All right, what's up, internet? Live from the new hardware sugar on this fine Sunday. So we finally finished the move to the new place here, 2, 2, 3, 2, China Roses. Stop, Revenjan. I thought you were taking a break from your computer. Stop, good afternoon, Jaguar. So yeah, we just started streaming. This is the new place. So I'll be taking you guys around a little bit. Although you notice I don't have my usual wireless headset, so we're making do with this mic. And so I'm sort of tied to the desktop right now, but we can still go around. But you can see from the main feed that it's much larger than the old shop. Stop, good afternoon, David. Thanks for joining us. And so we've been here since Wednesday. So we haven't even been here a week, but we have done some builds already. Online shop is back online. We're delivering just like normal. So that's it. This is just a very quick stream. This isn't the final version of this shop. Like we want to buy new shelves and things like that. But I will, well, let me run the ad first, guys. So we'll get that out of the way. And then stop, good afternoon, Jag. Good afternoon, Ann. Thanks for joining us. And we'll just run the ad and then I'll take you through a very quick tour of the new shop. What's this? It's a CD Key Overs.go. It's easy to order. Search for the software you need. Add to cart. Send it to their payment option. There's no more five minutes. Finished. There's a legit working CD key for your Windows. Use our code to get discounts. So if you're looking for a legit, cheap, and original software, check out CDEOvers.com. All right, guys. I'm just going to leave you for a little bit because there's an actual customer in the shop. Sorry, you're actually live now, not here in the camera. Let me just mute it. Shop business first. All right, guys. Actually, we did have a new build come in yesterday and then we did it today. So I was going to feature it on the stream, but the owner is actually in store now. But he was kind enough to let me feature it just very briefly. So let me bring the camera around. Again, I do not have our usual Corsair Void wireless. So I'm tied into the desktop here. But this case was a custom case. We didn't have it in stock, the pure base. Be quiet, pure base 500DX. Yeah, sorry for the shaky cam. Noticable features are the front strip and then of course the mesh. The whole front actually is mesh and it's bisected with the two parallel lines. So very distinctive look. To be honest, we don't get a lot of requests for this case. I was quite surprised for this specific request. Wait, yeah. I think this is better so they can see it. What we've done here is the stock fans are two 140mm. They're quite large actually. Then for the AIO, we move the stock 140mm up to exhaust on top. And then the AIO is here for front. Notice the very nice double loop ARGB fans of the ML240 AIO, the Cooler Master one. This is... You know, I have a thing for AIOs, and then this is a very unique AIO design from Cooler Master, how they made it transparent and see-through. So you get a lot more light bleed on the CPU block here, which again, you don't see a lot of. Although Fractal Design has taken this sort of to its extreme with the Lumen S24, which we had also, and I was super curious to see it in person, but I didn't make it when we had a build that used it. But it's so beautiful. This one also has a very nice... It's more subtle than the very bright RGB that became Uso Date. This is where the design trend is not a more subtle kind of softer RGB approach. And finally, of course, everybody asks, what's the CPU? This is a 3070 Ti. You notice the bling-bling crystalline design around the fans here at the bottom? Gerald and I were talking about it. It's also meant to be vertically mounted so you can see the GPU kind of facing here so you can appreciate more the design. Although to be honest, I'm not a fan of the kind of crystalline frame. CM has a similar fan design, but I'm not a fan of that too much. Too bling-bling for me. Although I don't have the owner's minds, but I can't see it. I can't see it if it's... It's super... It's like a baller type. It's too much for me personally. You don't notice it if it's not vertically mounted. So this is a very pretty rigged performance. 5800X, right? Do I remember correctly? The CPU? Yes. Yeah. And then you got the furies for the RGB. The RAM. Fury RGB RAM. Yeah, this is pretty much a borderline state of the art. Of course you can have 3080, 3090, but this is very respectable. It's like in the top, maybe 85% in terms of speed. Very respectable rig. We were glad that we were able to do a quick turnaround on it. Yeah, so I'll get back to you guys in a bit. It's just me at the shop at the moment and I don't need to tend to the customer. Although before I go, you'll notice that we have this very cool the Torrent case is on a stand and it's on wheels so we can move it around now. So I actually got this thing from IKEA, this thing here at the bottom. It's super useful now and the Torrent is a massive case, but it's so easy to move right now. I'll talk about that in a bit, like the stuff we saw at IKEA because ASUS was kind enough to invite us to IKEA for the special opening because it opens to the public on November 25. Alright, but hang out here for a moment guys because I gotta write up the customer. Shop business. Shop business before stream business. Alright, hang on guys. I just need to write the customer up. But at least you guys got to see the build before we got picked up. It's a very nice build. The ML 240 but I'm taking it as a customer because that's not about rockin' the programmer. I need back up here. We're streaming and we have a customer. But I'm just dealing with the customer. I mean I'm just taking care of a customer and then I'll be right back with you guys. Alright, so we're just finishing up here. Again, I did want to point out the nice roller caster thing we got from IKEA. Yes, this Torrent is a massive case but I don't know what they call this case thing, but it was in the ROG segment of IKEA and I picked it up because it looked so useful and I'm excited now to try to use it to cart around different stuff so it can handle the Torrent, it can probably handle the monitors. I can probably pick up another one. It's kind of reasonable at like 800 bucks. The assembly though was kind of difficult. The assembly was straightforward except for one part where you have to slot the wheels in place and then secure them in place. They're not screws so you need to basically you need to bang metal into submission and you know that's never fun. So I filmed it so I can make a short. It was around 800 bucks, 850 I think for I don't know what they call the tray, the kind of tray on wheels thing. There is audio, it was just muted because I'm finishing up with the customer here. So we are a working shop here at Hardware Sugar and we don't have YouTube or Facebook or things like that. Let's get invited to IKEA and stuff like that. We are a working shop. We do a lot of builds, PC parts, so there's always somebody picking things up here. Actually I was supposed to stream a bit earlier but I was busy assembling the wheel thingy with the tray wheel thing and another customer ordered something as well. Hang on, let me mute you guys for a sec. Stop crew from Facebook, there is sound but I'm just finishing up with the customer so hang out for like 10 minutes and I will continue to stream. But we were able to feature the build to the customer. So hold on guys for a bit. Alright, I'm back. Another happy customer I hope. So I'll just talk a little bit about this tray thing that I got at IKEA here better. So yeah, it's small but its wheels are super slidey and it can basically carry just about anything. I carted out a full rig on this thing just now. We are on the second floor so I'm still resting a bit helping the customer down and then going back up. So let me catch my breath. The Torrent case which is quite huge fits perfectly fine. It's very stable on this thing. It's around 800, 850. Let me get the product details. Sorry guys, I think I tossed the name of the thing but I did save it somewhere. But yeah, this is in the ROG section of IKEA and if you've been following our Facebook and our YouTube and stuff like that we were there for two days, Friday and Saturday on the invitation of ASOS and IKEA opens November 25th to the general public. Super nice, it's the biggest IKEA in the world. So our IKEA in the Philippines is the largest in the world. Yes, they do have the meatballs and actually, the meatballs are delicious but what I really liked was the chocolate cake. They have this chocolate cake that... I don't know if the other IKEA's have it but I've never had it in another IKEA but it was super, super good. To be honest, I wanted to get more but I stopped because it's like free and you know, it's like you're free and you go back for seconds but it was really good. Yeah, so this is the shop. Again, apologies, I am using a wired connection now because I didn't borrow my brother's wireless coarser void but you can see on camera that the shop is much larger so we just finished a... we just sent out a build which used a case we've never built in before the Purebase 500DX from Beep Quiet. This build is actually for diagnostics the customer bought all the parts from us but he did his own assembly and now he sent it back to us because he was using the computer and then suddenly, there was no signal on the monitor and we have been trying for the past two days to get it to break That's our term when we run diagnostics because when a PC crashes or when it does a blue screen of death it's basically breaking, right? So when we're doing diagnostics we try to run it at the maximum so you notice the CPU utilization is 100 GPUs at around 50-60% So we're stressing the computer out trying to make it break but so far and which is the difficult part about doing diagnostics sometimes, you know, in the customer you know crash by crash but here in the store nothing happened and this is what's happening with this particular build everything is running fine for the past two days I do notice though that we've changed our program that we used to stress the computer now we're using Ida64 I actually don't know why or I'm not quite sure why we've settled on Ida64 before we were using Cinebench and then time-spy a little bit to get basic benchmarks Rocky the programmer suggests try to run 3DMark I will tell the boys tomorrow when they come in although it could be the GPU it is 5600G Ida or 5700G so it's one of the APUs yes Tony from YouTube the storeroom is much larger as well again I would take you for a tour but the mic doesn't reach all the way into the storeroom but yes a much