Γεια everybody and welcome back! Today I have a new card making video and I will be sharing 3 cards using products from the latest release by Waffle Flower. This is actually part of a blog hope there are lots of giveaways and tons of inspiration. Make sure to visit my blog to find all about it. So these are the 3 sets that I will be using for today and I will be using the matching dice as well and let's start with the first card for today where I will be playing with the birthday kitty's stamp set. I will be playing for the background with the confetti stencil you will get those 2 stencils in the set and it consists of 4 areas that when you layer one on top of the other it creates the whole confetti background and since you are supposed to layer those stencils one on top of the other I'm going to make my life easy and I will use the silicone mat here so that I can align both the stencil and the paper on the top right corner and if you take a closer look on the stencil which is really hard to catch on camera there are engraved colors there which are actually just a suggestion however I'm going to follow them exactly so you can see how it works. So for the first layer it says blue and I'm going with a blue shade here I will be using my Distress Oxidings for all the coloring You can use any brush that you like any blending brush to apply the color I just find it easier since they are so tiny areas with my finger dabbers and also notice that I did align the paper as well as the stencil on the top right corner of my mat. This way when I have to rotate the stencil and place it again in the perfect position I don't have to fuss around I just know that by laying it on the top right corner I'm good to go. So I did the second layer with green then I went with pink and finally I'm going to finish it off and I will go with yellow here You can of course play around with different color combos You can even go monochromatic if you like and you can even use glitter through that which is something that I will do for the second page just to add a touch of shine Now in the new release there is also a dye that cuts out exactly all those confetti pieces You can even lay the editis going to match perfectly with the stencil There are lots of things that you can do but I'm fixing and matching those products but I'm going to leave it as it is I find it really beautiful and I'm going to use a rectangle dye to cut it out I'm going for a slimline card a mini slimline card This size is quickly growing into me and it becomes one of my favorite sizes to work lately and now it's time to do the stamping I will be using the birthday kitties You will find many kitties along with many sentiments for birthdays There is also a mirror image which means that you can play around with that, you can make one of those spinner cards if you like so you have images for both sides or even you can make a window card and when you open up the card you can see the back which is going to look just fine Anyway, I'm not going to make any of those type of cards but I'm going with those two mirror images They do have the exact same shape but they don't have the exact same design They have different designs of presence I'm going to color everything with my alcohol markers and I grabbed my tree blends which are my favorite lately I get a lot of questions about those alcohol markers These are by Crafter's companion from the Spectrum Royal collection So anyway I'm going to color everything of course inspired by my cut ginger and I'm going to use the magic dye to cut it out Now since this is a mirror image there is only one dye included in the dye set So I'm going to use once to cut out the cut that matches with the shape and then for the mirror image I'm going to lift the cut towards my light which is what I'm doing here I'm just working outside of the frame and then I am aligning the dye at the back I'm going to secure it with some washi tape So when I place it on my platform you see there is no dye but there is a dye actually hidden at the back and secured with a washi tape You will see that once I run it through the machine it's going to work just fine The easiest way to do that of course would be to first cut out the shape flip it at the back and then stamp and color your image Sometimes I just like to do things the difficult way You can see how it would look if you stick them back to back So anyway for this cut I'm not going for that look and I'm planning to have those cuts as if they were jumping from the side of the cut When you use the confetti stencils you will find that it leaves an empty gap This is perfect for stamping your sentiment I went with one of the sentiments from the same stamp set and as I'm putting things together I do have to add some foam tape at the back I just wanted to talk a little bit about the coloring This is where I realized that I didn't like the combo of the cut on the right It is green and red and it kind of reminds me of Christmas If I had to do that again I would definitely use two different colors But anyway I'm just going to go with that I have a yellow panel here which is 6.25x3.25 and this is going to be the finished size of my card I'm going to stick that directly on top of a pre-folded white card I always like to have white on the inside of my card so that I can easily write my message I'm also adding some highlights here and there some dots, just some finishing touches I'm also going to add some crystal gems just to add some shine and I'm going to call this card done Here are some close up photos on my mini slimline card and again the size is 6.25x3.25 So that was the birthday kitty's stamp set but there is a puppy kitty's stamp set as well with matching ties which I'm going to play with for the next card For this card I'm going with a long dog and there is also a mirror image for this design There are also more mirror images for the puppies included but I'm going with a long dog which I'm planning to make it even longer than it looks at the stamp So let's start I'm going to stamp that twice I'm going to color it using the exact same colors Again I'm going with my alcohol markers The idea here is to use the front part with the head from one image and then all the way up to the cupcake and then the bottom part from the other image and you will see how I'm going to put them together So first I will use the matching die to cut out both my images and then I'm going to work on a panel This is a navy blue panel to create my background Again using the same confetti stencil set that I used in the beginning This time I'm going again with Distress Oxide Inks and if you haven't tried that Distress Oxide Inks work beautifully on top of dark cardstock and you can see here that you can even see yellow This time I'm going for a more masculine color combo I started with yellow I'm going to go with green now and I don't even dip the brushes or ink pad I know that I use these finger dabbers for my oxides and they still have some ink on top of them so I don't even bother to grab an ink pad sometimes Now I'm also going to use blue and there is also the fourth layer that I need to apply color but instead of using Distress Oxide Ink for the fourth layer I decided to go with the shiny paste You can use glitter paste you can use Nouveau Mousse or any type of paste that you have that is going to add some shine Here I'm going with Glacier paste and the color is Quicksilver I'm applying it over the openings with my spatula always pick up the product with the back of your spatula it does make spreading it around easily and then I'm going to put back in the jar all the excess and I think it binds everything together nicely it adds some shine on my background and I hope that the camera catches the shine this Glacier paste dries quite quickly So anyway I'm going to work on another panel here which is bigger than the previous one I did ink up the edges with the darker color and I did use the same colored cutstock but since I didn't have find any darker one in my stash So first I did use faded jeans and this time I'm going with black suit and these were both Distress Ink For the sentiment I went with the stamp from the same stamp set as the puppies and I used this stitched rectangle to cut it out this is from the A2 Lazy layers die set and I'm going to use foam tape at the back of my panel so that I can pop it on top of the darker one now the finished size is again 3.25x6.25 and of course I'm going to stick those panels on top of a pre-folded white card since I always like to have a white inside On the card so that I can write my messages I'm going to place at the center the sentiment and then on the left and on the right I'm going to tuck behind the dog this way it's going to make to give the illusion that the dog is longer and of course I have to add foam tape at the back of the dog to pop it on my card I always like dimension so I'm going to stick everything down and although I'm quite happy with how long the dog looks the look that I was going for I don't like the top right corner here it looks unbalanced it doesn't have something there so this is an afterthought I'm going to use the balloons from another dog I will stamp them and color them I will use the matching die to cut them out and for the balloons I went with this green that I did use for the cupcake and the heart of the dog as well as yellows and I always like to repeat the colors on my images this way I'm going to tuck everything together and I placed them on the card as if the dog is holding them with his tail I'm not going to add anything else on the card after all it does have that beautiful shine at the background and here are some close up photos for my next card I'm going to use the stitch diamond panel die and I did cut it out from white cardstock I absolutely love this background it gives you the option to tuck in between those little windows lots and lots of small leaves and flowers for a really beautiful card and I'm going to use lots of images from these simple stamps stamp set that are matching dies available as well which I'm going to stamp and cut out now since I don't know from the beginning how many of those stamps and flowers I will need I'm going to stamp a bunch of them I'm going to color them with my alcohol markers and cut them out I'm going to work with a vanilla card base today so I'm folding the crease there it's going to lay nice and flat and then I'm going to place on top my panel for the panel I will use foam tape at the back and I'm going to bring in my big roll of foam tape and I'm going to use my scissors to cut it into thinner strips so that I can easily stick it at the back as I'm going to place this panel on top of my vanilla cardstock although they are not so contrasting colors white and vanilla however you can still see the difference with that dimension and I absolutely