Anyway, welcome to Nonprofit Tech Club Austin, and we appreciate your taking the time. I know we have some Facebook live viewers right now, and you're very welcome. We will have a recording of this program on YouTube, on the TechSoup page eventually, and also if Sean has any slides, we'll post those on SideShare, but we are glad to have you, and you can look at this 24-7 in another day or so at your leisure, if not live.  N10, Nonprofit Technology Network, was our first sponsor here in Austin, and that took us certainly nationwide, and then TechSoupConnect joined us, and that made us have a global reach, which we really like that. Get in some really interesting conversations with our friends all over the world. Programs are free to all. We are managed entirely by a group of volunteers, and Sean Hale, our guest speaker today, is one of those, like Kevin. They do all their work for us, free of charge, and we also are very inclusive, and we like to invite people of all backgrounds and skill levels to our meetings, and we went online last year with COVID, starting in, I guess it was April, and we've just kept going because we've had more viewers and participants, and it's just really super easy, so we will see as COVID progresses here, we will probably keep doing Zoom meetings online through the end of this year, and then we'll review next year and see what we can do, and of course you would guess our mission is to help individuals and non-profits seeking tech tools and techniques to make their work easier and more effective. We have had a great year so far. We're in our second half now, so please come back and join us for future programs we'd love to have you. I guess I mentioned so ready, we're all volunteer. We are soon, this fall, going to morph into not just us, we're not going to be just us, we're going to be the Texas chapter of TechSoup Connect, and that will allow us to draw in people from all over the state, and most everything will remain the same, but our programs are probably going to get even more interesting, and so stay tuned for that. We'll still have our group page on Facebook and our event listing and all that. We wanted to showcase here our wonderful volunteers, again who do their work free of charge for us, and so if you have questions at any time or you just like to, you know, hook up with them, LinkedIn is a great place to do that. Locally here in Austin we have Capital Factory as a partner, and we're very grateful for that. When we were meeting in person we had space dedicated to our programs at Capital Factory, and we love that, and they stayed with us through COVID, and so we are in touch with them every week just about, and they post our events on their event page. Capital Factory is expanded into Houston and Dallas by the way, and I think maybe they have their site in San Antonio, I don't know, but it's a startup hub, and a tech hub, and really a friendly, great co-working and educational space, and also to ramp up your startup. It can help you do that if it's a social good startup or a for-profit one, and here are some links for you, and so connect there if you would like, and we do have this slide deck with all these links on our Facebook group page in case you would like that, so I am now going to stop sharing and I'm going to let Sean Hale, who is a former COO, I guess it is, of Mission Capital, which is a long-time, highly valued local non-profit support partner here in Austin. He has some really good knowledge from that experience, and also, he developed a new platform, he's gone freelance, but he's also a developer, which is a consultant directory, and you'll love to hear about that, so I'm going to let him self-introduce further, and I really, really appreciate Sean speaking today. Thanks so much. Carolyn, thank you. I'm going to, speaking of technology, you guys, speak up if my slides aren't starting to show up. They are. They look good. Okay, all right, so folks, please do feel free to interrupt me if there's an important question that really has to do with what I'm talking about. We'll also try and do Q&A at the end, but this seems like a small friendly group, so we can also take some questions while we're doing this. Of course, first of all, thank you, Carolyn, for organizing this group and making it all possible. Carolyn, for those of you who don't know her, she is the glue that holds the non-profit tech club together, and Eli van der Giesen up in Vancouver was also key to this. He had to jump off the call before we officially got started, and of course, thank you everybody who's in attendance for wanting to serve your non-profits and your missions better. So I'm Sean Hale. I've been doing non-profit nuts and bolts, back offices, what have you for more than 20 years now. By day, I'm a consultant now. I help non-profits strengthen their administrative functions. So finance, HR, IT, operations, those sorts of things for small and medium-sized non-profits. And I'm also a co-founder of Philanthrop Force, which is a tool that helps non-profits to find their next consultant online. We have hundreds of consultants listed, and this is a service that is free to non-profits. So at Philanthrop Force, I get to talk to a lot of non-profit and foundation leaders, and very often they'll tell us about how they want to have more options than they can get just by word of mouth, but when they're not talking to us about that, they're asking us how they can vet the candidate pool so they can get the right match. And that's a lot of what we're going to be talking about today is getting those candidates there and making sure that you do get the right ones, to get the right one finally hired to help your non-profit out. And folks, don't worry about taking notes today. In addition to the recording of this being available, all this content, we're in the process of publishing it as a three-article series. The first article has already been published. The next two will be available soon and I'd be happy if you email me. I'd be happy to give you advanced copies of those articles so that you don't even have to wait. And I do have just a really quick legal disclaimer, and what it kind of boils down to is, please don't sue us. This is all good general information, but at the end of the day, a professional is key to identifying and managing exceptions to that general information. For example, for many non-profits, bringing a margarita machine in on Fridays, that could be really great for staff morale. But it could backfire at other non-profits. For example, mothers against drunk driving. That's where a consultant can help you make sure that you're adapting the advice appropriately to your non-profit. So why would you want to move beyond word of mouth? Because word of mouth, it is what most non-profits use right now to find the specialists and consultants that help them out. Well, if nothing else, and we'll talk about a number of reasons during this presentation, if for no other reason, consider doing it because of money. Because if you're going to spend $5,000, $10,000, $20,000, $50,000 or more, you really deserve a great match, right? Not just a match. And why wouldn't you just go with the friend's reference? You might be wondering, because a lot of non-profits do that, right? They reach out to the person that worked and friend says, oh yeah, I like Terry. Well, that person, very well, we have been a great match for your friend and their organization. But that doesn't mean they're the best match for your non-profit. Your non-profit is unique. It has its own unique history, mission, people involved with it, culture. And so all those things are important to take into account when you are looking for your next consultant. Now, I'm going to be talking about some work that might be more than you're used to doing when you're looking for a consultant. And why would you want to do extra work? There are lots of reasons. Number one reason is that we human beings, and I think everybody on the call is a human being, we're kind of, we fall prey to a lot of biases, right? And these biases, they lead us to make poor choices sometimes. For example, we will tend to favor the person who gives us warm fuzzies. That's what we do by nature. And you know, that's a perfectly good criteria if you're looking for friends or a romantic partner. But it's usually not a good criteria if you're looking for the best match for the job, right? And so we're going to be talking about good processes to help us acknowledge and reduce that bias so that we can really make sure that the person that we end up hiring is an outstanding match for our organization. So, step one, we want to define the project, right? By answering questions like who, what, when, where, why, how, that helps us improve the odds of getting the right consultant. And it helps get all of our people in our organization pulling in the same direction because different people might have different ideas, even though, you know, we all agree that we need a strategic planner. Everybody might have a different idea about what that really means. And folks, please note that for larger projects, consider hiring a consultant to do a small kind of figuring out the details project with you, because a good consultant can help you make sure that you really understand the problem or the opportunity that your organization has, because oftentimes it's different from what you might think at the beginning. They can help you really surface those, those important details that can change what you're looking for in the consultant who's going to take on the big project. So, what kind of details might you want in addition to who, what, when, where, why, and how? Well, you can start with smart goals, right? S, for specific. What do we want to accomplish? And why is this goal important? M, for measurable. How much and how will we measure success? Is it a finished website? Is it a 50 page plan? Is it mission clarity? A, is for achievable, right? Is this project realistic? Have we accounted for things like financial constraints and other things like that? R, relevant, right? Are the goals of this project that we want to do, are those consistent with our mission values and strategic plan? Because sometimes it might be a really awesome idea. It might even be aligned with the mission, but it's not aligned with our strategic plan that really helps us make sure we stay on course for the next three to five years. And T, time bound, when will we finish this project? Right? It's good to know that up front and get everybody on the same page. Your, your staff and your internal stakeholders and your consultant that you're going to be looking for. You all want to be on the same page about, yeah, we need this wrapped up by December 31st. Of course, you're going to want to start to do a preliminary definition of activities that can change over the course of the engagement and endearing project design.  Budget, right? You have an idea of what this is going to cost, or maybe you already know that you have this grant that's going to cover $25,000 or whatever. Name that, because that's going to help define whether or not you can add bells and whistles and all sorts of other important conversations. Financing, what stage is the financing in, right? Has it been secured? Has it been partially raised? Has none of it been raised? Those are going to be important factors for you to understand internally and for your consultant as you are looking to find the right person. Tea, I know we already discussed tea when we were going to find it, so activities, budget, financing, timeline, major dates and milestones like maybe you need to have the strategic planning line up with the annual board retreat or whatever. To find that up front, that could be important, especially if one of your top consultants always takes the first week in July to go do something with their family. You want to define your organization roles, right? Who in the organization has decision-making power with this project? Who has an advisory role, but not decision-making power? Who's going to be the point of contact for the consultant? Because the last thing you want for you or the consultant is for them to have 20 points of contact. I'll just make a mess. And I see some things going into the chat, folks. I can't look at the chat, so Carolyn, please do stop me if there's something there that is a good reason for us to pause. You also want to look at the consultant's role and define that up front, right? Are you looking for an advisor, somebody to do research, somebody to do analysis, to diagnose, to propose solutions, to implement those solutions? There are lots of different things that a consultant can do for you, and it's important to define that up front. And the above list, it's not comprehensive, and you're not even going to always use all the different things that I just named. For example, often get hired to provide ongoing financial advisory to nonprofits, among other services, and a traditional timeline doesn't come into play much. It does a little bit, but not so much. All these project details that you're going to be building out, these are things that you want to share freely internally to make sure everybody on your team is pulling in the same direction, and you want to share this with your applicants so they can help self-select and really understand what you're looking for and help you figure out jointly whether or not it's a good match. You're also going to want to define criteria for your consultants, right? And you want to do this before you begin publicizing or doing a search. We'll talk a little bit more about that in just a second. Here are some of the potential criteria you might want to consider. Things like skills and credentials, right? Do they need to have an MBA or a fundraising certificate? Are you looking for a certain amount of experience in the field or a certain number of years of consulting? Is emotional intelligence an important criteria for this project? How about personal lived experience? Is it important, for example, that the consultant have meaningful lived experience among the population that you serve? How about affinity for your mission? Is that an important criteria? Do you want that person to at least be able to speak to and understand what your mission is? A lot of times, you can tell a lot just by their cover letter and whether or not they understand what you do or how much they might care about it. Location, is that important to you? Can they work for you from another state away or across the country or from Timbuktu, for that matter? Or is it critical that they be local? Being open to a large talent pool from around the country, around the world, will get you a lot more opportunities for great matches, but sometimes it is critical that that person live in your community. Can the work be done remote, onsite, both? Is it important that they play well with others? Is it important that this consultant be forthright with you? Do you need somebody who can maybe speak some hard truths? Or is that not an important criteria? Or maybe you really need somebody who's going to sugar coat it? I don't know. That's up to you. I do want to make a special note here, though, folks, about unicorns. Unicorns, they are magical creatures. They have magical powers. They perform miracles. And in my experience in nonprofits, I'm not saying it's the case for anybody on the call right now, but in my experience in nonprofits, I've seen over and over again how sometimes we expect to get a unicorn out of these processes. And if you have a magical treasure chest, you should totally go for that unicorn. But otherwise, maybe to have different expectations because that unicorn, that person who's going to check all the boxes, who's going to do all the hard work for you, who's perfect in every way, it really does take a magical treasure chest to be able to attract and retain that person. If you don't have that magical treasure chest, there are some things you can do. And that really becomes to prioritizing your criteria, right? What among all your criteria are required, right? That you absolutely must have, like maybe you really do need somebody who has at least three years of experience doing capital campaigns. But it might be preferred for them to have 10 or 20 years. Those are different levels of experience there, right? You want to prioritize those criteria now before you meet any of the candidates. Going through this process, making sure you and your team are on the same page, this is going to help you to acknowledge, manage, and minimize bias. And it's also going to help you to manage expectations within your organization. So how are we going to evaluate people? Well, you can build an evaluation matrix. And because really, you can and you should expect to get multiple applicants. And why do we want to use an evaluation matrix? Why do we want to minimize bias? Well, again, human beings like me, and I expect every other human on this call, we all have a certain level of bias. Sometimes we know about it. Sometimes it's unconscious. And whether it's, you know, we want to pick the person who we want to have coffee with, or the person we might have bias because, oh, yeah, this person went to the same university I did, or they went to the rival university. Maybe I don't like that rival university. Sometimes we also have much more serious unconscious bias. And research has shown that we human beings, we often judge people unfairly because of things like physical appearance, age, gender, national origin. So this evaluation matrix, it's kind of like a scorecard. And I'm going to show you an example of one here in just a second. It's going to help you make sure that you're comparing apples to apples, right? You're using the same criteria for every single person and criteria that you came up with in advance. And this is a great way to keep that bias down. You're going to create it now because after you've seen the applicants come in, bias can start to creep in, right? You might have already seen, oh, my gosh, this person went to that other university or whatever it is. And ID, in an ideal world, you're going to build your evaluation matrix, your criteria for your consultant and your interview questions kind of all together. They kind of come as a package because they're going to all influence each other. So what does an evaluation matrix look like? For those of us who haven't seen it before, I have one here on the screen for you and email me. I'd be happy to share this Excel spreadsheet with you. And the basic idea is it's just a quick scorecard. So on the left hand side, you have the names of the different candidates. Then you have a bunch of columns here with required skills, right? These are things that the person must have. So either they have them, so they get to keep on going in the process, or they don't have them in which case, they're out. They are off the island, right? You also have preferred skills and experience, right? These are things that for all those people who have to check all the boxes on the required skills, these are the things that are going to help you see who really stands out in the crowd, the people who have a lot of your preferred skills and experience. Folks, another key factor in this whole process is making sure that you have buy-in from your stakeholders. Program participants are one of your stakeholders, right? The people that you serve and the people who might be participating in this project that you are bringing a consultant in for, right? The people that this project is going to impact. You want to involve them with a real voice in the project design because that's going to make the design better and it's going to make their participation a whole lot better if they know that their thoughts and ideas were taken into account. The other set of stakeholders that you really want to keep an eye on into taking into account are your key decision makers, right? That might be your board, the executive director, key staff, key funders because the last thing you want to do is spend lots of your time and lots of the consultant's time in this whole process of finding the right person just to have a situation where at the last minute, a critical decision maker denies support, right? You want them on board from day one, but I'm not saying you necessarily need 100% buy-in or 100% consensus, but you absolutely do need critical mass for project success. We get a lot of questions about requests for proposal, RFPs. Should you do one? Shouldn't you do one? The answer is maybe. And for bigger projects, especially where there's a lot more detail, more formality, budgets of like 50,000 and above, absolutely you're going to want to go a little bit more of the RFP route, but I have some important considerations free to keep in mind. Requiring a full RFP can really create a serious barrier to entry. Many of the most qualified, most experienced consultants will not participate in an open RFP process. Why not? Well, it's a big time investment for them to fill out the whole proposal. They're going to be competing against dozens of other proposals, so they know upfront that I might have a low chance of payoff after I put all this work into my proposal. If they know that you as a nonprofit are allowing dozens and dozens of proposals, that also signals to the consultant that you haven't done your homework to find good potential matches up front.  Most of the most experienced consultants, they really value a discovery process where they get in, they have conversations with you before ever putting in a proposal. It's hard for them to understand your nonprofit and it's unique challenges and opportunities if they haven't had a chance to really engage with you upfront. And one of the biggest things that's going to keep people from following up with your RFP is that they've seen that the winner is frequently the lowest bidder rather than the best match. And a lot of these folks, especially the most experienced, the most qualified, they're not necessarily going to be the lowest bidder. So instead of an RFP, if you had been considering one, how would you consider a targeted approach where you identify four or five, six consultants who look like a strong match? You reach out to them personally and share their project details. And even though I have a picture of a pretty VIP invitation on the screen, an email would be fine. And in that email, you're going to ask them if they would like to be one of a handful of hand-picked candidates to be considered for the opportunity. Doing an approach along these lines, it's going to get you greater appreciation from these folks. It's going to start building a positive relationship with them from day one. And that's going to be a critical part of your whole project success. It's going to be better for your reputation, both as a professional and for your organization. It's going to get you more participation from those highly experienced candidates. And so that's going to get you better matches. And now, let's talk a little bit about the search, right? And in an ideal world, we are casting a big net. Just in Texas, we estimate that there are 1,000 independent consultants serving nonprofits. And you want to cast a big net and have all those people potentially at the table, right? And you don't want to have just casting that that's going to have four or five consultants. You want to have as many as possible. Around the country, there are tens of thousands of great talented people serving nonprofits. And you want to get the best people to the table, you cast that big net. And this has always been a best practice. So step one in this is by looking at nonprofit consultant directories. And there are some regional ones. And so if you are outside of Texas, you might actually have a state nonprofit association. Check with them. They might have one or be able to point you to one. And there are a few national ones as well. Philanthrophorus, of course, in full disclosure, I'm a co-founder of Philanthrophorus, director of nonprofit consultants. And there are a couple of other national ones that you may want to take a look at CGT Connects, which is based up in the Chicago area. And nonprofit.ist, which is based in the Raleigh, North Carolina area. Where else are you going to search? Because you want to ideally bring as many people to the table as possible. There are professional groups out there where you can look. There are informal ones. You might find them on Facebook or LinkedIn. Some of those are organized by specialty, others by region. There are also formal professional groups out there like the Association of Fundraising Professionals or the Grant Professionals Association. And so if you're looking for a grant professional, by all means reach out to them as well. And then you have your personal networks, right?  And so the more people are sharing this opportunity on their social media, LinkedIn, Facebook, all that, the more potential applicants you're going to get into your pool. And so now great. You've gotten a whole bunch of great applications in the door. How in the world are you going to narrow the field, right? Because you don't want to have a phone interview with 30 people as awesome as they all are. So here's a pro tip before we get fully into narrowing the field. And that is having a blind application process can help reduce bias. What do I mean by that? That means that at this point in the process before, if you're the person who's kind of running the search, you don't look at the applications as they come in. In fact, they go to somebody else in your organization and that person's only job in this process, their only job, is to take all the applications, print them out, and use a big marker to hide the name of the applicant, where they live, and any other critical information that might bias the selection process, like the university they attended, or things like that. So that when those applications get to your desk, you're not distracted by, oh my gosh, they went to Texas A&M or whatever university is that might not be friends with the university you went to. Things like that. So you have these 20, 10, 15, however many applicants that have come in the door. That matrix we showed you earlier, that's going to help you to screen those resumes, right? And you're going to see who has all the required criteria. If somebody doesn't, they're out, right? Because those are required criteria. And then for all those folks who check all the boxes for required criteria, you go on to your preferred criteria, right? And you advance the strongest two, three, four people, maybe five, to the interview phase. So let's talk about the interview. And to continue getting the best match, to continue to minimize that bias, to continue comparing apples to apples, you're going to use a similar matrix, right? Except that this is going to be based around your interview questions. But similarly, you build it out in a matrix, right? And if you're going to be interviewing by panel, you want to have the same panel in every interview because the last thing you want to do is interview four candidates. But Terry on your team only shows up to two of the interviews. Well, Terry's not in a very good position to really compare apples to apples because they've only seen two of the four apples, right? So to avoid that situation, you want to get time blocked out on everybody's calendars weeks in advance before you even start publicizing the opening, right? Right now, it's the beginning of August. If you're wanting to interview people in the middle of September, go ahead and block out time on people's calendars for September 15th to 30th, right? So that you have those times available. And remember, use the same matrix and the same set of questions for each interview. And folks, I know some of us, we can't do this in an ideal world of hopefully you have somebody in your personal network, an HR professional who can help you design interview questions so that you can avoid those questions that are illegal or irrelevant or unhelpful. And these are the same ones that you don't want to use in an employment situation. Things like, when were you born? