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Category: Book

Elevating Engagement with Amanda Lea Kaiser

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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. You’re joining us for a special episode as part of our 2023 ACCE Chamber the Year Finalist Series.

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Brandon Burton 1:44
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Our guest for this episode is Amanda Lea Kaiser. Amanda is a keynote speaker and author of Elevating Engagement: Uncommon Strategies for Creating a Thriving Member Community. Through her research, Amanda is at the forefront of exploring how member and attendee engagement is rapidly changing when within professional communities. I’ll have to say as a side note, as I read through her book, I very much was able to visualize all of you as listeners, both attending your state and national chamber conferences and engaging on those levels, but also taking some of these lessons learned to your local chamber organization. So as we go through our conversation today, I hope you can see some of those parallels as well. But Amanda, I wanted to welcome you to the show give you a chance to say hello to all the Chamber Champions that are listening and if you wouldn’t mind sharing something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Amanda Lea Kaiser 2:58
All right. Hey, Brandon, thank you so much for having me here on your podcast and hello Chamber Champions. It’s it’s great to be here. Okay, something interesting about myself. So I got my start at Crayola and I rose up the ranks and marketing so I’ve got a classic marketing background. And and now I’m the keynote speaker but maybe even more interesting than that. I’ve got a two kittens adopted me during COVID I don’t know if if you’re a cat dad, but they adopt us I don’t think we adopt them. And and I named them after Muppets. So I love the Muppets, Kermit and all of those guys. So so my cat’s names are Robin in between. And you might see them running in and out because that’s what they do. Awesome.

Brandon Burton 3:44
Yeah, I did notice the Kermit quote in the book as well. So that carries through. I’m not a cat, dad. But I understand what you mean. It doesn’t matter how much you like the cat they have to like you to adopt. Right? Well, I am excited to get into our topic of conversation today. I think chambers across the country, even globally, are constantly thinking about the ways to elevate the engagement of their membership or their investors or those who participate in their organization at at any level. I often will out I’ll hear chambers talk about doing the yellow highlighter exercise where they will print out their membership list and then with a yellow highlighter, go through and mark any chamber member who’s participated or actively engaged with the Chamber in any way. And that may be the main sponsor of their annual banquet. It may be the sponsor of their board room, or maybe just somebody who’s constantly liking their Facebook posts. So literally any level of engagement and as they do this yellow highlighter exercise, oftentimes there’s not a whole lot of Yeah, low on that sheet once it’s marked up. So I think we’ll, we’ll be in for a treat today with a lot of these tips and ideas around how to elevate engagement with our memberships. So we will dive into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Brandon Burton 8:31
All right, Amanda, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’re, we’re talking about elevating engagement, you’ve got a book all about it. Some could say maybe you’re an expert on it. And I’m a little bit hesitant at all really setting the stage that way. I think I told you before we got on the recording. It’s like introducing a comedian and telling everybody how funny that comedian is and then your your setup to deliver. So you know, no pressure at all, but I’m looking forward to an engaging conversation. Good. So maybe let’s just start with why did you write the book like what what was it about your background and maybe personal history that led up to this moment where you’re like, there needs to be a book about elevating engagement of these membership organizations? Yeah,

Amanda Lea Kaiser 9:21
so Okay, so let me give you just a kind of quick, sober, quick, speedy history to get us to this point. So like I said, I started at Crayola. And then I had a couple of jobs in my career where I worked at an advertising agency and then I landed in a NAT at a national association. So I worked I worked in for a higher ed Association. Super cool. It was the first time that I even realized that associations and chambers and they were even a thing I just didn’t know until that point until I started working for them and I was director of marketing there. And and it just completely We opened my eyes. And I was so delighted by how collegial these professional groups are. They’re, they’re really fantastic. So I decided to open up my own business. And I was a qualitative researcher, my, my marketing focus has always been on research. And I decided to pursue the qualitative research side of things. And during my time, as a qualitative researcher, I worked with 33 different associations and got a chance to personally talk to 477 members from all different walks of life. And the conversations with them did two things, one, I would ask them about their industry or their profession. And the second thing that I asked them about was, what is it like to be a member? What is it like to attend? You know, what is engagement like, and all of that, and as I was conducting these interviews, one thing that I found is there’s this gap between members, and attendees and, and leadership, right. And so, so that’s why I wrote the book, I wanted to close that gap. And just to give you a sense of the gap is, is, you know, members, our members are having an experience there, whenever they engage with us, they’re having an experience, and very often when we’re on the inside, and I can say this, for sure, as the as being a staff person on an association, a lot of what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to provide value, we’re trying to do the administrative stuff very right. And we’re not, we’re not focused on the experience. And so, so that’s what this book is all about. The book is all about closing the gap. And and I’m also doing a ton of keynoting. Right now. And so I start out every time by saying we’re here to close that gap between you and your members.

Brandon Burton 11:52
Yeah, I like that. I think that’s a good summary. And that does kind of set the stage a little bit here. So my background is in chamber publishing. And often I’ll even joke with some of the different advertisers Chamber members that were selling ads to that. I often will hear a chamber member say that they want to advertise and whatever the chamber publication is, because there’s almost a sense of guilt, that they join the chamber at some point. And they see all the emails from the chamber about the networking mixer, the after hours, the Chamber luncheon, annual banquet, you know, there’s always something that golf tournament. And there’s a sense of guilt that they can’t be at all of the things, you know, they work during the day, so they can’t go to the luncheon or they’ve got family life after work. So they can’t go to the after hours. So they see doing some sort of advertising with the chamber as a way to engage. So how would you look at engagement? How do you define engagement? As you look at a membership organization, I guess what counts when it comes to? To engagement? Yeah, yeah.

Amanda Lea Kaiser 13:04
So So advertising counts and attending accounts. So so let me let me kind of step back, though, because what I tend to do is I tend to define engagement, the way a member would defined engagement and the way members define engagement is almost solely around emotions. And I actually, I asked when I when I keynote, I asked my audience this, I’ll ask them what is what does engagement feel like when you’re really engaged? What does that feel like? And I’ll ask them to, to recount a professional or personal community that they’re very, very engaged in, you know, what, when that makes their heart very happy. And so this is some of what they’ll say they’ll they’ll say, I feel valued. I feel welcomed, I feel belonging, connected, excited, inspired, it’s energizing, I feel included. I feel focused, I feel peaceful, I feel worthy. I feel like I’m being seen. That’s just some of the words this is I got 139 responses. But those are some of the key words that came up over and over again, so. So engagement is all about emotions. And when you’re when your members or our members are making decisions to engage, they’re making very emotional decisions. That what they’re what they’re what they’re trying to work out and might not be even conscious. But unconsciously they’re trying to say is this community for people like me, do people like me join a chamber like this? You know, do people like me go to events like this? Do Am I gonna find my people here? Am I gonna be long am I you know, all of those things. That’s, that’s the kind of what’s going on in the back of their minds. And so, I, I love to define engagement all around how members see engagement, because you’re right when we when we on the business side, talk about engagement. We’re talking about joins and when rules and registrations and opens and reads and click throughs and all of that. So we’re talking about the metrics of engagement. But I love to think about engagement as that, that very emotional emotions and feelings that drive those decisions to engage. And so that’s that’s typically where I’m coming from. Yeah.

