decisions really are costly. I think sometimes particularly when leaders aren't sure what to do, instead of leaning in and getting more information and thinking about people perspective or what they what they might gain from a particular decision, you have to make sure they don't concentrate on those things, they don't think about the depth of the decision. In the book "Nudge" they talk about the short, the medium, and the long about what are the implications of decisions today, tomorrow, and down the road. How does a decision now maybe preclude other decisions in the future. While it's really based on economic choice, behavioral economics is kind of the terminology I would use. I think the thought processes behind it are incredibly interesting and that lazy decisions and even no decisions are incredibly, they're detrimental to the organizations we represent in ways that are hard to describe. And so "Nudge" is a way of looking at decision-making processes, maybe more from an economic perspective, but it talks about cost-benefit. It talks about short-term, long-term how do we get to the point where we can make the best decisions. "Nudge" by the Nobel Prize winner Richard Thaler and certainly by his co-author Cass Sunstein.

The last one is about basic life and I'm not sure this has anything to do with philanthropy, but just maybe way to think about the way in which we all live. My favorite book of all time in this area is "All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" by Robert Fulghum. I think we make life a lot more complicated than it needs to be. The book certainly captures the thought process of sharing and playing fair and don't hit people. Those are all basic concepts we learn that may not be as applicable, in hitting in as an adult, but there's verbal hitting, there's emotional hitting. Do we take things that are not ours, meaning other people's credit. There's so many basic premises but I think the one that I take the most from is that I don't think we understand, as he says, in one of the pages the value that we have so to quote him "every person passing through this life will unknowingly leave something and take something away most of this". Something cannot be seen, or heard, or numbered, or scientifically detected, or counted, it's what we leave in the minds of other people and what we believe in ours, memory all of these things that we do that we influence other people, the decisions we make, how we inspire others, how we lead. There's really not a written trail for most of us. Maybe my podcast is my trail?Maybe someday my kids will listen and hear me talk about various things that, and they're not even in philanthropy, but they hear the values but there are trails. They're in other people. I've mentioned that a couple times that I lost my father this summer. The impact that he has on my life every day is profound and that to of my mother. They may not be anywhere else in the world, there's no written record per-se of my Dad's life except what lives in me and by the way I'm also aware that maybe my life has impact on others. The question becomes what kind of impact does your life have on even further down the chain others that you you interact with every day. And if we lived our life like we do in kindergarten and learned the things that are really basic and implied those into the life we live into to the relationships we have with others, the world would be a better place. And so I recommend at least annually a quick look at Robert Fulghum's "Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten".

As a reminder about what's really important, nine books, nine different subjects, nine different things to think about. Maybe there's something there for you. I appreciate a couple people asking me that. It kind of came from different places, thought it was interesting, hope it was of value to you today.

Don't forget check out the blogs at HallettPhilanthropy.com. You get an RSS feed right to your inbox - 90 second reads twice a week. And if you're interested reaching out to me podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com. Whether it's from these books or from mentors or just your experiences, hopefully you're growing because we need nonprofit work to be great. It's a little up and down right now in the world financially and certainly politically and certainly in our communities nonprofit works have a way of filling those holes so what you do is critically important. Healthcare, Social Service, education, doesn't make a difference. There's value there, so know that you're making it, making an impact on the lives and the parts of your community that are most in need. My favorite saying, some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, then there are those who wondered what happened. You're someone who's making someone happen so making something happen, partnering with someone who's making something happen for the things in the community and the people in the community they're wondering what happened, and that is a professional life well lived. I'll look forward to seeing you next time we're right back here on another edition of "Around with Randall" and don't forget make it a great day!