larger storeroom as well although you notice we've kept the same basic layout so we have our usual shelves but we don't have any shelves here in the left part yet so still a lot of room to stock stuff I actually don't like having these cases there in the back I mentioned before I just don't like it it looks so untidy when you have a bunch of boxes like in the shop so we're gonna get better more shelves and we're gonna make it easier you can walk around and actually see and touch the products in case you have a mini maze and you need to run like a rat to get to the items that you want so that stuff definitely will be in some kind of shelving in the near future this one yes so I did actually just want to talk about that build which I showed briefly then the costower came in and picked it up that's it for the diagnostic build and this is actually one of our test benches it's in a fractal design R6 R33100 I think for the CPU, stock cooler and we finally got our 2080 Superback this GPU is the shop GPU it was donated by one of our very good customers he's been with us from pretty much the beginning very early on he bought the rig from us and he's been upgrading ever since so one of our very loyal customers and when he upgraded to the 3000 series he's like he also got the 2080 Super from us and he was like so we've been using it as an extra GPU in the shop we actually lent it out recently to another customer who's 3070 broke and it took him a long time to come back we had already gotten the 3070 replacement it took him a while to get back to us I guess the 2080 Super wasn't bad because we had this 3070 for around two weeks sorry, two months or so but he didn't feel the urgency to come get it since I guess it's okay temporary replacement and that's something we do here at Hardware Sugar that not a lot of shops do is that we lend out replacements like Nassira in PSUmo, Nassira in AIO CPU cooler, GPU if we're not able to get your replacement right away sometimes we're able to lend you stock free of charge not all the time, depended on if we have extra if we can get the replacement right away but when we can, we do and so the 2080 Super just recently came back to us it was a loaner unit for maybe the past two, three months or so alright so we're in a bigger space now and you will see a video soon like how to get here and there's lots of parking generally I would walk you around the store but I'm really having trouble with this wired setup so we do have the torrent back in stock big boy, very big we're running a bit short on AIOs but we've gotten a restock of the castle 240x in white, we have Z53 again it was out of stock briefly, GPUs also running a bit low although at least we have the basics, the 3060s we have a 3060 Ti no 3070 we just sold the 3070 Ti which was in the build I just showed you guys the pure base 500DX build we do have 600-700 XTs from AMD roughly analogous to the 3070 and much cheaper actually than a comparable 3070 if you visit our shop at Gijo, you'll notice that the layout hasn't changed we have the mobos on that left side where they usually are the PSUs, the AIOs, the GPUs we have changed it up a little bit with the CPUs here in the bookshelf we have one facecam Elgato facecam if you guys are looking for a good webcam SSDs and yep, so we got a bunch of stuff although the I didn't realize we still had one left of the black triple fan the Unifan SL120s we are getting more restocked of GPUs a bunch of other things this week we also have a lot of the core P3s left, black, white and a couple of the core P1s, the core P1s the elite this was also recently back in stock in white and yeah so, oh yes a short mention of the sign this sign has been with us through all of our shops this is our third shop already after four years I think we were four years in operation and this sign has been in all of our shops it was hanging outside of the first shop it was hanging inside in the second shop and now it's hanging again here in the third shop so far it's brought us good luck every time shop upgrade we move we're upgrading the shop because it's a bigger space so hopefully the sign continues to bring us luck Rocket Programmers served down in Warren's 3060ti but we already gave her a 2060 I was like, I had to think what we sent Warren for her use although the 2080 super is back Pesto we don't have any super versions from 1650 and 1660 I have not seen to be honest, we've been trying to restock those because we usually carry the 1660 super but yeah, it seems like we don't have any re-stocked Ericson Chua, time for an RGB sign the word outside actually I've always wanted a neon sign but outside although when you enter the new location you're entering the parking you won't see it from the outside you need to know where you're going and once you enter the parking lot we have a big tarpoll in the outside so the tarp will show you the direction but it's like the neon RGB maybe for the next maybe for the next shop there cheers to new beginnings Tony Navarro, yes thanks very much we are excited to be in this new place hopefully it has the same good juju as the old shop at Gijo there are some things about Gijo I'll miss like the view, many plants outside this one is very enclosed around the second floor although it is much larger and we got a good deal on the rent and the parking is much easier actually I can use this as a dolly because it's so smooth I'm actually just yeah this roller thingy can double up as a dolly Kenichi, see 5 years from now where you'll be a micro center in hardware sugar that's the general goal to have something with that kind of inventory capacity because the inventory of the micro center slowly but surely maybe not in 5 years but hopefully sometime and then we also want to have a super shop our own place and it's not just one room but it's one whole location with different floors, one floor one monitor, one floor CPU cooler or something like that but to be honest it's hard in the cities maybe in the south or something even further like super store for computers and since we can design our own space we'll make it really enticing and if you're from Metro Manila maybe wouldn't mind driving down there just to see everything and that's our hope that may be in the next 5 years next shop is a separate branch of the original distributor KC Bolius I hope like a super store in the south because realistically it's hard to find a shop here then we'll set up our own shop it takes money to buy the land and to build something on it but maybe in the province the land is cheaper we can save on the cost of the land and then put it into having a really nice building and stuff so that's the medium term goal maybe 5 years or so definitely keep a location in Metro Manila just as a central location but the 5 year goal God willing is something like a super store in the south and then in the north and then maybe by then we'll have enough capital to have a nice one in Metro Manila I saw Ace in Cebu before we reached Cebu I would want actually a presence in the south in Cebu and maybe Zambuanga or Davao but first things first let's not get ahead of ourselves it's really expensive running a shop so we have a lot of expenses to take care of first but I hope every time we move it's an upgrade to a bigger space and more opportunity to carry more stock and just an opportunity to cater to more people as the shop becomes more well known and yeah we're so really excited you know this is a hopefully this is a sign of even better things to come Pesto is the new shop the one you equipped with PLDT Fiber to be honest I really have a hate relationship with PLDT I think their service is super bad but the problem is but so far yeah we're using PLDT this is PLDT Fiber and yes we haven't run across any of the any of the usual problems of the stream if you watch the regular streams you know you always have a problem with the stream but to be fair our first inaugural stream here at Chino-Roses it's like PLDT is okay so credit where credit is due PLDT is fast let's see how it goes like if there's a problem Liya, everything's sugar I don't know if we can compete with Amazon as the everything store everywhere everything's store but definitely we'll expand our inventory some more of PC parts this is much more expanded than when we first moved into Gijo I hope when we move out of this place maybe 3 years or so from now the inventory has expanded Tony Navarro's primary goal yes almost up to 100k to be honest we're still getting daily subs but not as fast as I would like I would like to reach 100k sooner rather than later so I can stop obsessing over it it's not a healthy preoccupation to be honest always thinking like oh what's the subscriber count and things I'm thankful that every day there is a solid number of subscribers but it's just not going as fast as I would like and at the same time though it's a vanity metric right who cares 75k versus 100k that silver plaque at 100k so I do tend to obsess over it which is not healthy expanded parking lot, you should check us out now KinetGC especially during the weekends we have the whole parking lot to ourselves parking here is so big which is one of the things that which is one of the things that we improved on when we moved to Chino-Roses there's a lot more parking now it's not a hassle to park Leah Magnaia it's time to make 25k accounts to reach 100k you know we're here we're always about Oreg and legit and we don't want fake subs like if you notice we rarely do giveaways because we don't believe in having to buy new subs I mean you know buy as it were we like the organic we like the organic content organic content and organic subscribers and things like that we very rarely do giveaways we don't like pay for subs or likes so we'll get there Tony Navarro the silver plaque would really be a nice backdrop when you stream or post videos yes when we get the silver plaque I will be putting it here somewhere in the shop like maybe there in the bookshelf or something so the silver plaque will be for the shop I'll be putting it in my personal place or something the silver plaque is for hardware sugar and it serves to be in the shop so when we finally get it it will be on display here at the shop a lot of our customers find us through YouTube so yeah I do agree it'll be nice to like they pass by and they see the silver plaque so it's like a connection between YouTube and the shop alright so I am rambling guys and I do apologize because me on silent I had to do shop business and I do actually need to shoot one and a half videos after this stream so I will be taking my leave I did get to show you basically what I wanted to which was number one I believe Rafael is talking to me using our CCTV camera there on the it's very hard to see but it's there on top of the core P3s so just very briefly again what I wanted to show you guys the new shop hello new shop please do come visit us here much larger space we'll be getting more tables and shelves and things like that so this is like the beta version of the new shop the caster thing that I assembled today which was actually a bit difficult to assemble but it's super nice now the build that we just did the pure base 500DX build the domestic thingy that we have there running in the MSI vampiric 100R so there I do actually have to get to work and shoot a video which is due on Thursday and then if you're watching watch out for my Slack later because I message you on the details of this video we do need it by Thursday because it's a special video for our primary sponsor who we're actually we can see their discounted sign over there and we're quite happy that they're supporting us supporting us actually it's really quite nice to have a primary sponsor so I do need to do that video and then I'll do a .5 video because whoa look the infinite loop thingy sorry which was requested by Rocky the programmer I'll be doing an intro on the 400K bonkers build that we just did and the conclusion to that I gotta go guys thanks so much for joining me from the first for the first stream, not the last it will be many more to come hopefully from this new location at China Roses please do come visit us parking is a lot easier now especially on the weekends our location is already updated on Waze, Google Maps, La La Move and Mr. Speedy or Borzo formerly Mr. Speedy I don't know why Grab hasn't updated the location yet but it should be propagating the rest of the map thing soon so hi Cloudy sorry I'm just about to end the stream thanks so much for watching, stay safe and have a good Sunday guys Advance Merry Christmas but we will have another stream closer to Christmas later


And welcome to Desk of Lady Aida. Hey everybody, it's Lady Aida Klok, it's our cool new retro graphics, thanks to Christiane who gave us a little bit of a... Nature's healing, we're starting to be able to think about things besides staying alive. Yeah. So we're... Like some retro graphics. We have some retro graphics. Thank you. So we'll be introducing some more fun surprises, you know, new look of Desk of Lady Aida. I love this look. As we recover. Very CGA. We've got some retro-themed things on the menu today.  Yeah, let's go. So on the, we did a little one minute video thing, I think was it load factorial dot basic, and then run, and then you can see, and then you can see the text. So we're gonna make factorial of, I don't know, 23. Very large number. So this is something that you saw on Hackaday sent over. It's a basic interpreter written pure Python. And one of the neat things about stuff that's written pure Python is that circuit Python tries as much as possible to be a pure subset of C Python. And so I just actually copied the files over and you can run a Python interpreter in it. So you can actually go to the piebasic repo because they have a listing that you can run. So in the repel, like the Python repel, sorry, the basic repel, you can put in your favorite basic scripts. I'm just gonna copy this one at a time. And it's funny is that, you know, circuit Python comes from MicroPython, right? It's a fork of MicroPython and MicroPython was clearly inspired by Arduino. And Arduino was inspired by Pickbasic. So it's kind of like we're gone full circle now where the stuff we're inspired by is now running, emulated on our hardware. Oh, sorry, it's confused because it's like, why did you have two things? It's like, why are you running two scripts at the same time? But yeah, so you can run it. It will output text underneath my head over here. It's neat to see interpret another language. Now, you know, there is a limited amount of RAM. So like some of the bigger projects like Eliza, it wouldn't have been cool if it could run but it actually, it takes up so much RAM that, at least this.  So maybe I'll try that next time and think, I'm thinking like, what has the most RAM? And it's like the RP2040 with 256K. But actually the ESP32 S2 has the most because it has two megabytes of PS RAM. It's a little slow, but, you know, it's basic. So who cares? Anyways, it's a fun thing. Go download PyBasic from the repo. Check out the Hackaday link and then just drag and drop the files on. And yeah, it's upset. But drag and drop the files onto your board. In this case, I got a PyPortal, but you can, you know, run on anything and then you can win your favorite basic sketches. Oh no, kinda cool. Very retro. All right, what else you got going on? Instal. The other thing I've got going on is Jepler this week wrote a library for another camera. The other camera. So we started with the OV7670, classic camera. Then we updated to the OV, so the 7670 I think maxed out at 640 by 480 resolution. Then we went to the OV2640. The 2640 I think was a two megapixel, maybe a three megapixel resolution. And I think this is the 5640, which I believe is a five megapixel resolution. It's like 2.6K by 1.4K. It's like 2,000 pixels by 1,400 pixels. Of course, this is a video of a camera, of an overhead of a TFT of a camera. So it doesn't look, it looks kinda washed out, but it actually looks quite good on the display itself. So you can see my hand here. One thing you can see is it does auto contrast, sorry, auto, what is it, brightness. So when I first, it kinda washed out and then it kinda realizes, oh I'm washed out and it reduces the DC bias to the CMOS sensor. And so it's dark and then it gets light. And so it tries to do its best to auto levels the image, which is really nice. So I'm trying out this camera module that I got. Now it's got a 120 degree fisheye lens, which is not bad. I mean, it's a fine lens and it comes with a lens cap. There's even one I got that you can, this little part here can actually twist. This has a little bit of glue on it, which is not unusual. So it's kinda fixed, it's a fixed focus and the focus is kinda like infinite focus. So it's not good with nearby stuff, but it's good for basically anything a foot or farther away. There's an auto focus version that you can, that's sorry, a focusable version where this isn't glued and you can twist the camera lens. I also, I got some other samples. So these are OV24, 2640s. So I really like the higher resolution and a lot of the features of the 5640, especially the auto, the color looks much better, to be honest, than the 2640 or the 7670. They're also got like this, there's kinda different lenses, right? So this is a 2640 with a kind of like a simple lens and it doesn't turn at all. It's also kinda got infinite focus lens. And then the one that I thought was interesting is this camera. So this is a 5640, although I couldn't get it working, but it says 5640 on it, so I believe it's 5640. But what's interesting about this is it's got this kind of like metal body and I didn't understand what this was. And then I realized that when looking at the lens, that when looking at the spec sheet, that this is actually, the 5640 has a ability to do autofocus. And so when I opened up the body, so you can see there's the CMOS sensor, nice big sensor over there, rectangular. And then over here, you can see the dual lens, it's very pretty. And then, let's see if I can remove this. Not so gently, because it's already been destroyed. But you see here that this is the- I'm gonna move that so you can see it on the other hand. Yeah, it's tough to. Oh yeah. There you go. So you can see the lens and around it is a voice coil. So this is a coil of wire. And this can very slightly move the lens above and below the CMOS sensor. So this is actually a micro motor, basically. Like a little miniature motor. It's actually kind of neat because the sensor itself apparently has the ability to control the motor and automatically do the autofocusing. The only thing is, I couldn't get this, well honestly, this one's destroyed. But this camera module, I couldn't quite get it to be recognized or something going on, something powered or like it has some weird requirements. I checked the pin out on my computer. So this is the- Sorry, this is- This is what the normal module pin out looks like. And I'll move this over here. So yeah, okay, so it's kind of legible. Okay, so there's the camera and there's these pin outs. And then at the bottom, you see pins 23 and 24 are no connect. And this is the non autofocus. This is like the camera module that I showed earlier, the 120. And then when you look at the version with the voice coil support, you can first off, you can sort of see there's a little bit of a coil looking thing here in the middle. But they also has, this is a focus range. So it can focus from 10 centimeters plus and it's got those two pins are AF, BDD and AF ground. So that's the autofocus ground and power. So it looks like you just have to power the autofocus system and the camera will kind of take it from there. It controls the motor and maybe even auto. I think it automatically does all the work for you. You just sort of have to tell it to go into that mode, which makes sense. Like for a lot of low cost phones, they'll use a camera like this for the camera phone and you don't necessarily want the camera processor to be doing the autofocus management. You want the camera to kind of do it on its own. How it actually does it, I don't know. I guess it looks for blurry pixels and then just tries to reduce the blurriness. I guess it's got like a DSP. It has a DSP anyways, cause it's got to do JPEG encoding. Maybe that DSP can also do autofocus. I'd like to get that working. So hopefully by next week I'll have autofocus functionality anyways. That's my camera experimentation. Yeah. Yeah. I've never seen anyone actually use these autofocus cameras. So it'll be, we'll be the first. Like people have them, but I've never seen anyone successfully use them. Okay. I'll do some bit of notes and then we'll do the great search. Yeah. Check out our updates on Adabox.com because we hope it'll get to you by Halloween. But you know, just spin the dial on the TV and you'll see there's a global part shortage. There is a shipping crisis. There's no flights. Well, I mean, that's domestic. And then- Well, if we need the flights to come in. Yeah. And then in China, they're operating the factories three days a week. Yeah. And four days closed because of electricity rationing. And not only if you're waiting for parts from China, you're gonna be waiting even longer and you're gonna get half of them. To go ahead and answer the question, even if someone already knows, there are things that are just not made in the US. In fact, it is terrible. We should make transistors and all sorts of stuff here in the US that we don't. And so go try to find a bicycle tire made in the US. Maybe there's a place, maybe not. No, maybe not made in the US. Yeah. And so we're all stuck with this together. And so it's just part of the post pandemic. I mean, it's not over, but we're all just trying to make the pandemic not the lead story. So keep checking atetobox.com. You can also ask anytime. And then just another note, I'll probably talk about this on Ask an Engineer. Our team's 100% vaccinated. We didn't need to threaten them with like taking away healthcare or fines or this or that everyone has great healthcare. So what they did is they had questions. They talked to their doctor and their doctor said, hey, it's a good idea for you to get vaccinated. So we're done, but we have some, you know, last formalization of it. And then in New York, there's a Heroes Act and we've already completed that, which is to make sure our team has all the information about everything they need. So that's just me telling everyone who either, either you work at a company or you're, someone who helps run a company, it is possible to have over 100 plus people all do the thing that keeps each other safe. I think to get trust, you have to give trust and that is how we did it. So you want to do the great search? Yeah, let's get right to it. Okay, so I'm going to add the song back later. But for now it's- It's the great search by- Yeah, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Yeah, we'll probably do a retro version. Okay. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Great search brought to you by Digikea native reader every single week. Lady Aida uses her powers of engineering to find stuff on digikea.com. We're going to be talking about the 5-5 timer this week. Lady Aida, what is a 5-5 timer? A 5-5-5, also known as a triple nickel, is a special chip that kind of was invented, I think in like 76 or so. It's a all in one non-microcontroller chip that can be used for timing purposes or oscillator purposes. It can do a delayed time. It can do a repetitive like PWM type cycle. It can change duty cycle of a PWM. It's really good for if you, you don't want to get a microcontroller involved. You just want a frequency generated or a pulse generated. It's great. It's really easy to use. And there's like thousands of example circuits. And we thought with the retro styling and also because we have a video from Colin that came out this week, I was like, oh, I should show people how you can get 5-5-5s. And also 5-5-5s have really improved in capabilities. Like they're not as clunky and power hungry as it used to be. They're actually quite cool and easy to use in wide voltage ranges and very low current draws. And if you're a super fan, you've seen our puppet and our cartoon character and also our plushie, we named the 5-5-5 Timer Hans after the inventor of the 5-5-5 Timer Chip. We don't have any of these more left, but that's some of the things that we've done over the years. I also have a 5-5-5 Timer stool from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories that I bought. And then Hans is one of the puppets in the Circuit Playground Kit series. And then last week, Colin did a 5-5-5 Timer video. So I thought I'd play that and then we'll jump into the search on DigiGate. Sure. Why is the 5-5-5 Timer one of the best known ICs of all time? Well, it's been around a long time and there's a crazy amount of example circuits out there for it. It's also cheap, easy to use and most of all, versatile. The 5-5-5 Timer can be used as a timer, performing a single action after a specific period of time. An oscillator, generating a repeating waveform at a specific frequency. A PWM signal generator, outputting a waveform of varying pulse width for controlling servo motors, LEDs, et cetera. Plus less practical uses, like using two of them together to create a stepped tone generator, a.k.a. tardy punk console. For a modern update to the 5-5-5, consider the TLC 5-5-1. It's pin compatible with the original, has a wider input voltage, and higher accuracy. Okay, so let's kick it off. You wanna find these? Yeah, so 5-5-5 Timers, they've been making them for decades and decades. They're still useful all the time, like we use them in our drawdy-o kits, but we also see them a lot of times in learning to solder, learning to engineer, because they're a great way to make a simple circuit that you don't have to worry about software firmware being the issue. So many things have been replaced with microcontrollers, but then you have to deal with microcontroller programming, and bootloaders and firmware, and computer and toolchain. 5-5-5, it just always works, and they're like rock solid. They're really hard to damage. I've never seen a broken 5-5-5. They always seem to work as long as using them with the ranges that they function at. So going to the computer, this up. Okay, so the NE 5-5-5 is like the original classic, and you can still get it. If you happen to need like one of the originals, let's say we want the dip package. Ooh, they're not in stock, but let's, oh wait, let's see. Dip? Yes, no? No, they're not in stock, because they're obsolete. But it looks like Rochester usually has them, but they're out of stock right now. The original could run up to about 100 kilohertz. It ran from about 4.5 to 16 volts, and drew 10 milliamps. So that's good TTL logic voltages and current. You need a lot of voltages, a lot of current to use electronics. You can run off of five volts, but you really need five volts, you can't run it lower. That said, oscillators have improved quite a bit in the meantime, so if we just look for, we'll just go to clock timing, programmable oscillators, and then these are all the 5-5-5s. Oh, you don't forget, you can get dual 5-5-5s if you ever need two circuits, two 5-5-5 circuits, like Atari punk consoles, I think usually have one for frequency and one for duty cycle or something. So you'd have two oscillators. So it is possible to get two for once. Let's look at only ones that are in stock and available at Digi-Key. Thankfully, you can get 5-5-5s. You can't get a lot of chips, but hey, you can even get them in VGA. This is all I get. You have to build everything out of 5-5-5s. You can build everything out of 5-5-5s. Okay, so let's look at eight dip. Because I think a lot of people, when they're first playing with 5-5-5s on a breadboard, they want to breadboard their circuit. So let's also only look at active ones so I can not get anything that's not available. So here's something, the first thing that's interesting. So the original was 4.5 to 16 volts or 18 volts, but chances are you want to be able to run off of a couple of batteries. And so we can select a range that's, you could run it off of one or three volts up to 15, so that's kind of nice. There's also different frequency ranges. So you can get ones originally that was 100 kilohertz. We can see they go up to megahertz now. And then the supply current is in the microamp range. So you can actually run these off of a battery. Now there are different, there's a lot of different ones. Like the TLC551 that we used in the Drobio has a special 100 milliamp output. So you can actually use it to drive a small speaker or I think maybe it's 10 milliamp outputs. You can drive a transistor to a speaker to check the, do you, there's some kind of interest. Like there's been interesting mods and hacks and tweaks to the 5-5-5 to increase like the output current or decrease the run time current. So do check that I have your special needs, but if you just want a simple 5-5-5 that's in stock, TLC555 will do the job. Looks like these are available. There's 2,000 of them or so. And this one can run from three to 15 volts, draws 360 microamps and up to 2.1 megahertz in through hole. And it's less than a dollar in quantity, it's 40 cents. So that's the thing, these are really cheap too.  You can build projects for a year on 5-5-5s and you won't spend more than $10 on it. So check this out. You might also wanna get a parts pack from Adafruit with resistors and a breadboard, put that together with the 5-5-5. And you can be having a really good time. Even a couple of potentiometers. You can make blinking circuits, buzzers. I guess it's available. Well, it's available somewhere. I wrote an article when I was senior editor of popular science like almost 15 years ago now, maybe more. And what I did is I cracked open a digital camera and I had it so the button would press over and over and I put the camera on a kite and I showed how to take photos from a kite because we didn't have drones back then that you could just get easily. And I flew this digital camera up in the air and I took a bunch of photos and I showed how to do it and I had to make it fit all on a page, a printed page of course. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, it's a perfect example. It's like how to replace a signal that goes every 10 seconds it pulses. Yes, could use a mic controller, sure, but a lot of people don't have it. This and big cap and two or three resistors and you're done. It might be on Google like Scholar or wherever they scan in popular science. So I'm gonna look it up. No, no. And then at make when we launched the first issue we did aerial kite photography. Yes. I think that was, was that my article and make? No, that was- What was my article? In the first make one? Yeah. I don't remember. Maybe like about, maybe it was about wave bubble, I don't know. All right, well let's end the great search now so we can do other stuff. Okay, so that is, that is a great search of getting a song later. I did, did, did. Okay. I'm curious about what aerial, aerial is spelled with an A-E. Yeah. All right, wanna do a couple of questions and then we're all gonna bounce. Yeah. But I'm curious, I did write an article for make. I just don't remember what it was. Yeah. I have a copy somewhere in here. Okay. Yeah. Question for later, now it's later. How do you arrange, I'm sorry, how do you manage the nightmare of breadboard jumpers? Do what do you use, hot cables? Yeah, I mean like I quickly, you know actually using, you know those premium jumpers are really nice but you really do want to go quickly to custom cut little jumpers and you can lay them flat against the breadboard. Okay, here it was. I did write an article on aerial cut photography. Yeah, this is my 555 timer.  