Brandon Burton 15:26
What you said almost sound like a Seth Godin quote, right? People like us do things like this. Yeah. And it’ll often talked about enrollment, right? So the engagement level kind of at Next stage is yes, I want to engage. And now I’m going to enroll I am all in, I’m going to fully participate. And I know that’s a few steps down from where how you kind of break down that, that member journey, or that the experience journey. So maybe touch on that a little bit, because I think so much of that, the beginning of that membership journey is where that emotion really is probably at its peak. There’s some reason why they’re choosing to attend the conference or choosing to join the chamber. And I’ll say everybody does it for slightly different reasons. But understanding what that emotion what that driver is, I think, is so key to being able to help them have a successful journey going forward with the chamber. Yeah, can outline that for

Amanda Lea Kaiser 16:28
us? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I’m so glad that you started touching on well, you know, what, what happens at the beginning, because So, for most professional communities, what they find is new members are the most fragile members. And, and so, you know, people, if you look at your metrics, you might see people join, and then they never engage. And then it’s not a surprise when they don’t renew, right, and, and so, so they’re very, very fragile. And, and so what we need to do is start appealing to their emotions, one of the one of the things that I often will say, when people are asking for, like, what is the definition of engagement, I’ll say, there’s two parts, there’s, there’s value, so we got to provide value. And the other part is positive experiences. So you want to provide good value and positive experiences. And when you do that, members will engage. And I would wager to bet that your chambers provide lots of amazing value, you know, people, all of you chamber pros, you’re doing all of these events, you’re publishing, you’re emailing, you’re providing all kinds of really amazing things and lots and lots of value. And it’s, it’s frustrating when people aren’t joining, and or it’s or renewing or engaging in, in some way. And so the, the piece that’s often missing is the experience part, the the part that triggers all of the emotions, and, and so this is very salient for new members, you know, new members join, they often don’t understand how to really engage, there is the old the emails are coming in there is I’ve heard that, Brandon, that guilt factor that you were talking about in so from so many different types of members, you know, they’re, they’re sending me emails, I feel like I and what they will say is, I’m not engaging, and it’s, it’s my fault. It’s not them, they’re, they’re making every effort, it’s me, right? And, and I can see that there’s a lot of benefits, I can see that there’s a lot of events and in what they would normally tell me is I feel like I’ve got to start going to these events, which I can never do, because the timing doesn’t work out. Or I’ve got to spend a lot of time on their website, understanding what they do. And I just don’t I don’t have the time yet. And, and so I think what we need to figure out is how to connect a lot quicker with them, you know, how to have how to provide a teeny bit of value so that they understand that taking that leap to come to your events makes a lot of sense. And also connecting on that emotional level. And you do that with experiences. So are there phone calls? Are there? Is there kind of a special quick Fitbit fun email that you could write to them, you know, what are all of the experiences that you can provide to new members that will get them saying this is not only going to be worth my time, but I think that this is going to be a really fun group. There’s a lot of energy. I’m super excited.

Brandon Burton 19:35
Yeah. And as you’re saying that it reminds me in the chamber industry, there’s a lot of focus on with the engagement of members to try to make the shift from being a transactional relationship to be more of a transformational relationship and that way, hopefully, if that’s communicated and modeled in correct ways, the guilt factor hopefully isn’t there. as much because they’re not in it, they didn’t join to say what’s in it for me, but they’re they joined to be part of something bigger, that’s making a positive impact in their community. I see some chambers that have the option to join their chamber right on their website, we can enter your name, credit card information, and click Submit. And you’re done. You’re a member. And I’m sure there’s the onboarding emails that come in. But that chamber doesn’t know anything about that member, why they joined, they didn’t really share their mission, their vision, any of that. And oftentimes, those are coming from another member as a referral. So you know, you need to be a part of the chamber, right? So I think right from the beginning, there tends to be a little bit of a disconnect. And I love in the book, you talked about doing a listening tour. And I think that could probably come in and in a couple different stages along the member journey. But to really tap into that emotion and their why you want to maybe expand a little bit on the listening tour, and how that can kind of pull on that emotion. Yeah,

Amanda Lea Kaiser 21:08
absolutely. So let me let me give you a couple of tangible stories that I heard dirt while I was while I was interviewing members. So. So there’s a couple of associations that were doing a really good job, and I got a chance to figure out what they were doing from their member saying I was on I was the recipient of the listening tour. And so there’s one, one association that did a very interesting thing. Now they had not very many members joining. It wasn’t like they were having hundreds of members join every week, they might have been having 10s of members join every week. And and so the the director of marketing of that particular organization, would schedule a call, it was about a 20 minute call with every single new member. And during that call, she would ask them a series of questions, you know, hey, tell me about yourself. And when did you start working at this company? Or when did you you know, when did you start the company? She would, she would ask them questions about projects, they were working on what their goals were, what their mission was, what if they’re having any challenges, she might even ask them, you know, what, tell me about some trends. And she would, she would take careful notes, and she listen intently. And at the end of the call, probably with maybe, I don’t know, three, four minutes to go, she would say this has been so interesting. And there’s a couple of things that I heard you talk about, that we might be able to help out with, there’s you talked about this really interesting project that you’re working on. And not many of our members are working on a project like this, but I know that Sue is. And I would love to introduce you, it’d be okay, if I introduced you to Sue, I think she’s a couple of steps ahead of you. And, but you know, I can introduce you via email in and then she will, she would also say and I also heard you talk about this system, that we’ve got some data from some of our research, or we’ve got an event coming up where we’re going to be talking about this topic, we’d love to have you I’m going to follow up with some emails. And so you know, she get off the phone and immediately send some emails, one introducing that new member to sue a longtime member and tell in telling Sue and you know, reminding this this person while why she was introducing them, and then she would follow up with a separate email saying, hey, you know, as we were talking, I told you, I was going to send you this research report and this invite to this event and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that that’s very time consuming very hands on for this organization that works. Because they don’t have a lot of members. Other organizations, there is the listening tour where you get into your car, you know, or your your get your staff into a van, and you book breakfast, lunch and dinner. Or you go to people’s offices or places of work or factories and and you spend 15 or 20 minutes with them doing the same kind of thing, asking them questions, touring, just being there letting them be seen. And it’s such a pleasure because now when they come to an event, they already know a friendly face. So there’s there’s that part. The other thing is if you are with a chamber that’s maybe spans a large geographic area, there’s a virtual orientation events. Now the virtual orientation events are not orientation webinars, there are much more responsive than that. So so people come you know, your new members come into a Zoom meeting. And then you ask them the same kind of questions, you know, where, where do you work what what kind of organization is your company? Tell us a little bit about it. What are some of your goals? What are some of the projects that you’re working on? And then as everybody’s feeding information to you, you the host can do some pattern matching for the biggest things that people are They’re struggling with and then make that link for them between their problem back to the to what the chamber provides in terms of, of benefits or upcoming meetings or something like that. So. So I love that you were talking about, you know, these these member listening tours, because there’s so many ways that they actually work, Brandon. And that’s really the key to it all. When when you know your members and you hear them talking over and over about their goals, then then we serve them a lot better. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 25:30
there was one chamber executive I talked to one time and he talked about how he’ll do three breakfasts each day, they’ll go meet with different members there. The first one maybe is just having a coffee is the second breakfast, awesome makes the third one, maybe a phase three. So he’s breaking it up. But he’s getting to three different member businesses to have these breakfasts. And he’s meeting with other members there. So like the levels of engagement with the organization with the members is on multiple levels, and able to gather a lot of that very important information to be able to better serve the member. And I love that. So it does kind of seem like though in today with everything digital, and we’ve got in person events, we got virtual events, we get emails, get social media, we’ve got podcasts, we’ve got YouTube, we’ve got all these different ways to get our messaging out there. Does that make it harder or easier to engage members? Like how it I think I can see both sides of the coin, but I’d love to hear your approach and maybe how chambers might want to look at this. Yeah,

Amanda Lea Kaiser 26:41
what I’m hearing across the board is, is engagement is getting harder, it’s harder to engage attendees most virtually and in person, it’s harder, harder to engage members, it’s harder to get those opens and reads. It’s just I think it’s harder. And some people are saying, you know, this is not uniform. There’s some associations and some chambers that are seeing these bright spots, like, hey, we went back into person. And and, and we’ve got some of our in person events are doing amazing. And we’re still doing virtual, and some of those are doing amazing. So this is not, engagement isn’t universally going down the tubes. But I think it is getting harder. And one of the reasons why it’s getting harder is is really time and attention. You just hit on it, Brandon, there’s so many ways that we’re trying to reach members. But there’s so many ways that they’re getting content and they’re connecting. And they’re you know that it’s just sort of, we all have a very frantic pace of life these days. And so we’ve got to do something different to engage members than what we did before. And I’m so glad that you asked that question about communications, because this is sort of a really great time to talk about how you not only provide value, but you also provide the experience so so every time we communicate, there’s two things that we’re trying to do. The first is the what we say. And that’s the value, it’s the message we’re trying to get across. The second thing we’re trying to do is is or the second thing we communicate is how we say it. And this is the tone, it’s the voice. And and this might be something that you’ve talked about a lot in publishing is the tone or the voice. And so I love to think about tone on a continuum. And so on one side of the continuum, there’s the very institutional tone, the very professional polished tone, it’s a lot of big words, it’s when we’ve got our business hat on, that’s the tone we tend to fall into is the institutional tone. On the other end of the continuum, I have a what I call the best friend forever tone, sometimes we’ll also call it the happy dog tone. So if you go into your personal email, and you read, you just quickly, like scan your personal email of all of the brands and companies and products you really love. They’re talking to you and the happy dog tone, there’s emoji, there’s hashtags, it’s casual, they’re talking to you like they’re your best friend. But for some reason, when we’re doing business to business, and we put our business hats on, we talk very, we tend to talk very institutional. And so I just like to remind everybody, that tone is on a continuum, and you can pick anywhere you want to be, and especially with your new members, they’re they’re looking for all of those cues on whether to belong, you know, is this the place for people like me, they’re looking for those belonging cues. And when you can warm up your tone in your emails or warm up your tone and your phone calls, you know, or any of the information you’re sending out to new members. They the sense that they sense that this is going to be a happy, warm, lovely place for them to meet other people and connect.

Brandon Burton 29:54
Yeah. So when I think of, maybe an in person or even a virtual event I think to on an event stage, it’s a maybe a little easier to gauge the engagement. You can see if people are looking down at their phone or distracted or getting up to get a drink or, you know, just the distraction, where as we try to with these communication channels, I’d love that you brought the the tone and the voice into the happy dog messaging. Besides maybe some of these metrics that we look at the open rates and social engagement tools, are there other ways that we can see if our message is landing, right? If we’re how do we get that kind of feedback when we’re not in a room or a Zoom Room even to be able to get that that instant? Hopefully, positive feedback. Yeah,

Amanda Lea Kaiser 30:47
yeah. So people are always asking me how, how do you measure engagement and and there are, you know, I think when your members are doing the yellow highlighter exercise, they’re measuring engagement, looking at your renewals, it’s a measured metric and a measure of engagement. And so as you’re engaging members and attendees differently, you’re going to see that metric go up some some organizations use Net Promoter Score, some of them do things as sophisticated as Engagement scoring. And so again, over time, if you’re, if you’re focused on those experiences, you’re gonna see those those metrics go up. But, but it’s engagement is a tough one. Because it’s very hard to make one change, it’s very hard to say, Okay, we’re gonna make this one event more experiential, and we’re gonna see renewals fly off the chart, that’s not the way it works, right? There’s, there’s, there’s not a lot of like one to one direct comparisons, you just sort of see a general lift over time. So So I think sometimes we have to measure engagement, again, with our own emotions, which is, you know, is there what’s the energy like? Okay, so we’re making it we’re making some improvements to try to be more engaging and say this one event? Was the energy better? Did people walk out smiling, you know, for virtual, one of the things that I think is a really good predictor of a virtual meeting is what’s going on with the chat. Now, you can do a lot of things to have a really robust chat and as a, as a very often speaker, I love the robust chat. I love when I’m talking. And people are busy in the chat and they’re talking to each other. And they’re asking each other questions and they’re tuning in to listen to me and they’re plussing up what I say and then plussing up what everybody else says. And that’s for me that schools because because they’re sure they might be listening to me and engaging with me, but they’re in if they’re engaging with each other. That’s lovely, too. So, so if you’re doing lots of virtual events have chat ambassadors in there. And that can be a micro volunteering opportunity for one of your members. Or it could be a staff, you know, job, but have those chat ambassadors in there that are, you know, they’re plussing up what other people say? And they’re asking questions, and they’re, they’re kind of saying, Oh, this, you know, the speaker said this, what do you think about this, everybody and, and really try to foster that excitement and get it going. And that’s, that’s You’ll sense the energy, you’ll, you’ll sense it, whether you’re virtual or in person, and that that’s almost I think, is Valley or it is as valid as some of those tangible metrics.

Brandon Burton 33:26
Yeah. So I hope this doesn’t feel like we’re taking a step back. But I was thinking about the emotion as people engage with an organization that emotion is, you’re able to maybe give them some small wins along the way. So in the book, you talk about, like speaking from stage, there’s little engagement questions or things you can do to warm up the room, right. So they’re engaging on a very minimal risk or risk free environment where they have nothing to lose if they just participate and engage. And as a member joins an organization. And there’s other little quick wins, I’ll say that you can do to kind of trigger that emotion or positively reinforced that emotion of yes, you’re here for a good reason. We’re here to listen to like, all of those things. Are there any strategies or tips that you want to share around maybe those small quick wins to warm up the audience or the new member, to help encourage them to give them that confidence to be able to engage at higher levels as they progress through their their membership journey?

Amanda Lea Kaiser 34:38
Yeah, let me let me tell you about a totally unexpected story that I heard when I was doing those interviews and it’s a it’s a story that I heard over and over and over in different ways with different words. But what I would hear people say is I went to my very first event for this organization. And while I was waiting in the registration Mine welcomer I didn’t know it at the time, but people were circulating, and they were talking to all of us in the line. And in somebody stopped and talked to me, and it was maybe just two sentences. And it was it, it made me feel like this community is super open and warm and welcoming. And it and I felt like I had to step out of my shell and I am going to, to just talk to other people, I’m going to introduce myself to other people and just see how it goes. And so, so it’s like, new members come in, and we have to give them the teeniest little nudge or a teeny little bit of permission, so that they can go and make their experience great for themselves. And so whenever we can do that, it’s great. So So let’s see, how do you do that you can do that with welcomers that in person events, you know, kind of warming up the crowd for in person or virtual events. Think about your icebreaker, you know, what is what is a an icebreaker question or an activity that is super safe and super easy. And so I’ll give you just an example, when I’m getting together a group and I want to get them to be really creative, I want to I want the group bubbling up lots of ideas, I want them collaborating with each other. And the topic is not is not very serious, you know, it’s we’re working on, we’re just going to work together on this problem. And we’re gonna have a really great time doing it. One of the questions that I love to ask is, would you like to be a dragon? Or have a dragon and why? And in the why is the key, you know, you can pick either one, but I love to ask why. And so you can ask that, you know, in person, with a smaller group, you can ask it on, you know, virtual meeting and get people responding in the chat. But that, you know, again, you’re you’re popping them out of the expected stuff. And in the their professional world, and you’re bringing them into sort of a different surprising experience where they can have a little bit of fun with it. They tap in their answer, and now they’ve started participating, which is half the battle, because once once you start once, then you’ll you’ll form that habit and you’ll keep participating. That’s

Brandon Burton 37:12
awesome. Having read the book, I knew that was the question you’re gonna you’re gonna bring up it’s I was waiting for the dragon question. So I’m glad you glad you brought it out. As we begin to wrap things up here, I wanted to ask usually I’ll ask for maybe a tip or action item for listeners who want to take their organization up to the next level. And what you would offer I think I may want to read phrase that too, for an organization that a chamber listening who would like to level up the engagement of their members to the next level? Where should they start? Yeah,

Amanda Lea Kaiser 37:50
yeah, absolutely. Oh, let me backtrack and tell you one other one. So if you’re looking for more icebreakers, or energizers the other one that is surprisingly, super fun, and people get you know, they have this very fun argument about it is, is a hot dog a sandwich. So what do you think Brandon? Is the hot dog sandwich? Or is it not a sandwich?

Brandon Burton 38:13
I’m gonna go yes. Is it the same way a cheesesteak is the sandwich.

Amanda Lea Kaiser 38:17
Oh, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. So so interesting. Usually, usually groups completely divide. And there’s some squabbling around if a hotdog is a sandwich and to my knowledge, there’s no real answer, you know, just like, Alright, are you know, is white chocolate, chocolate, you know, again, you get the you know, those are those are fun cup questions to ask.

Brandon Burton 38:40
In cornbread, and you have a corndog. Now, that’s a whole nother topic. I don’t agree with that. Yes,

Amanda Lea Kaiser 38:47
yeah. Yeah, that feels not sandwich like to me, but yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, so. So what, you know, what can they do to take things to the next level, what, what I would suggest is go and start identifying all of your transactions anytime you have a transaction. So joining as a transaction renewing as a transaction, opening an email is transaction registering as a transaction registration at your events as a transaction. And in so think about and so like, anytime the staff has a job to do, you’re doing administrative stuff for that transaction. So think about how you can seamlessly keep doing the administrative part of it, and then layer the expensive experience on top of it. So that’s, that’s how you close that gap is to keep doing what you’re doing in terms of the transaction and the administrative stuff, but now figure out how to layer the positive experience on top. It’s easier than you think it is. So like, let’s say you’re, you’re you’re doing registration at one of your events, and you’ve got you know, 100 people coming through the door, and you need to give them all badges within 10 minutes or something like that, you know, people are coming at you, and you’ve got to log them. And you got to give them all their badges, even even in those moments where you’re so busy and so frantic, just smile, like just keep giving them a genuine smile. And now you’ve layered on that positive experience. I

Brandon Burton 40:22
love that. And I was thinking, I don’t know, man, I don’t know if this holds true all the way through or not. But if, in talking about those micro wins, as you know, micro positive experiences and micro engagements. Hopefully, if they’re engaging on that small risk free level, a way of maybe measuring that as if they’re engaging again, like if they’re taking another step, you know, on that journey. And if they’re, if they’re stalling out, if you make that initial engagement, and they stall out, maybe the communication needs to be refined, maybe you need to get more information. But they hopefully should be making another step and other engagement along the way. Would you agree with that? Or is that just totally my own thought? totally

Amanda Lea Kaiser 41:13
right. So I have identified it fine. I’ve identified six stages of engagement, and is exactly what you’re talking about that that at each stage, there’s generally speaking, a barrier for people to take that next step into the next stage of engagement. And so to the extent that we can be aware of all of those six, six stages, and just constantly helping people have those micro wins, and in sort of taking that next step, if they want to, one, one thing that happens is you know, sometimes like, boards will get burnt out and a new member, a new face will come to an event for the first time and a board member will rush up and say, We’re so happy you’re here. Have you ever thought about being on the board and the new members panicking and saying, oh my gosh, I don’t even know who you people are yet. And so you can’t rush people up the six stages of engagement, but what you can do is make the opportunity available if they want to. So if you you know, the book is elevating engagement, and right there in the beginning, I detail all of the six stages, and each chapter is devoted to one of those stages. And I talk about the the kind of go no go decisions that members are making at every single one of those stage stages. And then I just try to give you hundreds of ideas for helping them move from one stage to the next. Again, if they want to work, we don’t rush them, we just make those opportunities all available to them. And, and yeah, I think I love I was taking notes while you were talking Brandon, because this idea of micro wins or micro engagements. I just I love that terminology. And I hadn’t thought about it or articulated it that way. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to steal that from you. Because I think it’s cool.

Brandon Burton 43:04
Yeah, just reference me twice. And then you can own it after that. So a real life example that, that I was reminded of and reading the book, you you mentioned that the board members, you know, maybe seeking a replacement for their seat during the board recruitment. So my, my wife was the volleyball Commissioner for our local youth volleyball organization. And our two youngest, well, all of our girls played volleyball through it. So we felt invested. And she was giving back to the community and doing her thing and just ended up with a lot of things on her plate. And she was completely overwhelmed. It was draining all of her energy. So she would talk to the other volleyball moms, she would say, this is wiping me out. Do you want to take it from me? Do you want to do you want to do this? And everyone kept saying, No, it was like, You need to change your approach. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It doesn’t have to be a negative experience. You don’t need to lie to them, but just share what it entails, share what the upsides are, and let them make a decision. But if you sell it as you know, this is so time consuming and is totally drained me. I think the example he gave in the book is a board member saying you know, I’ve I’ve been affected finite, you know, negatively financially, you know, in serving on the board. Nobody’s gonna want to take your spot, right. So you don’t want to scare people away with being over engaged, maybe? Yeah, yeah.

Amanda Lea Kaiser 44:35
And then then a staff members, we can also get a handle on that as well. You know, if, if we feel like it’s hard for volunteers to volunteer, we can look at their roles. We can look at the time commitment, we can look at dividing things up we can but just like it just like we were talking about with new members, you know, we want to take new members and give them that little nudge to help them keep progressing along their membership journey, you can do the same thing with volunteers. I love thinking about the volunteer journey as well. And, you know, start the volunteer journey with a micro volunteering opportunity and then slowly build. And I think a lot of time as a staff people, we tend to think about volunteer roles is very specific things if you’re on a board, if you’re on a committee, those are volunteer roles, but to members welcoming as a volunteer role speaking is volunteer role hosting as volunteer role, right, and, and so, so think about all of those non traditional things that we want to do to engage members like like being a chat ambassador, and have that be a volunteer role. And, and so, you know, maybe people are spending three minutes volunteering, or 10 minutes volunteering, or 30 minutes volunteering, but now you’ve just flex their muscles so that if there’s a chance to do another volunteer role, they might take you up on it. Right.

Brandon Burton 45:59
I love that. So I like asking everyone that I have on the show this question that as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, and I’ll broaden that and say, just associations in general, how do you see the future of chambers and associations going forward?

Amanda Lea Kaiser 46:17
Yeah, I see it really bright. There’s, there’s such a need, you know, when, whenever there’s a need in the community, there’s the business propositions, I think the future is really bright. And it’s just about how to engage differently. And I, from the research, I see that the answer is in the experiential side of things. And again, I think I said this a little bit earlier that I would wager to bet a lot of your chambers are offering a ton of value. And if you offer even more value, that’s great. But it might not get you to engagement, what you got to start doing is focusing on those positive experiences. And so a really quick way to think about that in this is something that you can play with you with your staff or talk to your board about or your committees about is just start saying, you know, the any, anytime somebody starts asking what do our members need, you know, what do our website visitors need? What are our attendees need? What do people need? Start laying or layering on that question, which is how do we want them to feel? And so? So when you ask, how do we want them to feel? And this is an easy thing that we that you could try even tomorrow, right? The next time you’re writing an email, think, how do I want the reader to feel and you kind of lock in that emotion in your brain that you want them to feel happy or joyful or hopeful or something like that. And when you type your message will actually totally change in quality? In in, that’s a really great experience. So just always, always keep asking, How do I want people to feel? How do I want them to feel when they come to our website? How do I want them to feel when they walk in the door of our event? How do I want them to feel when they’re advertising or hosting or sponsoring or any of those things. And that that’ll that’ll get you to the experiences part. I

Brandon Burton 48:11
love that that’s a good gauge right there just to kind of make sure that what we’re doing is the right thing and getting people to to engage and feel good and hit on those emotions that brought them there in the first place. So Amanda, I enjoyed this conversation and having you on the podcast, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect or share where they can find your book or anything like that, that you’d like to share with the audience feel free.

Amanda Lea Kaiser 48:42
Yeah, absolutely. So you can find me at amandaleakaiser.com. It’s Amanda, Lea, and then Kaiser like the role.com. There’s information about the book there. It’s there’s information about speaking, there’s a newsletter all about engagement that I put out once once a week that you can sign up for if you’d like or you can type elevating engagement into Amazon or any online bookseller and you’ll find my book there.

Brandon Burton 49:09
I love it. Well get that in our show notes for this episode. But like I said, this has been an engaging conversation and I hope the listeners feel so as well. And that it may prompt them to make some micro wins to put themselves out there a little bit to touch on those emotions understand why their members are there and what can you do to make them feel the way that you’d want them to feel. So Amanda, thanks again for being with us today and for sharing your your insights and for for sharing this book as well.

Amanda Lea Kaiser 49:41
Thank you so much, Brandon, this has been delightful.

Brandon Burton 49:45
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Money Matters for Nonprofits with Melisa Galasso

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Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Melisa Galasso. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.

Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

And now, your host, he had a paper route in middle school. He’s my dad, Brandon Burton.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to chamber tap podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Kris Johnson, President and CEO of the Association of Washington Business in Washington State to learn how Holman Brothers has provided value for him.

Kris Johnson 0:47
Well, Doug and Bill at the Holman Brothers have been a key ally in growth for my professional career working at three different chambers, a local chamber, a regional chamber, now a statewide chamber. And they’ve been the ideal solution, whether it’s a comprehensive training program, whether it’s working on individual sales growth, quarterly check-ins with the team, the ability to grow members has meaning more assets for the organization, more assets means we can do more things to serve our members. They’ve really been the perfect solution for us, a trusted resource partner and a growth partner for us all along the way. So hats off to Doug and Bill for their great success. They’ll be a great partner for you as they are for us.

Brandon Burton 1:28
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Doug & Bill Holman know how to diagnose and solve
member recruiting issues faster and better than anyone else, and they want to put
that knowledge to work for you and your chamber. Learn more at HolmanBros.com.

You’re joining us for episode number 201. We just got over our 200 Mark, which is a big deal. But before we jump into this episode, I just want to remind everybody of the chamber pros planner giveaway that we’re doing right now with Izzy west. So if you’re interested in getting a free copy of Izzy’s Chamber Pros Planner for 2023 What you need to do is leave a review for Chamber Chat Podcast, in Apple Podcasts or even on our Facebook page. Take a screenshot and email it to me at Brandon@chamberchatpodcast.com and you’ll be entered into a raffle to win one of 5 2023 Chamber Pro Planners.

Our guest for this episode is Melisa Galasso. Melisa is the founder and CEO of Galasso Learning Solutions LLC, a CPA with nearly 20 years of experience in the accounting profession. Melisa designs and facilitates courses in advanced technical accounting, and auditing topics, including not for profit and governmental accounting. Her passion is providing high quality CPE that is meaningful creates effectiveness improves quality and positively impacts ROI. She also supports essential professional development, audit level training and train the trainer efforts. Melisa is a 2020 enterprising Woman of the Year Award recipient and was honored as a 40 under 40 by CPA practice advisor in 2017 2018 and 2019. She was also named the 2019 Rising Star by her region and AWB Oh chapter received the Don farmer award for achievement and technical content, content instruction and earn several other awards for public speaking and technical training. Melisa, I am excited to have you with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast, I’d love to give you a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and to share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Melisa Galasso 3:35
Well, thank you so much for having me, it has been an absolute pleasure, super excited to be here. So something interesting about me is that I have always been a pretty avid traveler. And when I started abroad, I managed to make it to every country in Europe outside Portugal. So I really did a very concerted effort studying abroad to also study other places outside of where I was studying, which was in Paris, France.

Brandon Burton 4:01
That’s awesome. Now many people can say that they’ve got that that much travel under their belt and experience in other countries. So very good. I like it. So I mentioned that I’m excited to have the on the on the podcast. I’ve had a few chamber professionals reach out to me, I guess more than a few over the last couple of years. specifically asking for episodes regarding finances at their chamber. Think through the pandemic and just a lot of turnover we’ve seen in the chamber industry. A lot of these individuals often had been serving on their board and then found yourself in the chamber presidency EOC and are trying to get their head wrapped around the finances at the chamber. So I think this episode is really going to provide a lot of value for those newcomers into the space but also some that have been around that maybe just need to take a little internal audit of how they’re keeping track of their finances. So I’m sure we’ll we’ll get into that but tell us a little bit about at your company, what it is that you do kind of your focus and in what you’re all about.

Melisa Galasso 5:05
Alright, well Galasso Learning Solution provides continuing professional education to CPA firms in particular. But we also support governments, nonprofits and other organizations. And we try to provide training that is practical and really engaging after I obviously, am a licensed CPA, but I spent many years in the profession and I went back to learn about instructional design. And so I have my master trainer designation, I have my certified professional and talent development and my certified speaking, professional license. And so really trying to make learning more fun, because CPAs are required to get on average, about 40 hours a year of CPE, which is more than most doctors and lawyers are required to have. So it’s a profession filled with the goal of learning. And there’s always change going on. And so I really want to make my courses as practical, engaging, and really relevant. And so we use needs assessments and things of that nature to help people really figure out what are their goals for the learning, and then how can we achieve that in the most fun way possible?

Brandon Burton 6:04
Absolutely. Yeah. I imagine with the ever changing tax codes and things like that there’s a need for that continuing education, but it also keeps you gainfully employed.

Melisa Galasso 6:15
Some days, we say that this is like the Full Employment Act for our trainers.

Brandon Burton 6:20
That’s right. That’s right. So for this episode, Melisa, she’s also the author of the book money matters for nonprofits, which I didn’t mention is I read through her bio, but for this episode, we will focus a lot on why she wrote the book, what the book covers kind of the purpose of it, and we will dive into that discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.

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Izzy West 7:57
Hey, this is Izzy, publisher of the Chamber Pros Planner, a weekly monthly planner featuring weekly meeting notes, habit tracking and 12 week goals. Last year, Emily Roberts of the Madison Area Chamber commented on the Chamber Pros Facebook group. “This is my first time getting this planner and it’s great. It’s specific for chamber professional and it has lots of notes room checkout Izzy West’s website to get a better picture of it.”

So you’d heard her go to TheIzzyWest.com to learn more about the Chamber Pros Planner. I have a video you can watch of me slowly flipping through the book so you can decide if it’s right for you.

Brandon Burton 8:30

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Melisa Galasso 9:45
Well, I would always tell you I’m not I don’t feel like a writer. And so it’s very interesting always now to be referred to author because it is 300 pages of length there but what really was the impetus to have this for years and years similar to you got questions like How do I get my board to engage, but predominantly, my client base is filled with CPA firms. And so they’ll go out and do an audit, they’ll do a review for a nonprofit for our chamber. And then when it comes time to present the financials, they’ll hear things like crickets. No one wants to ask any questions, nobody, you know, they’re like, can we just approve this real quick and make them go away? And obviously, my clients really want to engage, they want to help, they want to answer questions, they, you know, the people that I work with are phenomenal CPAs, they really do care about their client base. And they wanted them to have a basic understanding. And so people would call and say, Hey, do you have a book that you would recommend for board members? Or do you have a book you would recommend about the basics of nonprofit accounting. And what I always struggled with is there are amazing books out there on governance, right? If you want to read about nonprofit governance, there are great phenomenal books out there. But there’s only usually one chapter on accounting. And then when you got an account, when you found a nonprofit accounting book, it was like in the weeds, debits and credits, like bookkeeping, and most board members don’t need that, they just need to be able to understand what should be on the financial limits, they need to be able to interpret the financial statements, and they need to be able to evaluate to the into the financials, they don’t need to actually do the bookkeeping. And so as a result, I always had trouble really making a reference. And then I guess the silver lining of COVID is pre COVID. I spent I you know, three to four days each week on the road training. And so I didn’t really have any free time. And then all of a sudden, my evenings and to afternoon started becoming more and more open mornings and everything opportunity. Who knew that there could be something positive come out of being grounded for almost 18 months. And so I decided to write the book and the publisher was interested, again, also getting lots of feedback that there wasn’t that book out there. And so we wrote the book.

Brandon Burton 11:51
All right. So what would you think the idea being that this podcast is for Chambers of Commerce? I mean, most of the listeners are chamber professionals of some sort, whether they’re the president CEO, or the director of sales or marketing or vice president? Who would you say the ideal target is for this book? Is it going to be the board member? Or is it going to be the chamber President, to kind of have both sides of what’s being presented? What, what would be your thought?

Melisa Galasso 12:20
I actually have learned that while the book was really written with board members in mind, and a lot about what the board responsibilities are fiduciary activities, and fiduciary responsibilities, etc, what I have learned is that a lot of people who are in the space actually are interested in learning. So I’ve had multiple CEOs say, You know what, I actually could use this like I know for, I’ve also kind of leverage either my finance person or the treasurer on the board. And I haven’t necessarily always understood some of the terminologies or when something was changed. And so anyone who really wants to understand the inner workings, I would be an ideal reader. It’s not written super detailed. And you know, I’ve actually had very recently got an email from someone who said, they actually give it to their accountants who are stiff people who haven’t necessarily been exposed to nonprofit accounting before, because when you come out of school, even as an accountant, you learn commercial GAAP, you learn how to do commercial accounting, and we don’t have an owner’s equity in a nonprofit, we don’t have a lot of that we do have some special things like contributions and other things that are kind of harder. And so this really gives people an opportunity, who just want to have a better understanding of these types of accounts, what it is that they could be learning. And my favorite part, honestly, of the book is all the examples, we reached out to so many amazing nonprofit to have beautiful financial statements to give examples, because you can always make XYZ nonprofit, right? But let’s look at some real entities and really look at the differences that are out there in presentation and how you can do this, and really make it more interesting. And so I think that a lot of people benefit just from the opportunity to look at things maybe differently than how you’re doing and say, Oh, I like that, or I like that. Let’s, you know, let’s see what we want to do.

Brandon Burton 14:03
I love that. And that’s a lot of what we do on the podcast here is presenting different ideas of how one chamber does something and you can call it rip off and duplicate and do it your own chamber. So I like to use real examples of other nonprofits. So those that read can rip off and duplicate what what makes sense to apply that you’ve alluded a couple of times now between not having a section on debits and credits and not having owner contribution contributions or disbursements. What type of differences are there between a nonprofit set of financials versus that of a corporate business or personal finance?

Melisa Galasso 14:39
Absolutely. So the balance sheet looks a little bit different because we still have assets and liabilities and that’s pretty consistent between all entities. But the leftover in a corporate environment would be owner’s equity, and so you worry about things like dividends and retained earnings, but nobody owns a nonprofit. So we use net assets. And so net asset classification is really simple. Orton to nonprofits and so what some things are restricted and can only be used for certain reasons, right, you can’t walk into Target and say, Here’s my $50, if you’re lucky, and here’s how I want you to spend it, right. That’s not really how it works. And so restrictions are very unique. And so we talk a little bit about why we present them differently on the face. And so you always have typically multiple columns we looking at or multiple rows around those net assets, we also use something called a statement of activities, which could also have a bunch of different terms. So that’s like your income statement. But because we’re not looking to make a profit, we’re not looking for that calculation. So we’re looking at the change in net assets. And so we’re still have revenue and expenses, we still have gains and losses, those things are the same. But how we present them is different. And so it’s a really pretty presentation. And one of the things about the statement of activities is it could look pretty much like anything, you can have a single column, you can have multiple columns, you have comparative years, you can have summarized years, you can do pretty much anything you want with it. And so I think that’s what makes it so interesting is you can kind of find what’s the right way to tell your story. And that’s what a financial statement supposed to do is tell your story to your user. And so what presentation you use really depends on the organization and your users. And then I think the other big thing here is that there’s lots of guidance around Kunshan, accounting, and other types of things that are sort of unique to nonprofits that you will see. And so we take one chapter just to go over the basic financial statements, what they are a little bit about each of them. And then there’s a chapter for each one going over what are some of the key elements that you should be seeing there were are there unique elements for each, for each standard, and for each presentation? And then at the end, we actually have an analysis. So okay, if you have all of these right, you have a statement of functional expenses, which again, makes a nonprofit environment, like what do I do with this? There’s all these numbers, right? There’s all these words, right? And sometimes it’s overwhelming. Yes, I know what an asset is, and know what a liability is, but like, what should they be? Or what ratio should they be at? And so we have an entire chapter on how to evaluate and what to do with that information. So what are some ratios you can calculate? What are some trends you can look at? What are some KPIs that you can use to evaluate organization? And this way, you can look forward? What do you want to do? What do you want to achieve? Okay, how do I benchmark how do I get there, and to make it a little bit more practical, because again, just versus overwhelming to a lot of people that like, I’m not a numbers person, and like, you don’t have to be a numbers person, you this is adding, subtracting, you may get some division in there. But this is not AP Calculus, right? To the imagination, I tried to make it really very practical on what we could do to to really engage. And then would you talk a little bit about the role of the CPA and what kind of services that they could provide? Because everyone always says, well, I need an audit. And I’m like, nine times out of 10, you probably need an audit, you might need a review or a compilation. Or you might need an audit, but you might need a single audit or Yellowbook audit. So what are all these terms? Because again, it’s like alphabet soup.

Brandon Burton 18:03
Right? So it I think you’re right numbers can be very intimidating. People have that limiting belief. I’m not a numbers person. So when you look at a board, what is the financial and accounting responsibilities for board? And how much do they really need to know to be effective as they operate as a board member?

Melisa Galasso 18:26
So that’s a great question. Because a lot of times people think they’re signing up just to move the mission forward, which is absolutely true. You know, a lot of the boards that I sign on, people are super passionate about it, right? When you think about a chamber, right, you are really trying to in that area, make a difference for those organizations, and you’re trying to make sure those members are well represented as you go through it. And so you’re really passionate about that. So maybe you sign up for the board, because you have this idea of something we can do in the future, or you have this desire to make a difference from a development and fundraising type of experience. And you’ve all these different opportunities. And then someone says, oh, and by the way, we have a finance committee, and they’re everyone, they go good, I’m not going to be on that I have no responsibilities, right? That’s not my thing. I’m not going to do that. But when you sign up to be a board member, you have legal responsibilities for the duty of care, the duty of loyalty and the duty of obedience as part of being on a board. And so automatically, each state sets the rules. There’s a model role that’s across the country, and then each state kind of takes it and adjusts it for the state. But when you’re doing this, you’re talking about going to meetings, right duty of care is showing up and participating. Not just voting yes, even if you don’t understand what’s going on. But really looking at it. Updating policies is another big thing because when we think about this policies are what helps first off those who work in management achieve their objectives, right, they have to be told exactly what the rules and regulations are there. And then we have things like the duty of loyalty which are conflict of interest, very important in the nonprofit world to ensure that We are really putting the the board first as we go through this and requiring everyone to disclose any potential conflicts of interest. And then the big one, which is the duty of obedience, which is making sure that you are doing all the things that are required, whether that’s filing a 990, whether that’s filing financial statements, whether that’s getting the required audit, but making sure that we’re fulfilling these responsibilities. And so everyone who serves on the board has this responsibility, not just the CEO, not just the chair, not just the person who’s in charge of finance, or the treasurer, right. We always like that. That’s the treasurer’s job. But everyone has responsibility for going through and really understanding the finances now, do they have to be a financial expert? Absolutely not. But you are responsible for ensuring adequate financial resources, because if you don’t have the resources, you’ll never achieve your mission. And so you have to really make sure that you’ve got the right finances out there.

Brandon Burton 20:58
Right. And I think to the, to the point of maybe feeling a little bit overwhelming, I see a lot of chamber boards will say, well, let’s get a CPA, that’s a chamber member on the board, and they’ll handle the finance. Right.

Melisa Galasso 21:09
That’s your job.

Brandon Burton 21:10
That’s right. That’s right. So then you just kind of bury your head in the sand. I say they the board members, but what are maybe some important questions that board members should be asking whether it’s to accountants or, or to that CPA that’s on the board that is handling the finances, just to make sure that things are going right.

Melisa Galasso 21:28
Absolutely. So obviously, when you’re looking first off at you know, picking it, there are lots of questions you should ask around, does the CPA firm have experience with chambers, right? So, you know, you may be a nonprofit specialist, but you might not have any experience with the expectations of a chamber. And so a lot of times, one of the things you can do is to start off by picking the right CPA firm, for whatever type of service you’re going to be providing, making sure that they are providing the right level of services, seeing what kind of educational opportunities that they have for really making sure that their right fit that they have the right, you know, requirements that they have a strong quality background, and just kind of getting into that. So those are sort of the starting points. But then they should be asking, especially their CPA, what are the risks that they see for the organization, right, so many CPA firms will tell you about what some of the, you know, what they’re seeing out there, what potentially from internal controls, they might be lacking, that they could consider what they see other chambers doing. So again, I love the idea of just kind of borrowing and using whether you know, best practices,

Brandon Burton 22:36
they’re proud to say rip off and duplicate. So

Melisa Galasso 22:42
clearly recreating the wheel here, like we saw this work really well. And when it’s another organization, similar size, similar type of, a lot of times you get a lot of really good benefit from that. So benchmarking coming from the CPA firm can be really helpful. You can also ask questions like, Are we properly staffed? Do we deserve, you know, just enhanced department, which could be a department of exactly one person? You know, do they have what it takes to get this done? They can also talk about trends that they’re seeing and sort of expectations for the future. Because again, as long as they have that right experience, and working with other chambers, and they’re seeing what’s going on in the industry, they can be really helpful at saying, Okay, well, this is what we’re seeing out there, you know, this might not be impacting you yet. But this is something that you want to see, you know, could be on the horizon for you. And then a lot of times they can get into, you know, sort of the governance type of items as well. So they can talk about internal controls, they can talk about timekeeping systems, they can talk about different types of transactions where they had concerns, but you have to ask, sometimes there’s required communication. So those are typically in a letter that if you don’t read it, you’re not getting a lot of benefit out of, but the conversation with the CPA is super important to have that two way conversation. And, you know, CPA firms come to present they present the financials, and they’re kind of waiting for you to ask questions like, oh, you know, how are we doing? Or how do we compare? And then they’re like, Okay, let’s vote to approve this. So these people don’t, you know, make us feel uncomfortable about their knowledge of finance versus our knowledge of finance. But I’ve never met a CPA who didn’t want to answer questions or provide guidance, because really, you know, they’re in it for the benefit. And people who work with chambers and other nonprofits really want them to be successful. And learning from all of that experience that they have can be super important.

Brandon Burton 24:29
So I feel like the media has done a great job at really highlighting negative aspects of nonprofits, especially when these you know, really greasy stories come out about different fraud and different things. And so then when you hear the term and nonprofit, for me, sometimes I think, okay, what is the true what’s the governance, what’s the purpose? What does this nonprofit do? It makes me scrutinized a lot more before donating money to a nonprofit. But how big of a Problem is fraud in nonprofits and what kind of board do to help hedge that?

Melisa Galasso 25:06
I mean, especially when a nonprofit is smaller and doesn’t have as many people, you have less segregation of duties and segregation of duties is one of the most important internal controls, because it makes sure that one person doesn’t control everything from start to finish. And when we see these nonprofits who try to be great about using funding for its purpose, right, and its mission, it tends to try to scale back on those more overhead type items. And so they try to do more with less, and then all of a sudden, one person is receiving the checks and depositing the checks and reconciling the bank account. And then all of a sudden, right? You know, that you look at this, and they have absolute control. And if you you know, you just search the word nonprofit fraud, it’s pretty sad out there. And there’s a great book on, on what we call pink collar fraud, which is very interesting has a high impact on nonprofits, because it’s tend to typically, right, somebody who you would never suspect, right, you’re like, oh, no, the person at church who reconciles would never steal from the church they love the church was the same thing with chambers, that person would never do anything wrong, because they have this trust. And so trust with that internal controls is a really bad setup, we tend to see a lot of this because the person typically doesn’t go into it for the intent of committing fraud, but then the opportunity kind of overwhelms them. And then the next thing, you know, they’re so knee deep. And we see a lot of stories where they’re like, Oh, I’m just borrowing the money, right? Now I need it, I’m gonna pay it back. And then it just never gets paid back. And it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And so focusing on internal controls is so important, even the smallest organization, because that’s really what the board can help with. The board can be that oversight, they can be the checks and balances, they can review the balance sheet racks, they can review invoices, they can review executive expenses, if there’s no one else who can do that. And so it’s a great opportunity for the board, once they realize where there’s potential for fraud to step up to the plate and say, Okay, I’m going to help with that. And even large organizations to still be very active in that governance. And in those internal controls, even if you have a well staffed organization, that’s really thriving, there’s still opportunities there. And so to know what’s kind of going on, and even some of the, you know, the funding that we saw come out of the federal government over the last few years from COVID, we’ve seen a lot of fraud, because it was just seemed like the money was just available and could be used for anything. And it really wasn’t supposed to be used for just anything. And so we’re starting to see more and more stories about nonprofits who maybe didn’t use the funding the right way, or really wasn’t eligible for it. But there weren’t good checks and balances by the federal government to prevent that money from getting out there. And so again, checks and balances are huge portion of really being that sorting on that board.

Brandon Burton 27:57
Right. And I think, you know, oftentimes the person who commits the fraud, who’s the guilty one ends up being the, you know, the bad guy. And really, it’s just, it’s not a fair situation to put them in where it’s all the trust, and no checks or balances, and it puts them in a really tough situation. And a lot of times, you may be dealing with a lot more money than a person will see in a lifetime, you know, at a really effective nonprofit. And it’s just it’s not fair to put that much burden on one person.

Melisa Galasso 28:26
And it’s unfair, just because it’s an expectation that is unrealistic to, for that person to have. And so they almost feel like, well, you know, they’re asking me to do so much. And therefore, you know, the entitlement kind of kicks in the rationalization kicks in. So I think it’s something that we always have to be careful of is that we all have responsibility for maintaining good internal controls, we all have responsibility for understanding the financial statements, looking at trends of cash is going the opposite way of what we expect asking questions like, Why isn’t cash flowing the way we expect? We had these great fundraisers, or we did this great event or our membership is growing? Like where’s the issue here? So we can kind of take a closer look at it, instead of saying, Well, I’m just not good with numbers. So it must be right.