love the effect and now I'm going to bring in all my cutouts try to place them in different areas I'm just auditioning here I'm not sticking anything down and after I'm happy with the placement I can go ahead and stick everything down with my glue now there are so many different ways on how you can play with this panel you can have pattern paper at the back and you will be able to see the wonderful colors coming through the windows you can also ink up a background there I just went clean and simple for today but I'm sure you can find so many different ways on how you can use that now this is a lovely card it's perfect for any occasion just add a sentiment I decided for my sentiment to spell the word hello and for that I did use the retro outline alpha die which I absolutely love I am using it on a project that I'm sharing tomorrow on my mixed media Tuesday as well and I absolutely love the font as the outline So anyway I'm going to ink up the bottom with a little bit of pink I'm trying to get the same shading as I have on my flower so that everything is matching nicely and I'm going to stick them along the bottom of my card and I'm just aligning the letters along the stitching line at the bottom which makes it super easy to have them nice and straight As a finishing touch I will spread all around the card and here is a close up look on the last card for today absolutely beautiful So I hope that you had fun today that you got inspired you will find a full list of all the supplies that I used down below the description area and don't forget that this is part of a blog hub Blog hubs for a new release are always fun because you get the opportunity to see all the products in action it helps you decide if something is the best for you you get tons of inspiration you have a chance to win prizes you will find there all the info regarding the blog hub So these were the projects for today I hope that you had fun, that you got inspired Thank you all so much for joining me today and I'll see you tomorrow with my mixed media project


So Google recently announced this thing called IP protection, which is the same thing as NAT catcher or G NAT catcher, if you're familiar with that project from last year. And this IP protection is actually gonna be making its way into the Google Chrome browser's default settings at some future release. Now, if you've been paying attention to Google's moves over the past few years, then you know that this is something to be skeptical about at the very least and possibly even a bit concerned about since this is something coming from a company that's been acting pretty evil. And at the same time, they're saying that this new feature is for your protection and that it's for your privacy, okay, a company that makes a lot of money off of people not knowing much about digital privacy in current year. So let's read through the description of the GitHub page for the project to get an idea of their intent and whether or not it's genuine. As browser vendors make efforts to provide their users with additional privacy, the user's IP address continues to make it feasible to associate users' activities across origins that otherwise wouldn't be possible. This information can be combined over time to create a unique persistent user profile and track a user's activity across the web, which represents a threat to their privacy. Moreover, unlike with third party cookies, there is no straightforward way for users to opt out of this kind of covert tracking. In addition to being used as a possible tracking vector, IP addresses have been and will continue to be instrumental in routing traffic, preventing fraud and abuse and performing other important functions for network operators and domains.  I mean, an IP address can definitely be used to track someone across the internet, but it's not as good of a tracking point as a data point to track someone as you might think. So for one, the vast majority of people who use the internet are doing so with dynamic IPs. So when you sign up for consumer internet service, your ISP, they don't just give you your own unique IP address that you have while you're using them. Sometimes they'll offer you that as an additional service for an additional fee, but if you aren't gonna be running a website or some other kind of web service out of your house, whether it be a public, private one, whatever, then a static IP would be a waste of money. And even then, there's still ways to host stuff like that out of your house with dynamic IPs. And it's gonna be especially expensive if you're paying for something like a static IPv4 address because there's not as many of those. So most of us consumers, we just use dynamic IPs which are leased to you for some period of time and then eventually they're gonna get leased to someone else and then you'll have a brand new, totally different IP. And you can also change this IP address yourself for free, sometimes at least, by just disconnecting your router for a few minutes and then plugging it back in. So this will basically make that IP refresh that your ISP does for you automatically at some time interval, just trigger automatically then. So needless to say, an IP address alone is not that great for tracking you, especially if you have multiple folks that are using your internet because everyone is gonna have the same IP or at least the same IPv4 address. And you can check this yourself by just checking what your IP address is on your computer and then on your smartphone, just make sure that they're both connected to the same Wi-Fi network. You probably have family from out of town that's staying with you for Thanksgiving, all of them using up your precious bandwidth. But again, they all have the same IP. So that IP tracking, it's not something that I personally would lose a lot of sleep over as an internet privacy enthusiast, especially when you can also use VPNs to mask your IP address as well. I mean, there's a whole lot of solutions for blocking IP tracking that don't involve sending all your traffic through Google servers. So now let's take a look at the goals here that are outlined in the proposal, right? So Chrome is reintroducing a proposal to protect users against cross-site tracking via IP addresses. Yeah, okay, we pretty much read those. So the goals are to improve users' privacy by protecting users' IP addresses from being used as a tracking vector, and then to minimize disruption to the normal operations of servers, including the use of IP addresses for anti-abuse by first-party sites until there are alternative mechanisms in place. So this part here, for the anti-abuse by first-party sites, that sounds like Google wants to not only handle the proxying of your traffic, right? This is obviously what that's talking about, but it sounds like they also want to proxy server traffic as well. And this is kind of further confirmed down here when we get into the privacy proxy, where they say we're considering using two hops for improved privacy. A second proxy would be run by an external CDN, while Google runs the first hop. Yeah, I mean, that sounds good in theory, but if the CDN is going to share data with Google or hell, even if the CDN is just owned by Alphabet, right? Because remember, Google is the child company of Alphabet. So if the CDN and Google are gonna communicate with each other, it's kind of meaningless for them to technically be two separate entities. So CDNs, if you're not familiar with them, they're commonly used by people that are running websites and web services and things like that to make them faster and more resistant to denial of service attacks, especially distributed denial of service attacks.  And it also helps it load faster because if somebody in, say, India is trying to load a website that's technically hosted in New York, loading all those images is gonna take a lot longer, or not a whole lot longer, but you know, longer than if the heavier assets are hosted on a server that's actually in India. But the really important thing about CDNs in current year is that they're the only way to really defend against advanced DDoS attacks, especially ones that are utilizing botnets with thousands, tens of thousands, however many machines in them. Because even if your site is fairly lightweight, right? So let's say that you made sure to make a website that's not bloated, all your web pages are one megabyte or less in size, and you've got a gigabit connection to serve this website over, it'll still only really take a few hundred people just asking for that web page again and again, each second to slow your web page to a crawl.  Like they're talking about using it as a CDN kind of to fight anti-abuse, but then right here, there's a whole anti-abuse section. Okay, so to limit abuse of the proxy, we're considering the following non-exhaustive set of anti-abuse protections, and first one, of course, is to require a user account, right? To have the user authenticate to a proxy. So now we're able to correlate your traffic to a user account, and of course, it says right here, the proxy shouldn't be able to correlate traffic to a user account, but I mean, come on, this is Google we're talking about. They already do that, like if you surf Google, if you're using the web, especially in Google Chrome, signed in with your Google profile, everything's already being tracked to your Google account. And so Google's saying that they're not going to use this proxy service to basically do a global man in the middle attack on everybody to track users. It's a lot like a fox promising to guard your chickens and not eat any of them, especially when you look at the absolute state of Google, because they're losing this ad blocker battle, you know, which honestly they did to themselves in a big way. If they didn't strizen effect themselves, you block origin would probably still be just a, you know, not super well-known, lead hacks or browser add-on instead of mainstream. This combined with Google jacking up the prices for YouTube premium and Google Drive, and they're also deleting old emails and they're even starting to charge people on YouTube just to watch 4K videos. All of this tells me that Google is having some revenue issues. And so now they're trying to sell you something that they don't need and also obviously trying to fight back against ad blockers and basically be gatekeepers on both sides, right? Gatekeepers for the users that are trying to access the internet and also gatekeepers for people who want to run websites and have some kind of CDN to keep themselves or keep their sites actually available, you know, not getting taken down from DDoS attacks. They're trying to offer you this global proxy service that's going to hide your IP address from everyone except for Google, which is one of the main companies that you probably want to hide your traffic from.


Hello and let's talk about the Indian Premier League. The tournament began on Saturday, September 19th in the United Arab Emirates in the most unusual circumstances. It's being held in a bio-bubble with no real spectators. On the other hand, if you see the matches, you'll be hearing a lot of spectator noise and cheering, which has been added by the broadcasters. One of the early responses by fans was a bit of ribbing of the players who seemed a bit unfit with some of the memes bordering on the lines of being offensive. There have been reports of players being injured to raising questions of what kind of preparations actually took place before the tournament. And then there's of course the question of Indian cricket at large, especially the Ranjit trophy. What happens to that? We talked in news clicks, Leslie Xavier, on some of these issues. Thank you, Leslie, for joining us. So the IPL is kicked off and of course, a lot of viewers tuning in definitely, although it's not being held in India and the circumstances are quite different to say the least. And there's of course been some talk about the general fitness of players, a lot of speculation about that. So what's your take on the first few days of action? How do you see it going? What do you think are the standout aspects that have come out over the past few days? The funny to the absurd, I would say, but yeah, let's, I mean, when I talk about IPL and the matches, of course, matches happening, businesses are coming out. And the nature of the game is such that invariably, the matches tend to be a little interesting.  And of course, sixes, fireworks, all these things happen too. And broadcast star has ensured that there is a bit of a interest because they have introduced proud noise, which has left divided opinions divided also because it looks odd that the stands are empty in the visuals, but it's buzzing. The stadium is buzzing. There's a lot of cheer. Yes. So it's and the players are not obviously not hearing it, we are hearing it. So I don't know, it looks completely surreal. It looks odd, surreal is a more positive word, I think. And so, but, but to start with, I would like to talk about generally how the setup has been for media to cover this even. So BCCI, as we had discussed a couple of weeks back in one of the talk shows, they have come complete control over the situation there. It's a bubble, it's a quarantine center also. So no, no news come out comes out unless the BCCI stands, it's approval. So media is not allowed citing health concerns and quarantine. I mean, the protocols and so. There won't, there won't be pre-match press conferences as per the BCCI rules. Post-match online media conference happens where registered journalists can tune in and the BCCI provides with interviews, but you have to apply and go through them. And images also, they provide rights for images which can be used. So all these things, narrative is completely controlled. It becomes like a big boss house if you ask me. Yeah, everybody is in there and then the drama happens and all that. Let's see, let's see how it unfolds as far as, I mean, off-field things are concerned because as we all know, Middle East, UAE, Dubai, it's the hub of a lot of bookies and people who generally try to manipulate the outcome of sport. So let's see how that goes. But as far as the narrative and the media access is concerned, this is how it is. And action gets streamed onto our TV sets or mobile or laptop screens. And the league has started. So right, so one of the questions was specifically about the fitness. Now it's a bit of a dicey discussion, so to speak, how to conduct that discussion without going into cliches and stereotypes and, you know, some of the more problematic ways in which it's often framed. So what's your take on the issue? Are you dragging me into body shaming now? But professional sport is a controlled world. And it's not about body type or body shaming asset. It's about performance also. It's about remaining injury free. So fitness, I mean, it's not about six packs either. I mean, sport related fitness is what I would be more concerned about. Yeah, a lot of memes went around on Twitter, on social media about even in the opening match CSK versus Mumbai Indians. And Roy Sharma was, I mean, visibly plump, a couple of other players as well, Manoj Tiwari, sorry, Manoj Tiwari was also, I mean, so these players were targeted online, online, I mean, social media. But Roy Sharma, if you look at his fitness, then he struggled a little through the match. He played well, but the problem was he was coming back from an injury. Last February, he got his hamstring injured. And then after that, he has not seen any action at all. He must have gone to rehab and fitness drills and all that. And then the lockdown happened. So a full-fledged fitness workouts or running or next session or anything, everything would have been absent for him. And then when you look at how the league, as progressed before, I mean, the preparation stage for the players, it's been slightly aphazard. Now the board has set the IPL governing council has set protocols for the eco bubble assets. But there were no set systems for the teams to prepare these players. So everybody went there, went by their own plans assets. So some teams are more better prepared, some teams are less prepared. But I mean, again, there's no team preparations assets because the players were all convened at the last moment except for CSQ when they had a small camp in Chennai. And so in such a situation, what happens is that there's no control over the fitness of the players for the team. So a direct comparison can be made with how the sport big sport restarted in other disciplines. For instance, football, the clubs got their players into their own special quarantine or eco bubbles and they started training them fitness wise. They they ensure that they are getting getting on the boys slowly so that they don't get injured. And then they started training after ensuring that all the players are free from from coronavirus and then full-fledged match simulation trainings happened. Then a few training matches happened. Then they got into competitions as such. So this was a full elaborate one and a half month process. Now the dates of IPL were announced one and a half to two months back. They were expecting this. So they should have probably been a bit proactive about fitness as such. And not surprisingly, there has been an injury list as well already. In the first week, you have six players who are injured. And the list, I am expecting the list to grow. So I mean, I'll just name out some of the prominent players who are in the injury list as such. Mumbai Indians, you have Nathan Colton, I was injured. Royal Challenges, Bangalore, you have Chris Mowaris, who is sitting out. Sunrises, Hyderabad, Kane Williamson is sitting out. Mitchell Marsh is out of the tournament. He is completely ruled out. So injured is right-hanging ankle in the very first over my level play. So again, Ishan Sharma is injured. R. Ashwin, again, he played the match and he injured during the match while he died. Chennai Super Kings Ambatri Raidu is injured. And Raidu, again, if you remember, 2019 World Cup, he was dropped. I mean, he was not considered for the Indian team and after that, he got angry and he retired from all forms of cricket, except for IPL. So he is coming back into competition from there. It's like more than a year. So he is injured. He has some answering problems. Going Blabo, he has seen action. He is coming from the Caribbean Premier League, but he picked up a knee injury there. So obviously, his preparation before that must have been lacking. He has a knee injury. So this is going to be one of the biggest problems for IPL and the teams and also cricket in general, because some of these players are big players for the national team. Once tournaments open, once bilateral series open, these players would be missing in action there as well. And their personal careers are also in jeopardy because IPL didn't plan it well as far as training them and as far as the fitness of the players are concerned. And this is just a physical aspect of it. Later, I was talking to one of the mental coaches who was there in the IPL, he's probably right now with one of the team. And he was telling me that he is expecting more issues on the mental side as far as players struggling with pressure and feeling with pressure and all this in the latter half of the tournament. And also the isolation doesn't help at all. Isolation doesn't help at all. And that's another aspect to it, which should be addressed, which IPL would address, I guess, because they have no choice. But it's going to be one tricky league, unlike any other normal circumstances when you look at the Indian Premier League. And in this context, any other interesting international examples that you can think of, how fitness is being dealt with?  But that is, I mean, it's not been unprecedented numbers as such, because football is an injury-con sport and when high intensity, high quality action happens, some players are bound to pick up some needles or so. But otherwise, things have been so systematic that, and due to not be, because they were not careful or they were not systematic, no injury has been as happened as such. We saw a US happen being completed, the women's champion pulled out of the French Open, which is going to start this coming weekend. Naomi Osaka has always struggled with hamstring injuries, so she had taped her leg up when she was competing at the US Open also. And yeah, of course, a player has to also take the schedule very carefully these days. So we are talking about a couple of, I mean, at least a couple of months, I mean, the gap would have been there between two grand slams. And we are talking about US Open just finishing and then the French Open starting within a fortnight. So I mean, it's going to be a huge toll on players, exactly why Nadal possibly didn't play in the US Open and he's trying to focus on his favorite surface. Anyways, but if you look at generally tennis players, they were all on the boil. Yeah, it's an individual sport, it's easy probably for them to train and maintain their physical intensity coming into the tournament. But still, like I said, it's a trap getting into comparison between sport, but cricket is more forgiving as a sport, I would say. And on the day when tennis uppercans played Mumbai Indians in the opening match of this season's IPL Saturday, we saw a tremendous physical feat happening in France to the France second last stage, stage 20th, the eventual champion. He rode a ride which can be termed as a ride of the century or maybe ride of a life, like many objectives. So Kade Pogacar, 21-year-old, became the youngest to the France champion post World War II era. And he did that by cutting the deficit by 57 seconds. He was behind, at that point the leader, again a fellow Slovenian Roglic, he was behind Roglic by 57 seconds. He overcome that deficit and then he took a lead of one minute as well. So he cut two minutes in that single stage which was a time trial and it was unprecedented because it was a climb. He also was not using any technological aids like a power meter or so. So he was going just by physical instinct alone and post this victory to the France, there were some stories about his training and preparation. So April it was when his team manager asked him to stay off cycling for a week because he was already showing signs that he speak. He said that you cut down the intensity a little because we want to peak up to the France in France from September. So you are talking about April, so what were our cricketers doing in April? So you are talking about professionals in various sports, different sports, but you are talking about professionalism. As a professional player you are getting paid so much of money to perform. So even under unprecedented circumstances, even under lockdown, there is duty just like as journalists. So if you are in lockdown also, we will try and maintain our work environment, our work networks, our work system so that we do justice to the salaries that we get, we do justice to the professional tag that we have. Absolutely. So that's a direct comparison I would like to make rather than comparing the physicality of the sport as such. It's a professionalism that cricketers should maintain. And the nature of cricket as such which is forgiving in a way, that's why they get away with it as well. Right, absolutely. And Leslie finally, of course there is a lot of discussion about the IPL, but what about the Renji Trophy and the domestic seed in India otherwise? It seems to have completely vanished from discussions and coverage. So what do you think about it? In fact that was the first thing that we would have discussed because we should have, we should and the entire country should discuss because that is where cricketers come up from IPL. Yeah, IPL is a stage where players get picked up from the Renji youngsters and then they show the metal and then they get into the national team set up or they get into teams and become domestic IPL stars as such. But Renji Trophy is where the real talent is. Renji Trophy is the platform where youngsters come up. Renji Trophy is the backbone of Indian cricket. So there's no plan as such as far as I know so I mean till date whether the upcoming season of Renji would be held or not. I mean understandably it's a difficult task if you look at the magnitude of the tournament as such the teams involved, the traveling that would be involved and all that. So I understand BCCI being a little careful about it, but what I don't understand is it's not about being careful as such there has been no discussion, there has been no planning, no contingency as such. Again a direct comparison can be made with football, the all India football federation then again it's not a perfect federation as such, but at least they are making an attempt. So they are staging the iLeague second division now in the coming week and they are going to stage the Indian Super League in Eco, Bubble and Goa. They're going to stage the iLeague which happens to be the second tier tournament now in Calcutta in an Eco, Bubble in Humber in late in the year. So there and slightly short and cut trail tournament you're looking at there ISL would be full-fledged. So attempt was made to at least the top three, four tiers of the Indian Domas Kirtchak has been maintained. Of course the age group and tournament and all the discussion has not happened yet and it's again a huge task. So then G, BCCI, it's clear the priority here is the money factor. So profit is not the money spinner for BCCI. IPL is and broadcast issues are there and broadcast rights and broadcasters pressures and so that prompted BCCI to push for this league to be staged so much so that even the World Cup was dropped. So it looks unlikely that the Renji Trophy would be staged this season and that would be unfortunate for the entire lot of picketers because their livelihood, their career, some of them would be hitting critical junctures in their career where this season or the next two, three seasons would make or break them, would help them come up into the national team or maybe relegate them into, but I mean so they are more unfortunate. But in general if you look at it for Indian cricket it would be very unfortunate if the Renji doesn't take place and that seems to be the likely scenario at the moment. Thank you so much as you were talking to us. That's all we have time for today. We'll be back tomorrow with more news from the country and the world. Until then, keep watching NewsClick.


Thank you all for joining us. Welcome to Navigating the World of Donated and Discounted Resources for Nonprofits. My name is Becky Wiegand, and I'm the Webinar Program Manager here at TechSoup Global. I'm happy to be your host for today's event. We have three esteemed speakers joining us today, so I'll quickly get into an introduction of each of them because I'm really excited that we have these three folks on the line for the first time really bringing these three organizations together to talk about the landscape of donated and discounted resources and technology out there for nonprofits. Many are also available to other kinds of charities, foundations, public libraries, depends on the different programs, but there's a lot out there that you can be accessing to help benefit your organization and save money so you can use that money instead toward meeting your organization's mission and needs. The first of these speakers is Gail Samuelson-Carpentier who is a Chief Business Development Officer at TechSoup Global, my co-worker Gail. I love being able to work with her. I don't get to do it often enough, so I'm really happy to have her on the line. She's been here really since the inception of TechSoup's strategic structure of our product donation program which allows nonprofits to find a large array of donated technologies in one place while still reflecting each donating company's unique philanthropic goals. So she's the one working with companies like Microsoft, Adobe, Symantec, and has a whole team of people that are out hunting down new deals and new discounts and new donations for the sector from all of these different companies out there that provide technology resources and more. So we're really glad to have her joining us. You'll also hear from Matthew Pardoni. Matt is the business director, I'm sorry, the director of business development at Independence Sector where he manages their affinity program. They're a nonprofit coalition of over 500 nonprofits, foundations, and corporate giving programs with a mission of advancing the common good by leading, strengthening, and mobilizing the nonprofit and philanthropic community. He'll be talking specifically about their affinity program today where you can also receive discounted, valuable offers from different organizations and companies out there to help you again save money so you can use that instead for meeting your mission. Lastly, we'll be joined by Lynore Freeman. She serves as Good 360 Senior Director of Nonprofit Relations where she oversees several departments comprising of their retail donation partnership, membership, and order processing. With over 20 years of experience working closely with nonprofits, retailers, schools, and faith-based organizations, she is one of their premium people providing customer support. So we're really glad to have her on as well. She'll be talking about what they have to offer. And in general, all of these folks will be talking about the different options for you to access donations and discounts to save your budget. And you'll see assisting with chat my co-worker, Allie Bazdikian, in interactive events and video producer here at TechSoup. She'll be joining us on the back end to make sure that you're heard and that your questions are captured. So Gail and Allie and I are all located in TechSoup's headquarters in San Francisco right over here on the map. And Matt and Lynore are located in DC slash Virginia. So go ahead and let us know where you're joining from today. I always imagine that I'm in the Bahamas. So I put my little arrow down there that I'd love to be there. Let us know where you're joining. And while you do that, I'll go ahead and take a quick look at our agenda for everyone. I'll do an introduction of TechSoup briefly since Gail is going to dive more into TechSoup and what we do for those of you who are new to us during her presentation. But she'll also be covering a broad overview of donated discounted resources for nonprofits like said including TechSoup, but also mentioning JourneyEd, Digital Wish, NMMA, Google, and many more. And then we'll have Matt talk about independent sector, what they offer through their affinity program, and their annual conference which is right around the corner. Then Lynore will take us on an overview of Good360 and their resources. We'll have time to share some additional resources and have time for Q&A throughout. So feel free to ask those questions like I said as they come in. We have folks joining us from all over the country. We've got folks in Ohio, Texas, Washington, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Illinois, Montana, Canada, New Jersey, Colorado, Nevada, all over. So thanks so much for being on the line. For those of you not in the U.S., be aware that some of these programs may be directed at folks who are in the U.S. If we have programs that are in Canada, we'll try to let you know. But we can't know everything about all of the programs that other companies and organizations offer. So we definitely recommend checking them out even if you're not U.S.-based. So quickly, TechSoup Global is a global partner network of 63 NGOs around the world serving more than 120 countries with technology resources, support, and knowledge including events like this webinar. You can see where we are on all of these dots on the map. All the little green ones are where you can connect with Netsquared local groups where you can meet up with other like-minded nonprofit professionals and talk about the technologies that help your organization reach your full potential. We serve organizations around the world to the tune of 615,000 NGOs reached. So we are almost everywhere and we're happy about the work that we do that has delivered nearly $5 billion in technology products and donations to the NGO sector. And not just NGOs, I mentioned earlier, charities, libraries, and foundations as well. You can learn more about our programs and in particular our product donation programs at TechSoup.org which Gail will get into in just a couple of minutes. But before we do that, I'd love to know from where you have previously thought donations or discounts for your organization, have you already reached out and utilized some of the resources that I've got listed on the screen? There are probably many others that I can list as well. And even within TechSoup's programs alone we represent donations from all kinds of companies like Microsoft and GrantStation and Symantec and Adobe. But go ahead and click on the ones that you're already familiar with or maybe utilizing it at your organization. You can select as many as apply to you. And if you have others that aren't on the list, feel free to chat them into the box because these are great resources for all of us to know about. And there may be some that you've accessed that we aren't familiar with. Many companies have their own donation programs that they may administer directly. So maybe you've gotten donations directly from Dell or maybe you've gotten direct donations from a local business or a grant making organization has donated in kind expertise to your work. So let us know. And I'll give just a few more seconds to allow everyone to participate. And then we'll go ahead and bring Gail on the line and have her take us through a broader overview. We have a couple of people commenting that they've gotten donations from local businesses or received grants. We have one person mentioning E-Rate which applies mostly I think to libraries. One person mentioning APCUG. Another person mentioning Adobe, Microsoft, Home Depot, Contessa, United Way in Kind Center. So this is great. And we can chat these back out so that you have a list to follow up with that goes above and beyond what we'll even be covering today. This is not intended to be all-inclusive but we want you to have a good idea of what all is out there for you to access. So with that, I'd like to go ahead and have our first presenter, Gail, join us on the line and tell us what's all out there. Help us navigate the world of these donated and discounted resources for nonprofits. Welcome to the program, Gail. We're so glad to have you. Becky, thanks so much. We get to see each other on a regular basis but she's right, we don't get to work together nearly enough. And in fact, I've had the pleasure of sharing the time of information I'm going to share with all of you on the line in very different locations. I think this is the first time Becky we've ever done this for a TechSoup audience. Isn't it true? Yes, this is the first time that we've all gotten together to do this for TechSoup's audience. So long overdue. Sounds great and I can't tell you how happy I am to have Matthew and Lenore here because I think it's important that nonprofits understand that there are an incredible array of organizations that are there waiting to help you fulfill your mission. And certainly, as Becky mentioned, I have had the pleasure of being the key business development person here at TechSoup. I need to admit it's been 14 years. So when I started, there was no such thing as online philanthropy. So we had the pleasure, the team that was all starting at that same era to create something brand new. So whether you love TechSoup or you think some of the things are strange or peculiar, you get to either say thank you or blame me, mainly so. Thank you guys for showing up today and wanting to learn more. The slide we're looking at gives you a sense of what we have collected underneath the TechSoup umbrella. And as Becky said in her earlier great overview, we exist to help bring together resources, knowledge, training, forums, webinars. We know that the average small nonprofit has budgets of a million dollars or less. That's not a lot of money in the 21st century to operate on.  By bringing these wonderful companies underneath our umbrella we can combine education with access to donation and discounted rates. So this is a chance for you guys to ask any questions in chat if you have particular questions about any of the company offerings. What I can tell you is that at the end of each fiscal year we wrap up our programs and there are still piles of resources that could be distributed that have been taken up by the sector. So the first thing that you should do is make sure whoever handles your IT understands how many things you have at TechSoup whether it's as simple as going into looking at the Pitney Bowes offering if you're still doing direct mailing or Cosvox if you're doing online fundraising and event management. Those are all things that people may or may not recognize. You'll see a lot of promotion about the names that we all know, the Microsoft, the Adobe's, the Semantics. So it still bemuses me that on the forums I get people saying, oh, when are you going to have QuickBooks? QuickKit for people. And two, it makes QuickBooks. You'll find it here. So if you have any questions about particular company offerings this is a self-serve process. It seems like a good number of you have already registered on TechSoup. That's the first place you would begin. Once you are in our system once we have validated your organization by your mission, by your physical location, by your legal status while we've captured your operating budget, you can then click through and place anything in your checkout card. At checkout you'll find out in seconds if you qualify for a donation just like our own universe. Becky may be interested to I donate too. I may be interested in her philanthropy but we're not going to mirror each other. Each of these companies have determined for themselves who's going to receive their philanthropy. Many of them are incredibly generous but at checkout you'll know in a second if you qualify if you don't. At that time in the vast majority of cases you're paying a small administrative fee which comes back to TechSoup which enables us to cover all of our expenses. It generates a good chunk of our operating capital so we can continue to do online content and programs and outside the U.S. expansion to be able to help more nonprofits. So I don't see anybody here that has questions online about these particular programs so let me go a little bit further here. So this is part of the experiments in addition to bringing on new partners all the time. I wanted to let you guys know this is a secret so don't share it with anybody. It's just for the webinar attendees. We have just in the process of finishing an agreement with Western Digital they are going to be bringing some hard drives online that you'll see on the site in the next month or so so we're very excited about that. I usually try to keep one or two secrets for webinars so you guys can feel like you're on the inside loop for things. Boost is another one of those secrets. We launched this about two months ago and we know that for many organizations and you're trying to get your handle on how do I benefit from TechSoup. Boost is a way at one very small fee you get access to a whole array of products that we take the admin fee down to zero. There's special hardware offerings with deeper discounts. There's access to really great advice from people who know the nonprofit landscape. There's a $25 voucher you can apply to request and there's a lot more so if you're interested in getting some hand holding and getting some of the best ways to start working with TechSoup Boost is something I would highly recommend you take a look at. Going on to the next thing here's another experiment that we just launched not too long ago. This is a company called JourneyEd they also run the Academic Superstore. This is a family of purely negotiated educational discounts. Now unlike TechSoup where you're used to getting things for pennies on the dollar this can go all over the map. Some of these discounts are up to 85% off retail some of them are maybe 1% or 2% but what we've been able to do in working with JourneyEd and their unique family of companies is that they have allowed those educational discounts previously only made available to schools and to students. You can now as a nonprofit get access to that wide array of opportunities that give you a chance to really again save money, get more technology at a lower cost so you can put more funds back to mission. So we as I think a $10 admin fee you can request this on TechSoup you'll get access to a co-branded private site and then you from there can make your request but again this is not the same as TechSoup so make sure when you're going online do your due diligence. Shop intelligently but we think that you'll find a huge array of really great resources that are things that you may not necessarily have gone through and been able to take advantage of. And I'm looking at a note here from Sandy online. Hi Sandy, thank you for joining us today.  In our case you do absolutely need to have a final letter from the IRS giving us your EIN number so I don't know if that will be true. For the other groups I'll let them weigh in on that question when Matthew and Lenora are talking but for our purposes here at TechSoup you have to be active in the IRS database to qualify so thank you for letting us know. Going on TechSoup sure if you are looking at needs and resources to make yourself more effective go to TechSoup. I wouldn't have spent my last 14 years here if I didn't believe that but there's lots of other great organizations and normally in this part when I do this for outside groups I do talk about independent sector. I talk about good 360 but I pull those out because I figured these guys can talk more intelligently about their own groups than I can but there are lots of people as I said out there waiting to help you. One group that I'm particularly fond of is Digital Wish. It's a small nonprofit based up in Vermont and they are working directly with teachers in the classroom so if any of you work in education or you know that there are other activities going on that touch schools in your universe that there is in fact a place where you can go donate as a parent or somebody who is interested in the school to support a teacher's fund to get resources into their school so you can shop for a classroom. You can take advantage of a wide array of activities and resources and so if you haven't gone to DigitalWish.org you should and I think it's also a thank you for putting it up on the chat line. It's also under.com but you have both options. Also for those of you that are a little more adventurous these are organizations that represent key manufacturing or international groups that bring in together types of functionality so whether it's housewares or realtors or manufacturers or the toy industry. Each of these organizations when you reach out to them and these links should be clickable back to those organizations on the PowerPoint. This is something where they have access to not consistent inventory. When you come to TechSoup you're going to be working at programs that have inventories available 365 days a year so whenever you need them you can get access to it. These folks will probably have inventory that goes up and down if you have a particular program, a campaign, you're opening a new children's center. You might go back to them and ask for specific assistance and they are sometimes able to help sometimes not but it is definitely a group that you should be thinking about checking on, building your own bookmarks to say hey when I have this need let me contact the people that congregate this type of functionality and they can help you reach out to places you wouldn't normally get access to. I'm so pleased to see in the overarching analysis slide that you've had Becky that many people have already taken advantage of the good programs at Google for nonprofits. This has been an interesting overview because you have so many people that obviously know Google and I recognize I've got to update this logo Becky because this is the old Google logo. They changed that just recently. But when you're looking at Google you have to think through not just one or two things but you can take advantage of all of them. So whether you're wanting to promote an activity, your organization, their ad grants will help you tell your story more effectively when you're looking through search engine optimization and visibility. If you're working in building a brand or telling your story by a video, your YouTube program is just brilliant. The apps for nonprofits, if you're not using traditional software on computers and you're wanting to do things in the cloud, it's a great suite for you guys to take a look at. Some people love it. Some people have things that don't work for them and that's part of why in TechSoup and in this presentation we point you to lots of resources. We know it's rare that one resource fits everybody's needs. And the most important thing here is that your needs as an organization get met not that you're shoehorned into the solution that fits 90% of the people out there. If you're looking at telling your story in terms of physical footprint or doing something in terms of environmental issues or if you just wanting to show a changing landscape, the Google Earth program, I've had a chance to work closely with that group. Both are really great about hands-on assistance, giving you a chance to understand their tool. And certainly the one today by Google, their mobile fundraising platform is another option of dozens out there that you can use to try to, again, tell your story, generate interest and make your organization more sustainable. The other one that we just finished, Dreamforce, so we were just chatting about our colleagues, Matthew and Lenore, based out near DC so we were discussing before this presentation started about traffic issues with the Pope in DC, we had our own variation of that in San Francisco over the last week or so with Dreamforce, which is the International Congregation to Everybody on the Planet who uses Salesforce. So we've all had our traffic issues. Salesforce has from day one been able to donate key resources to nonprofits. What I will tell you is that if you're needing to collect your data and if you don't have an active CRM, this is a wonderful resource. It is, however, a complicated resource. And so like anything else with technology, make sure that you have the resources to put it together, to use it effectively, to be able to make sure if you don't have the expertise in house, there's going to be tons of resources out there of people, whether it's in Salesforce itself or other people, that can help you make that CRM a functional and fit for your organization. It is not a turnkey solution and it's something that requires some time and commitment. So just like you wouldn't want to change your house without careful thought and consideration, same thing should be true for how you collect your data. So hope your CRM will make that a better universe for you. And then going forward, here's something that a number of you have been throwing up in chat and this is worth spending a little bit of time. So if you have questions and you're thinking about how do I get asked and you're going, okay, appreciate the resources, good information. What do I do if I don't see what I need on this list? And certainly you're going to learn some more great information, some wonderful resources. But one of the things I can tell you, the least helpful thing and unfortunately the way most nonprofits begin this and hopefully everybody on this webinar are going to be people that have bypassed this but you would not be totally surprised to learn that many times a nonprofit person will walk into a company and look somebody in the eye and say, I'm doing really great work. I need you to give me X because I do really great work. Interesting, probably true, but not something that's going to be a compelling scenario for anybody. Certainly not for the person who's sitting there going, why would I be doing this? Because if I wanted to give to you, I would have given to you already. I don't know you at all. And so this is where I'm sharing a little bit of my personal philosophy about how you make those asks. When we started putting together a family of donors and when we started with TechSoup, we had two, when we were working initially, a little bit of Microsoft and a small program with Lotus Notes. It is, everything's grown from there and I think if I were going to put money on it, I would say a big part of it is because I have been able to develop a triple win philosophy that I'm happy to share with you guys that I know works. Triple win is simple. It means that you want to go through and say, all right, I need X. What am I going to do with it? How is it going to change my organization? How is it going to change the delivery of my mission? What benefit is the world going to see if I get this? Once you have that captured, then you need to talk about in your own head or you can write it down, either way works, is to say, then how are my people that are being served by this organization going to benefit? What step up does this give me? What advance does it give me? Once you have that in mind, the hardest part then is to say, and I want to get this from the Best Buy down the road, you need to then give them equal time and consideration. That Best Buy is going to be asked by, because each Best Buy has a certain amount of local donations each organizational site can give you. So I'm going to use this as an example, and if you guys didn't know that you now do, you have to go through and then say, what's going to make this a win for them? I know how it's going to benefit my organization. I know that if I get this asked, what it's going to do for my recipients, then you need to think through what is it going to help this organization achieve in its own rights. So walk in with that answer first to say, you know, I would love to ask you for this. We are happy to do a photo shoot. We're happy to do an article for you that you can share with your in-house PR team. We would be delighted to showcase how we're going to be benefiting this Best Buy donation as we go through the event. We'll do signs. We'll put you on the website. Make it a win for them as much as it's a win for you as it's a win for your organization. So those are all things that really will make you stand out because you will be talking to people as a peer rather than to somebody with your hand out.  Any other questions that I can answer here? I see there's one C6's. At this time TechSoup does not deal with anybody but 501C3s. So that is unfortunately overarching dictate that we can't serve any organization within that group. But if you do have a C3 organization that's part of your organization, they can certainly take advantage of the TechSoup offers. Okay, don't see any questions regarding this making your own unique ask. Just want to thank everybody for their time. Certainly, we didn't get a chance to go through every resource that exists out there. If you're looking for places where you can get discounts or support, some of the for-profit options where you can get tech, if you don't find it on TechSoup you'll see here under for-profit. For non-profit resources, these are again hands-on organizations that support non-profit work, goes through, gives you advice, ideas, knowledge, collects great information, certainly does hand on consulting if that's something that's beneficial to you. And then just for those of you that have been listening to this program, this gives you again a quick snapshot with links to all the different resources. Some of the other things that I think you might want to take advantage of that we didn't have a chance to talk about under the for-profit options. You have just a couple to call out there on the bottom right-hand side, optimisely.org. There's a wonderful discount program. If you're working on your website and you want to do some testing to say, oh, is it better to use this picture or that picture? Is it better to use this headline or that headline? They have a resource that can help you a lot. Also going down to that last item for Udemy. Udemy is an educational content program and they have a packet of information where you can create your own content. If you want to educate your volunteers, your supporters, your new staff, and then they also have a cash grant program that can help underwrite your development. So that gives you a high-level overview. It's fast, I know, so I'm glad that you have slides available to you and if there's any further questions at the end of this presentation, you'll have my direct email. I try to be as accessible as possible. So please, if you have ideas on things you wish you could see on TechSoup, if you have ideas on how I can better benefit you on behalf of the whole nonprofit community, please don't hesitate to reach out. And Becky, I think I'm at time, so I'm going to pass this back to you. Thank you so much for that, Gail. A lot of stuff covered in a short amount of time, but really great resources. And don't worry, you will get the slides again. And for those of you who got that final reminder email shortly before the webinar, that also had the slides linked on the right side so you can open up the deck and click through on any of these links at your convenience as well. Just before we move on to having Matt start, on that question about C6s, that's for mostly Chamber of Commerce and real estate associations and civic groups. Even though TechSoup doesn't serve C6 nonprofits, we do serve C3s, but we also serve public libraries in the IMLS database or libraries with a C3 or if you have a Friends of the Library program that's a C3, and we also serve churches. Now many of these other organizations and companies that are listed may well serve C6s. So don't consider us the end-all be-all. That's just our program and kind of the construct of the relationships we have with our donor partners. But many of them may make donations available to you, especially your local community groups. If you're reaching out to somebody in your community and you're from the local Neighborhood Business Development Association, you may find businesses that are happy to donate to that because they have a local vested interest in seeing that community thrive. So never hurts to ask. And I really like your triple win advice scale. I think that's great advice to walk in with ideas of how it helps you, how it helps them, and how it will make everyone successful. So I'm going to go ahead and move this along. If you're asking questions, we are capturing them and we'll have time later on to get to some more. But I'd like to go ahead and have Matthew Perdoni from Independent Sector join us. Tell us a little bit about what you do at Independent Sector and a little bit about what organizations can expect to find through your affinity program. And he's going to actually show us where to find some of these resources on their website. So thanks so much Matt. Welcome to the program. Thank you Becky. I'm Matt Perdoni, Director of Business Development at Independent Sector. I'm very excited to be here today. And IS is really excited to be working with TechSoup in connection with two important IS initiatives that are upcoming National Conference and the IS Affinity Program. So I'm going to spend the next few minutes explaining each of these and how these resources can benefit your work. So the first, and I'm going to walk you through, I'll share my screen here and walk you through the affinity program as I discuss it. So the IS Affinity Program is a resource list providing a centralized location for the latest, not just in technology, but also professional services and a host of other useful tools for nonprofits of all sizes. So the program launched in May of 2014. And with seven partners at that time, it's really grown over the past year, plus year. Now we have over 15. And that's really been helped by identification from our networks about what's important to them, what they're looking for, and just general clarification of what a program like this should include. The concept is not new, but what we're really trying to do is come to the table the best and the most beneficial resources possible. So it gives access to resources that are specially designed to enhance and improve nonprofit operations. And we're also able to negotiate special discounts and exclusive offerings with our affinity partners. So typically the discounts are available to anyone in the IS network. And what that really means is you are an active and live user of our registered user for our website. So for those of you who don't have an active IS user account, when you go into the affinity program or elsewhere on the site, you'll be prompted to log in, just follow the prompts and create a user account, fairly quick and painless process. And once you do that, you'll have access to resources here in the affinity program as well as lots of other things that I have to offer. So one example is you'll go through the page here. And once you click on these Learn More buttons toward the bottom of each of the profiles describing the partners and what it is that they have to offer for TechSoup here, you'll click on Learn More button and it will bring you redirect you to the page of the partner. In some instances it's a general page that describes what it is the partner has to offer. And in other cases it's a page that's specifically dedicated to the IS affinity program partnership. And in almost every instance, like I said, the discounts of the special offers are made available to anybody in the IS network. So whenever you see IS members in community, that means that as long as you have that user account, you're going to be able to take advantage of that offer. In some instances it's a very few number of instances. It's limited to just IS members. And if you're interested in membership, you certainly are always interested in reaching new members. You can learn more about that in the membership tab at the top of the page there. So the most common way that we make people aware of the affinity program and exploring the benefits is through the webpage itself. We also have a newsletter that goes out that briefly lists the partner offers. That's to science really expand awareness of the program. So the results from the earlier poll really reinforce what we're at right now which is continuing to spread the word about the program, make sure that everybody knows about the resources that are available through it. And our relationship with TechSoup certainly is going to help us do that to a greater extent, broaden that reach. But we really want to hear from the users, from you as well. So please feel free to reach out to us. My contact information will be provided here at the end of the webinar. Feel free to reach out with any recommendations about the matter in which the IS network is made aware of – in which people like you are made aware of affinity program offerings for the addition of new members, recommendations for new members. And if you have any recommendations like I say or also if you're interested yourself in becoming an affinity partner, we're always very interested to learn more. And again, we really want to make this the most valuable resource possible. And as we continue to expand and look to fill this out and look to fill it out in specific issue areas, whether it's technology resources for public policy professionals or for folks at the leadership level, we really want to make sure again this is the best that it can be for your sake. So any and all feedback is definitely encouraged and requested. And there was a question earlier about C6 eligibility for us. Again, for most of these offers it's going to depend from partner to partner. But basic threshold is do you have an IS user account? From there for the most part it's in some instances it's wide open, others it's just nonprofit generally. So C6 is C3, C4 is C5. C1 through 21 or wherever we're at right now, everybody's welcome. So that is the brief overview of the affinity program here. The next thing I'm going to talk about just briefly is the IS National Conference. If you go to ISembarks2015.com, which you'll see at the top there, that is the microsite for the 2015 conference that will be this year in October, Miami. Again, it's from the 27 to the 29. So it's preceded by a day-and-a-half pre-conference program, the Public Policy Action Institute, then we get into the regular conference program, shaping up to be a fantastic event. Again, this year like every year I'd highly recommend it to anybody in the sector throughout the event hall and opportunity to engage with providers of donated at this kind of technology through our exhibit hall, during our initial session program, and as part of the regular conference program. Really our conference is the, I would say, the sector's premier networking event. But that really shouldn't overshadow the caliber of the content that is delivered each year. So TechSoup is deleting a session this year, preparing to be hacked on October 27th at 4 p.m. It's going to discuss the most effective ways to balance between toxic security and transparency and how to prepare for the worst. So if your organization's hacked, you're ready to respond in the right way. This represents the type of content that we're really continuing to try to incorporate this technology and infrastructure become more important to nonprofits, especially with technology playing such a big role in the engagement and the retention of younger constituents and supporters. So that is the overview of the conference. And what we wanted to do is make available to everybody on the webinar here and at your organization's special discount code available to attend the conference. So if you go to that registration page listed on the slide here and apply that code, TechSoup 200, you get $200 off main conference registration. So that's giving you the summer sale pricing that expired last week, but this will be active through the time of the conference. So still plenty of time to take advantage of that. We'd love to get everybody there. If anybody on the line is interested in getting their names or ideas in front of the conference audience, much like the Affinity program, we're always interested in reaching out to or establishing partnerships, relationships with new folks and making our network as strong as it can be. And feel free to get in touch with me if you're interested in getting in front of our audience. So that is a brief overview of the conference. And if there aren't any questions specifically to this, I'll turn it back to Becky and go from there. Becky Thank you so much, Matt. And one of the things I really like about Independent Sector and much like with TechSoup is that we talked about what kind of organizations can access the different donations or discount offers available. But the resources on the websites are so rich and deep. So if you're a newer organization or maybe not even newer but you just want some more background on your IRS Form 990, well you can go to Independent Sector and they have a whole section to help you learn about the 990 and what you need to do with it and how to have good governance of your organization. They've got that on nonprofit leadership, on policy, on governance. A lot of really great resources. TechSoup's resources like webinars, articles, blog posts are free and available to anyone. So you don't need to be a registered C3 or a library to access those. And you can just come to our site and find them available to you at any time to help you improve the way that you run your organization. And TechSoup is specifically focused around the technology application. Independent Sector really helps focus on overall governance of your organization. So a lot of really great resources to find there. So thank you Matt for that overview of the affinity program in particular where you can get those technology discounts through their program but also for just highlighting Independent Sector for organizations who may not already be familiar. Now I would love to go ahead and have our next speaker come on. We have a couple of questions in the queue but I'm going to hold those for Q&A toward the end because they're more general about how to best access donations and in-kind gifts from grantors if they may not already be on some of our lists. But before we do that, I'd love to have Lenore come on and talk about Good360 because you may find that there are a lot of companies who are donating that you may not already have been aware of that are doing it through Good360's programs. So welcome to the program Lenore. Tell us a little bit about what you do there and about Good360 and what people can find through your organization's program. Well thank you Becky for allowing me to share Good360 and of course including us in your presentation today and I'd like to thank everyone for attending as well. So as Becky mentioned, I'm Lenore Freeman with Good360, Dan with Good360 over 20 years now working as your Senior Director of Nonprofit Relations. So some quick facts about Good360. We are recognized as a non-profit leader in product philanthropy since 1983. We consistently ranked five fourth as one of the top 10 most efficient charities in America. We have distributed more than $7 billion in product donations to nonprofits around the globe. We operate at less than 2% of the value of products donated. And we serve nearly over 40,000 non-profit organizations. So who donates to Good360? Here is just a few of the logos of some of the donors that we work with and that we partner with. We do handle product distribution for about 125 of the Fortune 500. We distributed more than 50 truckloads a month throughout the United States. We also take those one-off donations making it quick and easy for the company. We assist them with creating strategic giving programs that allow them to both give back and receive benefits for those donations. So here at Good360 we have about 360 degrees of good. Now what does this mean? For companies, we assist them with boosting their bottom line, build employee engagement, and improving sales. And also assisting them with saving some of those funds that they had to pay to liquidate or maybe store or destroy some of those good donations. And then for nonprofits, we work with them so they can receive a product that means or make a difference between keeping or cutting those vital programs. And also allow the nonprofit to stretch their budget by requesting products through Good360 and use those funds for those other programs. So we try our best to help leverage the funds that you have access to to receive the donated goods that we are able to receive from these various companies. And with people, we also make the connection too because they are able to assist with fulfilling and helping nonprofits crowdfund, paying those shipping and handling fees. And I'll talk about that just a little bit more down the slides here. So who can register with Good360? Good360 we work with nonprofit organizations that are 501c3 public charities. We work with schools, churches, libraries. So we work with all size groups, small or large, again to assist them with meeting their community needs. You can register by going to Good360.org in the upper right-hand corner, click on the link that says catalog, and then go right into sign-in to register. It only takes more than five minutes of your time. So once you become registered, there's three different ways to get donated goods through Good360. You can request the products through our warehouse which is all listed in our new online catalog given place. We also provide one-time donation pickups that is available in your community. And then we have a strategic program that we partner with local retailers. Excuse me, just to name a few like they're back and beyond, Home Depot, Pottery Barn, and Disney, where we have a 12-month partnership setup where they will donate specifically to their assigned recipient that is connected through Good360 membership. Now I mentioned our new giving place. This is our place where we have just recently launched in March of this year, 2015, where we're able to release a few new tools that assist you that allows your organization to spotlight the good work that you're doing via our online profile and dashboard. You're also able to create crowdfunding promotions via our new wishlist tool, allowing supporters to help cover the cost of shipping and handling. You will also have access 24-7, 365 days to access your product donation request to check on the results of your crowdfunding wishlist tool, how you're doing, the timeline and how much money you have raised. And then you're also able to showcase to the supporters how those donated products are making a difference. Through our storytelling tool, and that's the impact story tool. Moving along, this is just a quick visual so you can see when you create a wishlist. Creating a wishlist again is asking supporters to cover the administrative fees for the Good360 donation. And just a few quick tips. When you're creating a wishlist based on the inventory that Good360 have access to, that will be vital to your organization and your community needs. With this wishlist, if you can quickly explain how that product will make a difference, be specific. Tell how it will help a real person if you can. Create a strong headline, something that will catch their attention to intrigue them to want to learn more and to read more. And also if there's any good photos that you can include, any good visuals are great. And making sure that you have signed releases if you are using photos of children or adults. Making sure that you have that proper release. And then there's also a few links where you can download these toolkits, tips to help you understand how to create a wishlist and how to promote that wishlist. It's available through the Good360 website. So moving along, creating an impact story, again this is where you can tell how the product assists your organization whether it was used internally or if it was distributed among the community. But this is a way to submit the information back to the donors that will engage them and encourage them to continue to give. So they are very interested in learning more. Getting the most out of your Good360, a few quick points here. If you could maximize and also appoint one person to manage your Good360 account. Make sure that they are receiving our weekly communication knowing what is available, knowing new programs or donations that's coming through the pipeline. Playing ahead, ordering these products and knowing that you have an event that's coming along towards the end of the year or maybe back to school or the holiday just being able to prove the site and to make those requests early on instead of waiting to the last minute to make the request. Assessing your product needs on a regular basis, making sure that you fully understand what your internal and your community needs are. And then take a look at your budget to see what you are buying through these retailers that you can ultimately receive through Good360 and save some of those funds and use those funds on other vital programs. And then using our wish list to crowd-sign, to raise those administrative fees by allowing your supporters and Good360 network of supporters cover those shipping and handling fees. And then as always, finding creative ways to use the different products that you have access to through Good360. And here, just staying connected with us on and through social media, you'll see a few of our handles here at Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and YouTube. You will also have access to some of our newsletters and our blogs that we post online and that you will have access through MyGivenPlace, your online portal and dashboard. So this pretty much wraps up what resources that Good360 has, a high-level overview. You're able to always go into our website, check out the additional resources we have. If you have any questions, you can feel free to contact us. And our contact information will be provided at the end of this presentation. And Becky, I am going to stop at this time. And thank you again. Terrific. Thank you so much for that, Lenore. We did have one question that came in just now asking whether Good360 makes access available to nonprofits that are in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Do you happen to know offhand? Well, we do. We work with, again, nonprofits and non-governmental organizations. The only thing is sometimes it's kind of limited based on the donor company where that product can be distributed. But I still encourage them to register with us because as those opportunities become available, we will reach out to our network of registered members. Great to know. I know often with many programs they may have difficulty, especially if it's providing physical product donations with shipping. I see limitations on a lot of the shipping labels and information saying that it's restricted to the lower 48 or may include Puerto Rico or Alaska or U.S. Virgin Islands, but it may have an additional fee. So something to consider and to keep in mind when you are checking out those other options out there. Great. Well, I am going to go ahead and open us up to questions. Thank you, Lenore, for that presentation about Good360. And I mentioned in the chat that we know Good360 is not specifically providing technology donations only because they have a catalog that has lots and lots of products. You saw all of the vendors from Pottery Barn to William Sonoma and everybody in between and Beth and beyond. So they provide way more than tech donations specifically, but because they also provide electronics and office supplies and computers, we wanted to include them in this webinar because it is such a great resource and we want to make sure that you know about it. So thank you for that. I am going to go ahead and open us up to some other questions as we get wrapped up here in the next few minutes. We have a question from Sally who is asking about kind of best advice. So maybe this would be good. Any of you can feel free to tackle this, but I will point this one at Gail to start. Advice on how you reach out for donations if you are a brand new organization. Does it help if you are affiliated with other nonprofits or that you are part of a coalition that is asking or you are collaborating with them? Does that help give Gravitas to a request when you are reaching out to a company to help support your organization with in-kind donations? What do you think Gail? I think anytime you can show that you are an active member in somebody's community, it is always a good thing. The one thing that I have always learned is that there is absolutely no way to know who is connected to any given organization. You might be sitting across the table from somebody and it turns out that their spouse sits on the board of somebody. In this case, name-dropping, furiously showing that not only are you a good organization, you are stable, you are doing good work, you can talk about it occasionally, but to show that you are networked across things. So you are not doing this just for your own enlightened self-interest, but you are really participating as part of a larger community is a very good part of your personal narrative. And one, if you can practice it so you have it included briefly in the elevator pitch is always a great idea. Thanks for asking. Terrific. And I would agree that I think anything you can do to bolster your organization's reputation when you are making an ask, whether that is partnering up with other organizations or maybe long-standing ones, especially if you are new, gives you some good standing. I wanted to also mention we ran a webinar last week. I didn't link to it here because it didn't occur to me that it might be relevant until just now with these questions that are getting asked. But we ran a webinar with GrantStation last week and we are in the middle of a GrantStation promotion that ends today at 5 p.m. Eastern, I'm sorry, Pacific Time. So if you are interested, they spent quite a bit of time talking about how new organizations can use their database to seek out funding and in-kind donations as well as just grant funding and to really find those sources that will help support them as startup funds. So if there are organizations on the line that are interested in that, you may want to check out GrantStation. You may want to go to TechSoup.org slash GrantStation today because they have a special offer that is only lasting through the end of the day today for $99 for a one-year membership for their database, which is a grant-seeking database. And they not only help you find state, local, and federal grants of cash, but they also can help you connect with in-kind donors too. So a great resource to check out. But again, it didn't occur to me to include in the slide deck until I saw some of the questions coming in. We are almost at time, but I wanted to ask Alex this question. If any of you have any idea, and so this is to any of you three, about how to get travel discounts to help volunteers be able to travel to an area of need. So maybe if they are an emergency response organization, and you need volunteers to be able to travel for forest fire prevention, or fighting them, or Hurricane Sandy, or something like that, any tips on where people can get funds to help with travel? I can probably help a little bit there. I know the chat list listed that some really good ideas. And frankly, having people donate their frequent flyer miles is probably the fastest thing to do this. The airlines get overwhelmed with requests for things, and most of them will already have pre-existing relationships with major relief organizations like Red Cross, or other people that are dealing with emergency relief. Certainly FEMA has their finger on that pole. So I would say before you do that, talk to the overarching agencies in your community to say, hey, we're going to be helping out. We're going to be sending firefighters, or we're going to be sending something. Can someone help us with travel costs? And if you don't ask, you're never going to know what resources people can tap you into. And this is Matt, and I'll just tack on to that a little bit. I definitely would reiterate everything that Gail mentioned there, and I'm aware of Delta has a program that is sort of on point with this. We're looking into where you can at least get reduced rates for volume purchases. And that's something that we're trying to add to the ISVT program as well. So stay tuned for that certainly. Great. Yeah, and I also recommended that I've worked with organizations where we put up requests to include an option for people to donate or transfer their unused airline miles to us in the past. And it's been fairly successful, particularly if your organization does focus on a lot of traveling for implementing program work or something like that, then your audience knows that you have a need for that and may be more inclined to donate those unused miles before they expire, because that's no good for anyone, right? So I'm going to go ahead and wrap us up here since we're at the top of the hour and invite you to continue asking questions in our Tech Planning and Policies Forum. And we'll share that link in the follow-up email. Quickly I'm going to just flash on the screen the contact info of our presenters. You don't have to rush to write it down because you will have an opportunity to get this in your email box later. And I'd also love it if you could chat into us to let us know what one thing you learned today that you're going to walk away and either check out or try to implement to help your organization work more effectively and save some money on your technology expenditures. We hope that you'll visit some of the sites we talked about today, whether it's TechSoup or Good360 or Independent Sector or one of the many, many others that were mentioned. We hope that you learned something and we'd love for you to share that with us. Lastly, I'd like to invite you to join us for our upcoming events and webinars. We have a full menu coming up. You can learn how to keep your connected nonprofit or library secure in this Internet-enabled world. October starts the National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. So we'll be talking about Internet Safety and Security with an expert from Symantec and who trained thousands of TSA employees on best practices for staying secure online. Then we'll also have an NP Tech Chat on Civil Society Under Threat. This will happen on Twitter so you can follow this hashtag, NP Tech Chat on the 6th of October. Then if you're joining us from a library, we'll talk about Pinterest specifically for libraries and how to build a community using Pinterest social media to build boards and followers. We'll then be talking about Office 2016, the new office that is coming soon to TechSoup. So watch for more on that to come. We'll be talking about it for Windows users and then we'll also be talking about it for Mac users on the 22nd. And I just quickly want to mention that we have just opened up our next round of submissions for the contest that we're running with Adobe Creative Cloud right now. So if you have designed collateral using Adobe products, you can submit that collateral through the link on here. It takes you to a Facebook page where you can win up to $1,000 in prizes for your creativity and using Adobe's design tools for your organization. So join us for any of those. Connect with us at TechSoupGlobal on TechSoup.org and on our Facebook and Twitter. Thank you so much Gail, Matt, and Lenore. Really appreciate you sharing a bit of your expertise today. We're glad to have had you on the line. And thank you all of our participants for engaging with us and sharing questions and experiences in the chat window. We hope that you got something out of today's event. And we hope that you'll take a moment to complete the post-event survey that pops up when you exit the room. Lastly, I'd like to thank ReadyTalk, our webinar sponsor. They provide the use of this platform so we can present these webinars to you on a weekly basis. So please join us again and you can check out their donation program at TechSoup.org slash ReadyTalk. Thanks so much everyone and have a terrific day. Bye-bye.