Yeah. I knew I did this. I didn't publish this on make but this was, this is still on ladyin.net. So this was. That's interesting that, you know what? I didn't know you. I don't think you wrote it. I think you read my article. No, I didn't. I used to hack disposable cameras a lot. We, I think, that's funny because I don't think we had met in, no, we didn't meet. So what's funny is it looks like you did a 555 timer for a digital camera thing on Instructables. Yeah. No, it wasn't Destructables. It's on the site. Oh, I was gonna say because Instructables wasn't around. Yeah. That's cool. I'm gonna check the dates. I'm gonna check the dates later. I think we both independently. I think everyone did the same thing. Yeah, we were all like, I got, because digital cameras finally became like, okay, who cares if it crashes into the water? Everyone was doing the same. It wasn't like $400. It was $400. They were getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. I used a, I think it was an Olympus digital camera and it had, it wasn't an SD card and it wasn't an MMC card. It was another time. It was like Charles Benton. Yeah. Hey, look, that's me. That's you. I wrote about that. You wrote about this. Yeah. So how long ago was that?  Oh, I'll tell you remember, I remember it was, this had a mechanical thing and I was like, oh my God, that's nuts. Yeah, it did. And that's why I was like. And it was a disposable digital camera. Can you scroll up and see what date it is on that? 2007. 2007, okay, yeah. That's when, that's when we were doing, this one was going to make. Okay. Yeah. And I remember I read it and I was like, wow, that's like so messed up that you would use, that you would use a mechanical system. And I was like, oh, we should just do an electrical system. And I'd been taken apart disposable cameras. So I knew that it was really easy to activate them because I made an art project where I like set off a bunch of disposable cameras.  Like they were so cool. Yeah. What was the thing that Cisco bought and he didn't do anything with it? It was the digital cameras that we all hacked. It was the, it was a digital camera and then Cisco bought it for like a ton of money and nothing came out of it. It was like something cam. Anyways, I don't know. Yeah. Sony who? Looks like everyone had the same ideas. Like you put it by themselves. Let's do a question. Yeah, one more question. Do you think US produced chips could be cost effective enough to compete with versions of China that are suffering from shortages in shipping issues? Well, the cost of making a chip is not labor. There's almost no humans actually involved in making chips. It's completely automated. So it's mostly about whether, you know, the government is more on the subset. Also, chips are not made in China, they're made in Taiwan. I don't know that there's that many fabs in China. Maybe there's like one or two. Yeah, it all depends. But right now, all chips are being made in Taiwan. We do have a fab, I think, in Texas or Arizona. Yeah, I mean like, you know, my opinion about this is I think we all need to become a global others focus society that cares about one another and figure out ways to interact together in better ways than we are. Because obviously we rely on all parts of the world to live the type of life we want to live. So we have to figure this out and we didn't do a good job during the pandemic. Maybe this will be a good reason to think about how we can do things better together. Because I think we're way behind schedule on the United Federation of Planets thing.  We don't. We gotta get on that, okay. I think that is everything we got tonight. Okay, so I showed a 555, I did have a 555 circuit to show with the- Yeah, it's fine, I'll look later to see. Yeah, it was flip, it was a flip camera. And Cisco bought them and then like, where did it go? Who knows, GoPro came out, all these things. So, anyways, okay. That is- That's it. Dusk of Lady Aided tonight. We'll see everybody next week. No, it's cool. It's time, er, 555, that time.


Okay, next on the agenda is the statement of understanding. This is a document that gets reviewed at every February council meeting. I'll go over the document describes the manner in which NHGRI will interact with the council, sort of a list of council responsibilities and limitations of what staff authorities are. So I'm gonna review it and I'm gonna highlight a couple of the changes that have been made since last year's statement of understanding. And at the end, I will ask for a vote from the council to accept the document. So all applications that undergo peer review are required to undergo a second level of review by the advisory council. Now there are some exceptions to this. Certain kinds of fellowship applications are exempt from council review. We, NHGRI here, are required to present certain types of applications to the council. And these include large applications like program projects, all cooperative agreement applications, institutional training grant applications or T32s, applications that are deferred from a previous round, applications with human subjects concerns or animal welfare concerns, applications from foreign institutions and applications requiring special council review. Now I use the word present to council and our definition of that is to list these types of applications on the closed session agenda. We may or may not have a presentation about those applications, but that's the mechanism that we use to report these to the council. Now one change to the SOU this year has to do with special council review. Special council review is triggered when an applicant already has $2 million of total support and any new application that is coming to council review undergoes special council review. The one change we're making to that process is that we are discounting grants that will terminate within 90 days of the council meeting.  It doesn't seem fair to hold an API to that if that funding is going to be lost or eliminated within 90 days. And those applications that are not listed on the closed session agenda end up in the on block vote which is taken at the end of the meeting tomorrow after all of the applications on the CFA has been reviewed. Now the on block is our assumption that all applications receive a fair and accurate peer review. And so the council is simply asked to concur with the IRG. So any questions about the types of applications that we report to council? Okay, moving right along. Now there are four actions that you as council members can take regarding any application that is being reviewed. You can concur with the IRG, the initial review group. You may defer an application for re-review because it received an inadequate or inappropriate peer review. You can recommend an application for high program priority HPP or low program priority LPP. HPP means the application in your judgment is of a key interest to NHGRI, but its impact score may not put it within the typical funding range. And LPP is the opposite. It received a very good impact score but you think it's of lower program priority for NHGRI. You can also defer an application because you the council requires additional information in order to conduct the second level of council review. So any questions about those four actions? Now there's something relatively new called expedited council concurrence or ECC. There are certain kinds of applications that can be put on the ECC report. And these include small business SBIR, STTR applications and non-solicited LC research grants. Now there are other types of applications that go on the ECC, but those two that I just cited, small business and LC, they're paid out of funds that are programmed for those kinds of research areas. We can't reprogram that money. Therefore it seems less, it's not, how do I wanna say this? It would be less imperative to bring those to council's attention for a discussion since we can't reassign the money to other areas of research. Now there are other types of applications, career development awards such as K99, R00 and K01. Small budget or short term applications like R03s and R21s are also put on the ECC. And this year we are adding the F99 K00. So that's the pre-doctoral to postdoctoral transition awards. Now the point of using the ECC is to allow us to spread the workload here at NHGRI. Absent the ECC, our grants administration branch would be waiting for three large bolus workloads to be dumped in their lap after each council meeting. So the ECC is sent to the ECC subcommittee and Steve Rich, Len Panaccio and Lisa Parker are members of that subcommittee. They get this report about four to five weeks in advance of each council meeting. They approve the report and that allows the grants administration branch to start working up those awards. They don't have to wait for the full council meeting. We do present an ECC report in each council. So now at the February council meeting at the end of the CSA, there's a link there. You can go back and you can see all the applications that were approved by the ECC subcommittee four to five weeks ago. Any questions about the ECC? Okay. Now the next section of the SOU is largely about staff authorities. And this defines the kinds of actions that the staff can take without bringing them to the attention of the council or getting your concurrence. So these center largely around administrative supplements, they can be made to existing grants if the work is within scope of what was originally proposed in the application. The supplements can extend, can be an extension of funding for up to one year without council approval. And the supplements can also be up to the level of support approved by council when the grant was initially reviewed. So all of the supplement requests are presented to the extramural leadership team. And that includes Eric, the four division directors, the two office directors, Valentina and Vince and myself. We review these supplement requests and approve them. And then they are reported to council. There are some additional special programs that include the NHGRI action plan, the trans-NIH research supplements to promote diversity and the medical scientist training program. We can also make supplements to these areas. Oh, there is one last point that I wanna raise. In the current statement of understanding, it says that we are allowed to convene the council meeting by an electronic format, such as what we're doing now, but it specifies that that must be the result of some kind of declared emergency, national declared emergency. So that certainly made sense three years ago with the pandemic, but I would advocate that we be given the latitude to hold a council meeting by electronic format and absent any kind of national disaster. So that's the additional change that we're going to make to the statement of understanding. Any questions about this last area of supplements or administrative actions? Okay, so can I get a motion to approve the minor revisions that were made? And the second, all in favor? Anyone opposed or abstaining? Thank you very much.


Hey, welcome back everybody to another episode of the non-profit show. We're really excited that you are here today with us We have a conversation that I think we always It's always in the back of our mind And we always think how do we know? You know, how do we navigate this? Larry G. Raff is here to talk to us about understanding major donors Larry.  And give us some ideas that we didn't know Well, I think I'm gonna introduce you to some different thinking perhaps that You haven't thought about before to be sure Well, I love that that's always a good day for me when I get to learn something new and This is a topic that oh my gosh for so many of us is really a critical piece Another thing that we want to let everybody know is is that we are really excited about a new cohort of co-hosts say that fast three times They come to us from all over the country and so over This month and next month you're gonna see us rolling out introducing these new Co-hosts we're really excited about it and you might have already seen some of them joining us on the nonprofit show The other group that joins us each and every day are our sponsors and they are amazing Most of them have been with us since day one More than a thousand shows back and they include Bloomerang American nonprofit academy nonprofit thought leader staffing boutique your part-time controller 180 management group fundraising academy at National University JMT consulting and nonprofit tech talk These are the rock stars that help you become a rock star because they support our industry Okay, Larry G. Raff you were just in New York yesterday talking to a group you're back in your hometown of Boston Talk to us about what abacus does Be happy to julia. Thank you abacus is a brand new tool the only of its kind that operationalizes donor research To provide you with an objective bias free number To ask a donor for for a three-year pledge So if you're in a campaign If you're doing a special initiative where you're asking for major gifts We all know you can collect all this information And you never have it all And then you have to figure out. Okay. What are we going to ask this couple for how much? well abacus is a 21 questions only easy online way to get to those numbers and because We've have enough Subscribers and data now we are seeing that our predictive accuracy Is within 5% of actual pledges So you can use it to value your pipeline as well as figure out how much to ask someone for a gift We're very excited about it. You should be you know, um, you and I need to offline I need to get with one of your folks or maybe you And get I would I would love to get a tour of this to see how your product works And and and while we're not really here to have you sell your product, but I got to ask this question How do you?  It's for individuals. It's a subscription. It's a monthly uh amount it's either $45 a month or it's 65 because we have The ability to ask questions about your sector.  So it's all very affordable particularly compared to the wealth assessment Services that are out there So, you know my my desire I've been in the business over 40 years my desire is just to get this tool out there to help help nonprofits and All good will come from that. Yeah, I love it. Wow. That's cool. Not what I expected you to say I thought it would be, you know, really an arduous Financial commitment. So super cool. Well, like I said Offline let's I would love to get a tour of your product to learn more about it because this is as we're going to talk Really one of these things and and we were talking in the green room chatter you know, there's a gut feeling and I feel good about this and Good fortune's going to come and you're going to say, yeah, not so fast. It's kind of a myth What are we looking at here, Larry? Well, it is a myth and we're going to talk a little bit about bias money bias as well, but Through our beta testing and through our experience over the many years The reality is when you're ready to have a gift conversation with a donor You're still using your gut and hoping for the best because if the if the donor asks you hey, Larry Where did you come up with that number? Which I which has happened You need a reasonable answer You know a professional answer. Yeah, and trusting your gut is not that So it's really no way to run an industry or a profession to When you're at the end game of the whole development process of getting to a major gift to ask you at the end game You have nothing to help you objectively Come up with what you need to have that conversation Okay, Larry tell me what the answer is to that question because I'm I've never been a professional fundraiser. I've been a community advocate and championed You know many nonprofits and I've sat in those meetings. I've made the ask A lot of times many times. I still do No one has ever asked me that and if I had been asked that question I would have freaked out. I got a man up. I would have been like what I mean I probably would have said well, they told me to ask you I mean Right because that's really what's happened. I can think of over, you know, 40 years of doing this in my community um The development director the CEO would say, okay, we're going to meet with mr. Mrs. Smith And we're going to try and get them to give us x amount and you're the girl Okay, right and so if somebody had asked me that Tell me how to handle that Well, and even if they asked the CEO or the development director that question they they Would have to finesse it. I'm sure and say well We want to be respectful mr. Mrs. Smith and we don't know what's what's in your what's in your pocket book But would you please consider a gift of x? And what I always what I always follow up with is and if we haven't asked you for enough, please tell me Wow 20% of the people come to the meeting with a larger number than was asked for Okay, I'm adding that in my bag of tricks. I had never done that and you know what else happens People smile or they laugh when you say it and that's the kind of frame of mind you want them in when they're considering your ask It's a win both ways. Yeah, and you know what larry? I think it's genuine It is genuine no question. It is genuine. It's genuine Do you think that this myth becomes less of a myth The more you are in this this industry this sector this part of the nonprofit world That um, you know your donors, you know your community Or do you still think that this really is just something that we Is part of how we ask that we're not really being prepared enough How do you see that arc? The it's a very good question. Well, the arc is I agree. We're never prepared enough because if we're relying on our bias An interpretation of this data that goes through our bias filter Yeah, then then there's there's the likelihood you're going to leave money on the table right and Trust me on this. You never know what people have You never ever know what people have and the best research You can hire the research and they'll come back with ask for this or they can afford that and It's far too often the case that they could afford much much much much more because You can't capture all that information Interesting So you really feel you feel confident that it's generally more and not less Because I think human nature would be and maybe this is like fierce talking because I think a lot of times we We go into these asks being fearful And in that scarcity mentality you really do feel like it's there is more abundance than we ever consider well Especially these days and the reason you're fearful is because you have nothing behind you that backs up the number and the rationale That's why you're fearful if you did have a basis for a non bias basis you go in with strength Okay And I would say yes people if they've accepted an invitation to have a conversation about a gift to your organization Then they have capacity Yeah, I love it. Well, let's talk about this this other thing and that's Fundraising headwinds. Yeah What does that mean to you and what should that mean to us? Well, uh, I there are several and they're dynamic. Uh, so a shrinking donor pool AFP just came out with data, you know 50 000 plus donors Are seven percent fewer This year than last year Uh, which accounts for almost 90 percent of total giving so That's fundamentally a problem and small dollar donors are shrinking as well Making sense of donor research, which I've talked about there's there's just it's it's just Wild wilds Swings and I and I did research on this and I'll talk we'll talk about it in a minute Full the philanthropic capacity estimates, you know, the eye waves and the donor searches of the world You know the the Results they come up with can vary significantly from reality. They're very good at taking thousands of names in your file and It's scoring them and getting it down to something. But that's about it Because because of the high variability Um, personal and organizational biases about money Ever present, you know, some organizations human service organizations might say, oh, how could I ask for a million dollars for my My organization Well, if the numbers add up to making sense that you should then Get over your bias About your organization. You're worth it Make the ask right. Um No process internally about arriving at an ask amount Often there's the buck doesn't really stop anywhere analysis paralysis Right. Yeah, you never you never ever know what you Want to know a need to know But don't let that stop you from having the gift conversation And there's a lot of new gift officers in the field, you know, there's been a recent Real strong influx of folks and we need to get them to be much more productive much more quickly because The competition is much stiffer There's more nonprofits and fewer major donors that adds up to a problem Yeah, well, you know, we go on the nonprofit show We go by the number 1.8 million registered nonprofits In the country and and you know, I would argue they're a hell of a lot more that are kind of under the radar that aren't necessarily You know tracking and and doing what they should legally But I think one of the things is that It's so varied and we don't have those pillars of giving You know, we have ancillary and somewhat if dare I say kind of You know Off of off of main highway kind of people, right? We have Very unusual nonprofits That people can give to as opposed to the main pillars that that we used to give throughout our communities Whether they be faith-based or they be, you know, human services or health I mean, but we have things that are, you know, like chinchilla rescues and not to negate them But do you know what I mean? We have very boutique boutique. Yeah, that's the right word Thank you. That's the right word and that might Reach somebody's heart and their value system And it's it's really an issue. I mean, I talked to so many CEOs that are just shocked at the amounts of money that go to that go away from their organizations when they believe they're, you know, frontline Organizations really doing the hard work and then they see money bleeding off into other sectors that that Maybe they don't feel ours is important to the whole community But in my estimation, Larry, these companies that are are taking more of a Lion's share, they're well marketed. They're well branded. They're communicating with donors They're more strategic, right? And so they have more money and more budget to do all of that. Yeah, well, they're making that investment They are making that investment because the donor retention It's easier to get a gift from a previous donor than from a new person And so the investment in retaining your donors and growing your donor pool is We'll pay back. There's just no question of it Yeah, you know, one of the things that you mentioned and I can't wait to get into this Is money bias What is money bias? I think we're all gonna know this Let me uh, I mean we all of us were born into different circumstances, you know, some some less affluent some very affluent and so The amount a $10,000 gift for me Is the same as a 50 or $100,000 gift from somebody else so I did a I did research over 10 years And I gave fundraisers over 400 of them Two case studies 21 questions each the same that are into calculator And I said, okay, tell me how much you want you would ask to the small donor and ask to the large donor Well, the small donor the range of responses Was $25,000 to $250,000 For the large donor it was 50 50,000 to 3 million Now, mind you, this is the same set of data They're all fundraisers And the bias that is at play And how they interpret the information And it could be because they're new or they're seasoned Seasoned people might go to 3 million, right? Uh Or the nature of the organizations that they work for That's money bias in numbers in in the actuality Of real circumstances And that's why you need a non-bias objective way to get to A value That you then vet with people who know the donor And so they'll say they get a reality check You know, they'll say hey, you're crazy. That's that's way too much or or they can do a lot more than that I love that you can do it Seriously Seriously, and and so that's that's why I created Advocates. It's simply put that's just no way To to run a business when you're asking your best donors For the most you've ever asked them for and you have no solid basis for why Yeah You know how off-putting or Maybe off-putting isn't the right word, but how But asking for the wrong amount or you know too low too high How does that impact the discussion? Does it does it ever torpedo it because the donor can't get beyond it or Everybody's so stressed out and the tension, you know is is escalating like Because it seems to me. This is such a pivotal piece Of the relationship going forward not just Sitting there in that restaurant or that conference room or wherever right on your campus it it seems like we We have this stumbling block. That's it's pretty big Yeah, what does that look like to you? Well, I think it's language oriented. I I think You know, I use sort of a set kind of language And and it's it's you want to disarm two things You want to disarm the research? So say I don't know what's in your pocketbook. I don't know what you're capable of or what your financial pressures are But I want to be respectful So what you're saying is please forgive me if I screw up That's what it's saying. Yeah, I love that and you say would you please consider Would you please join us because everyone who's here has given? right It's a social bond Please join us and consider a gift of a hundred thousand dollars That can be paid over three years And if we haven't asked you for enough, please tell me Love it. That's the language that we that we typically use that I train my clients on using It's it's very useful. I want to tell you a quick story To illustrate what bias is about because it's more than what I just described A client a humane society executive director and board chair go into a couple's home And and the calculator when it was in an excel format Said asked for a hundred thousand dollars over three years And they go into the home and it's not very updated The kitchen hasn't been updated for a long time and they're starting to get cold feet Their bias is kicking in Right and they signal to each other to go to plan b plan b was 50,000 And in the course of the conversation when they showed the couple of the gift chart The couple volunteered a gift of a hundred thousand dollars Before they got to the ask So if if they had followed their bias and asked for 50 They may very well have left 50,000 on the table. Yeah. Yeah, and that's where bias shows up very commonly It's so interesting. I learned that selling shoes getting through college People who have money wear good shoes because they don't like their feet to hurt And if you look rag tag clothing, but they've got good shoes on That's fabulous. Oh my god, that's that's just fabulous Well, I think that that's a great example of of where we We do take the look at things and you know use that word bias. We we really form an opinion that's You know tough because it's mostly emotional and then we follow our gut It's just like what you said in the very beginning that myth of of what we think is going on So this leads me to kind of my last question of our time with you When is it right to make an ask and we get this information? Um, and we get through all of the emotion and the relationship building So when is it right to put this all together? and proceed with Making the ask right good question and it's back to that analysis paralysis problem And I'll tell you uh on the calculator. We hit we you know in addition to offering a Suggested asked amount and what to expect We have a readiness score So if you haven't if you were unable to answer some of the 21 questions We're feeding back to you and telling you hey, you're not ready. You need more research and more discovery To get the answers to this question like, you know, what was the largest gift they made to another organization as a for instance? Uh, have they made it a state? Have they included you in their estate plan? Those are the sorts of things you get by knowing the people Building that relationship So when you then get to is it when's the right time to ask? It's it's twofold. One, do you have the right information to make the right judgments about what that gift conversation is going to be about? And secondly, did you ask the donor To meet with you in order to discuss a gift To the campaigner to the organization And as long as you don't ambush them And you're saying this is a meeting to discuss a gift or your support of Then they're ready Then they're ready to have to make a gift 99% of the time sometimes something happens in between But 99% of time if they know that this is about a gift coverage. This is about a gift. Then they're ready to have that conversation Now it may not close that day Right, you can ask them and ask said they need to sleep out. They need to talk to their advisor or what have you Uh, and if it's a bigger number than they were expecting you need to say, well, you know Instead of three years if it would be easier over five years To fulfill this request Then that that would be pine that would work. So you need to be prepared for the objections and for the what is what abouts So don't expect to close it on that day, but they're ready to be asked Right, and that's what's important. I I love that you separated those two because I think you're right. I think um, you know, the actual aspect in the The discipline of you know, getting the meeting preparing for that meeting and making the ask Needs to be separate from the closing and how we we look at what a success In a failure is and like how do we feed the pipeline? It's it's all of those things and and we talk about cause selling That's something that a lot of times um, I don't see enough of uh, Our folks in development in the nonprofit sector recognizing It's more just like did we get the money or didn't we right? It's transactional Yeah, it drives me nuts because that's not the way that you build that sustainable approach. That's right And julie Something I preach is it's easier to get the pledge than to get the pledge payment True dad right and you need to steward them once they make a pledge. That's when the work starts Because you need to keep them engaged Yeah, so they pay that pledge Right, right Wiser words have never been spoken. Absolutely. And again, we don't focus on that. I think a lot of times we forget That that is a big part. It's it's just customer service, which we don't use that word enough Use the stewardship, but it is customer service and uh, there is there is a there is a solution to that too But it would be it's typically frowned upon in the business And I converted a major hospital to this So if you get a ten thousand dollar pledge From someone you book it That year as a ten thousand dollar income right Well, what if you just booked the cash from that pledge As what you raise that year It's not the pledges. It's the cash you brought in And then you know what cash to expect based on the pledge for future years, but you still need to get it And that will incentivize gift officers and fundraisers to stay close with your donors Because you're counting their pledge payments in the current year And as you can imagine, uh fundraisers weren't too thrilled about that idea, but administration was Well, yeah, because that has been an age old problem. I mean we look at you know, Legacy gifts and we look at generational wealth transference and how that looks and estate planning and all that and it can really skew Your sense of how well you're doing versus the reality of What's actually coming through and going into the bank, right? Yeah When you get when you get that bequest payment Which bumped your year. Well, don't budget next year Based on this year Right. It's just not real. It's not repeatable. It's not recurrent. Right, right And you know, I think and we don't have much time left but I think um that was illustrated a lot with With covet and with some of the the the funding and the the grants that came out and you know, just this these big um inputs of money To, you know, various sectors and then it's like wow, okay. That's that's not repeatable or it's not being You know, we're not navigating forward on that. It's over And now there are a lot of organizations That are really behind the gun because they ramped up with the this funding and hadn't really planned forward Remember the ice bucket challenge? Yes, that huge spike. I I did a blog post on this the next year and went back to baseline Yeah, it was never really increased. No, no, no. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I could talk to you all day Larry G. Raff really interesting conversation I can't wait to take a test drive on your product and we like I said, we'll do that offline because I'm fascinated by this and I have been and I continue to be in those those meetings As a community leader not a professional fundraiser And it's it's tough and it's fraught with a lot of anxiety. I personally love it. I really like it But you know, I I get to do the fun part as I As I see it and make that ask And I have never really had This background of information to help arm me Like I think you're providing our sector and so Really interesting check out donor abacus dot com Two weeks you can use it for free for two weeks. Okay. Well, okay That's even better. Um, yeah, and and you'll learn more about what they do and how they came up with this And uh, Larry travels around and speaks. I know you were just like you said in new york yesterday Speaking to a group of professional fundraisers So, yeah, this is something really to take a look at for your organization Another thing that we want to make sure that you take a look at and those are our presenting sponsors We have amazing support from folks like bloom or an american non-profit academy non-profit thought leaders staffing boutique your part-time controller 180 management group fundraising academy at national university jmt consulting and non-profit tech talk These are the folks that join us day in and day out So we can have these really interesting conversations like we've had with larry today Okay, larry I think that there's a lot more I would say a lot less stress Going towards next asks for so many people that have been able to meet you today on the non-profit show And learn about not only your product, but your mentality. I I've really enjoyed learning from you It's it's been great. I really appreciate your time today. Oh, thank you. Julie. Thank you very much It's been a lot of fun. Hey everybody, um each episode we end with this message And it goes like this To stay well So you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow everyone. Thanks so much larry. Have a great day


What's the word y'all? The Portland Trail Blazers are back in No Man's Land. This feels like a video we make every single year. This is not new to them and their organization, but boy, we gotta chat. They started off the season 10 and four, one of the best records in the Western Conference. They had one of the best defenses. And since then, if my math's correct, they are 11 and 21 since that 10 and four star. And last night, last night they blew a 24 point lead to the Lakers? Shout out to the Lakers, man. At this point, we kind of grown accustomed to seeing LeBron Jays put up 30 plus points since he turned 38, which is crazy. But of course, Thomas Bryan was the real show with his stat line and his field goal percentage. They said on the broadcast, the only other player in Laker history to do that similar stat line with that field goal percentage was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. And Thomas Bryan is doing that. He's been doing it. He's been amazing. And that was a big win for the Lakers being down that much. Cause I didn't watch this game live. I was screaming, twist.tv slash KLT for a cue. I fired up cause the Lakers game was boring. They went into halftime down by 24 points. And I'm like, okay, this is over. Let's go ahead and play some FIFA. And I'm playing FIFA. I'm being bad at it. And then the chat is like, the Lakers are coming back. I thought they was capping. So I look at the stats. They're like, it's like a two point game. I'm like, oh no. So the Portland Trailblazers were up by 24 points at one point and lost by nearly double digits. They lost by nine points.  So I watched it. But no man's land, man. No man's land is where they're residing. You know, it's a bit weird. And before we even talk about the things that's going on, can I quickly defend myself? Because this is something that happens way too often. I'm just gonna use the Portland Trailblazers as an example. When they started off the season 10 and four, right? If you watch our podcast, you know, I was a bit skeptical about the start. If you remember, Jeremy Grant hit a game winner. Anthony Simon to the game winner. Josh Hart hit a game winner. They hit three game winners in a span of like a week and a half. And you win those games, those that counted as dubs. But I went onto the podcast and said, I need to see more. I need to see a longer stretch. And boy, my mentions was, oh, can he never get Trailblazers? No love, boom, boom, boom. I'm gonna say this again for the millionth time on this channel. I try to make these videos and make my NBA opinions and stuff as objective as possible. Of course I don't shoot 100%, nobody does. But what I saw with the Portland Trailblazers during that stress didn't seem sustainable. I didn't think the defense that was anchored by use of nuggets was gonna continue to be top 10. I didn't think that they were gonna continue to hit game winners throughout the course of the season. I didn't think they were gonna be this bad though. But in the moment I was giving y'all these real reasons why I didn't think that start was realistic. I feel like I was public enemy number one on Trailblazer Twitter because of that. And like, you know what I'm saying? So I'm just, I'm not, this is not like a victory lap. Oh, they're bad. See, I'm right. I'm just saying like, I don't have a hatred for any organization like ever. This is my job, ladies and gentlemen, to try to be objective as possible when I'm talking about basketball. So even if I don't talk about your team enough, I get that a lot too. Oh, you don't talk about our team? That don't mean I don't like y'all. It just ain't really been a way for me to bring it into conversation. You know what I'm saying? So back to the Trailblazers because again, it hasn't been good since that great start. And listen, it's a candy for real video. So you know, we gotta talk about moves and changes because that's what we're obsessed with on this channel. The Portland Trailblazers have one timeline. And that timeline is Damien Lillard. They have the greatest player in their franchise history actively on their roster and still playing great basketball. And again, I'm not a guy that's gonna ever come on here again and talk about Trey Dame until this man tells the world himself that he wants to be traded. So their timeline is put the best team around Dame so we could get him in a position to win a championship. They made one conference finals run with C.J. McCullum. They shipped C.J. McCullum out the dough maybe a year or two too late but they finally did it to build this roster. And this roster in itself is a pretty, pretty new roster for Dame. Josh Hart hasn't been there for more than a season to have Jeremy Grant was this season acquisition. Drew Eubanks knew Shayton Sharp, Gary Payne. These are all people that haven't been there very long and still felt like there was a hard ceiling on this. I actually really liked their starting lineup on paper between Dame, Simon, Josh Hart, Jeremy Grant and Youssef Nurkic. I thought it was cool but now we started looking at that depth and Drew Eubanks was the better center last night against the Lakers but he's an undersized center at six nine. Shayton Sharp is, was he the youngest player drafted in this year's draft? Of course he's going to go through hot streaks, cold streaks or whatever. Gary Payne the second is finally getting a real PT after missing a great majority of the season and Nazir Liddle was finally back and he was one of the best players last night. He only played 13 minutes. So what do they possibly do to get them out of this no man's land to help Dame and Liddle? Cause again, I mean the easy thing to do is say a trade Dame, do this, do that. And now we, we just thinking about it differently. I'm going to be honest with you the Trebleys are our team. I'm going to keep it rooted for the season because the Bulls pick is old to the Orlando Magic and the Trebleys' pick is old to the Bulls if they make the playoffs but right now they ain't making a playoffs. They, they ain't doing it. And things get ultra weird when you start talking about the salary cap, the luxury tax and all of that because it feels pretty, pretty obvious that they're going to attempt everything in their power to bring Jeremy Grant back. He's been an amazing pickup for him for them. I mean, he went through a stretch where he was averaging like 25 points per game when they were still doing solid basketball stuff. But like Josh Hart is up for a new contract because he's got like a player option and he's making pennies on a dollar for what he could potentially make on the market.  So that feels like something that the ownership wouldn't want to do. So what do you do instead? You find a new home for Josh Hart so you can make something out of what he's making before you just leave him in free agency. I think one of the mistakes that they made in the last couple of off seasons was extended use of Nurkitz. I know that they basically had no alternative when it came to that center position. So yeah, here's a new contract use, but like he hasn't, he hasn't been good. He's a really cool dude from every account I've heard but like he just hasn't been good. And the best verges of what the Portland Trailblazers have been is when they were spamming pick and roll with Dame and Nurkitz. And if you look at their pick and roll percentage it's down like 14% this season compared to the other seasons. And part of that is because well now we got Anthony Simons. We brought Anthony Simons in on a four-year, $100 million contract. We can't just have him spotting up all the time. He also has to do some of the stuff with the ball in his hand. So now Dame and Lula pick and roll possessors are going down. And that means use of Nurkitz's value as a player is going down as well. Again, they have big body, Thomas Bryant having the game of his career and they couldn't play use of Nurkitz. They couldn't play him. They decided to go with the six nine Drew U banks on him because that was their best option. And we'll address the biggest elephant in the room is that the Dame Anthony Simons together at the time hasn't looked good. It just hasn't looked good. And I don't have the numbers to prove that or whatever but it feels like Anthony Simons is more effective when he's not playing with Dame. And Dame is more effective when he's not playing with Anthony Simons. And you have to figure it out because you gave Anthony Simons his money. And I'm not saying they won't be able to figure it out.   And they just ain't had it so far. Chauncey Bellups after last night's loss said that they're gonna look into every option to potentially change the team. And he meant like rotations and starters and stuff like that. But as I look at this roster I don't see what that can be to maximize to get them in a place that they really wanted to be. Like Joe Cronus said before the season not publicly or like he came to the mic and said we're not a championship team. But he said that they're just gonna try to progressively get better. And that sound like somebody that's not looking at their roster as a contender. We could see this roster. We know that they're not a contender but them being the 13th seed is something that they didn't prepare for either. Is it in the best interest to maybe lose so you could get another lottery pick? Probably, probably. But if you look at the roster that they have if we talking about swinging foot offenses and getting another star to put along side Dame again, we don't know who that star is on the market. There's not a lot of stars on the market at all in this year's trade at least yet. But like again, we talk about Josh Hart's contract extensions and how they probably won't be able to afford that. If you really want to get ballsy and you want to put Dame in the best position to do Dame stuff. Are you coming in or? Okay, well, I guess Koba's filming this video too. If you want to put Dame in the best, best position and you want to get him a secondary star the Josh Hart, Shane Sharp. These are people that would be valuable.  And for the last month or so, he's been trying to tell the people he wants to see an Anthony Simons, oh, Giada, no betrayed. That is the way you write the ship. And I didn't think after what Anthony Simons showed last season shooting a 40% from three and when Dame went out basically being the engineer at offense, even though they weren't good that just as fast that, not that they're changing up on him, but they'd be willing to throw him in an additional trade. But again, Derek's mindset is, hey, Dame is our timeline. And Oceana Nobby probably fits what Dame needs to do or what the team needs more than what Anthony Simons does. But I can't look at that like Anthony Simons, Sharp, these are some young players that if I would hit the reset button and I have a star player of a DeMar deRose and or Pascal, I don't know, I'm just saying these are the players that are closest to maybe, but I doubt it. Those are people I'd be interested in. That boy Sharp looks good. He looks sharp out there, you know what I'm saying? And me at times. And he's also super young. Anthony Simons showed that he can shoot 40% on a high clip, moving threes and not just catch a shoot really, really well. But ultimately, another thing that really boggles this team down is how small they are. The only person above seven foot or seven foot or close to it is Yusuf Nurkic. Again, Drew, U-Banks is six nine and nobody else on the team is six 10. They're a small team. And I don't feel like other than again last night that they've been getting dogged by these bigger, bigger players, but it does matter. It does matter having that lack of size. You can't even tell there's a dog in there, can you? You can't even see them. Now here are the next couple of games for the Trailblaze. It's against the Spurs tonight, good redemption game against a team that isn't actively trying to win basketball games. The Utah Jazz, the Toronto Raptors, the Atlanta Hawks, the Grizzlies, the Wizards, like their schedule is not super easy. It's also not super tough. So, I mean, they have Damien Lillier who is still putting up crazy numbers, 50 points and a loss, 47 points and stuff like that. They could win more games, but again, even if they do end up making a run and getting into the playoffs, we know what the ceiling is on this team and it's not extremely high.