Brandon Burton 29:09
Yeah. And you talked about having those KPIs. So as you have board meetings, you should be reviewing those KPIs and see where the direction the trajectory of your organization should be going. What are some of the maybe unexpected benefits that can come to an organization by their member by their board members understanding basic accounting and, and maybe unforeseen problems that come if they don’t understand basic accounting?

Melisa Galasso 29:34
I think one of the big benefits of understanding the basics is that when they’re looking at a number, you know, they can say something like, that just doesn’t make sense. Right? So that’s how we teach auditors to audit. We say use a little bit of intuition here. And so if you have an understanding how things flow from one statement to another, again, not all the debits and credits, but you understand how things should flow, then you should be able to say what just doesn’t make sense to me. Can you explain that? Or can you give me a little more of the detail? Or can you, you know, dive in and explain this. And so having just the basics having an understanding of okay, this should happen. And then this should happen. Okay? We know, we expect that as a result of this, we had really good strong revenue, we should expect that the balance sheet should see an increase in net assets, but we don’t. So what’s going on here? And so we can ask the questions. And so no one’s expecting you to know the outcome. I tell that to audit firms all the time. So when I teach CPAs, I’m like, I don’t You don’t need to know what’s wrong. You just need to know that something’s wrong. And then you need to ask questions, you need to do your due diligence, you need to follow up. And you need to use what we call professional skepticism, which is that sort of inquiring mind that, you know, not just taking everything at face value, but really saying Does this make sense? And if you don’t have a basis to start from, right, you just kind of numbers are out there, they don’t have any meaning. They don’t have any relevance, right? They’re just numbers, then you can’t have an expectation, right? So the number 100 is not a good number. It’s not a bad number. Without context, that means nothing. And so by having that basic accounting, you have the context. And not to do that. But to say, Well, I just don’t understand that, or, you know, we have you know, this is I expected to see this as exchange revenue, because based on my understanding, and I don’t see it reported here, like, why is this going in a different place? Oh, it’s being parked on the balance sheet. Because we haven’t earned it yet. Okay, we can work with that. But if we don’t have anything to start with, it’s just numbers, right? And numbers is just like data without information, you have a lot of it. But it doesn’t mean anything. And so board members can really take it up a notch, because they’re really the first line of defense for the organization. And you know, that we tell a couple of stories about when the board chose not to really be involved when the board didn’t rein in executive compensation when the board didn’t say, hey, that’s, you know, unwieldy spending, we look at the eventually it made it to the public, it was announced in a news story, and all of a sudden, the inflow of donations drops. And even all things that this organization has done, they’ve never returned back to where they were pre announcement of this, because it’s hard to build back trust, right. And so people who don’t trust the organization aren’t going to be members, the organization, they’re not going to, you know, participate in it. And so you’re not going to have the funding that you need. And so the way that we develop trust is by having that active board and having the CPA involved to do some due diligence, whether it’s a review, or whether it’s an audit, depending on what would be appropriate for the size of the organization. That’s how you get the trust that people say, okay, yeah, I’m gonna give my money to this organization, because now I believe that they’re going to use it for what it’s supposed to be used for. And we’re going to do what we’re supposed to do with us.

Brandon Burton 32:51
Right? I love that. So I’d like asking everyone I have on the show what might be besides picking up your book, what might be a good tip or action item for Chamber Champions listening? Who would like to take their chamber up to the next level? What What might you suggest?

Melisa Galasso 33:09
I always say that one of the best things you can do is ask questions. And so asking questions is not a sign of not being aware, right? So people like why don’t ask questions. I don’t want to look stupid. But I feel as the people who don’t ask questions who actually are at a disadvantage? So if you’re not sure, ask, and if you want to learn more, ask because so many people would want to share that information with you. So I’m always have the asking questions is a good thing. It shows that you are inquisitive, it shows that you care. And so if you’re not sure, ask and if you want to learn more ask because there are so many things that you can do. And such a positive impact you can make simply by asking questions.

Brandon Burton 33:50
Right now, it definitely shows a level of engagement as you ask and desire to learn more. Thank you. So I also like asking, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Melisa Galasso 34:06
I think especially as a small business owner, myself, I think that the especially as we look at the economy and a lot of what’s going on there right now, I think they’re gonna have an even larger influence. Because you know, as a member of NABO, as you mentioned earlier, we talked a lot about the importance of the chamber locally and the work that they do to support us. And so I think that we’re going to see a growth in this area as there’s been a surge of small businesses coming out of the pandemic, a lot of people not going back to their previous corporate roles, I think there’s going to be an opportunity for additional education for you know, the camaraderie that comes from it. I think a lot of people, especially when you’re doing this for the first time, I know when I started out on my own, it felt pretty lonely, right. And so going out there and finding my Navajo sisters and finding other people who had done that really gave me that opportunity to say okay, yeah, there is, you know, camaraderie there is socialization out there, I’m not all by myself. People have done this before. And they’re great to ask questions of and lessons learned and that willingness to share. And I think that that’s going to be a big boom in the future. As we see all of these, you know, post pandemic organizations, particularly small businesses, who want to be successful going forward, are going to lean on the chamber, as we see changes in shifts in the economy, as we see changes in how, you know, federal funding is being provided. I think the chamber is everyone’s first line. Okay, teach me was it to help me understand network and and show me some people who have been successful here?

Brandon Burton 35:39
Yeah, I appreciate that. Is there anything that we’ve missed in our discussion today, I know there’s a lot in the book, and you can dive in deep, but any anything else you want to make sure that listeners know about or hear about before we wrap up?

Melisa Galasso 35:54
I just think the biggest thing that I would say is really have goals for your organizations and benchmark them somehow KPIs, etc. Because you don’t know it’s sort of like your map forward. How do you know if you’re being successful only if you are measuring it. So there’s so many, like, measure what matters types of, you know, books out there, but it’s really true. If you don’t know what you want to achieve, you don’t know if you’re going to achieve your mission. And so if you set the things leading and lagging indicators that can help you say, okay, am I heading in the right direction? And is it working, you’ll be so much more successful, and not all of them have to be finance related. But having the right financial ones can be indicative of having a really nice set of resources to better serve members.

Brandon Burton 36:39
Great, I love that answer. I’m glad I asked the question of goals, and have those indicators to keep track of your goals. As we wrap up here, Melisa, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who would like to reach out and connect with you, like pick up your book work with you what would be the best way for them to reach out and connect?

Melisa Galasso 37:00
Sure, first off, I’m very active on LinkedIn. So you can find me on LinkedIn. It’s Melisa last and Melisa with one s, if you want to learn more about the books, they have very exciting money matters. MoneyMattersfornonprofits.com is the website that you can go to to learn more about the book and, you know, get a little bit more about what the deep dive is how we are trying to help others. And so those would be the two ways I always I’m super active on LinkedIn, we try to keep people up to date on what’s changing in the accounting world and in the audit world and really help people be successful. So we share a lot of free information there. And so I’d love to connect with all of you.

Brandon Burton 37:37
Yeah, everybody can go follow Melisa on LinkedIn, there’s a lot of good value there whether for yourself or to point your board to so they can be actively engaged in your organization’s finances. That is a great resource. But Melisa, I want to thank you for spending time with us today here on Chamber Chat Podcast and you provided a lot of value. I’m excited for chambers to dive in and read your book and to connect with you and learn more and to be more fiscally responsible at their chambers and to set those goals and see their organizations move in a positive direction. So thank you for sharing your your knowledge with us today.

Melisa Galasso 38:14
Thank you so much for having me it was an absolute pleasure.

Brandon Burton 38:17
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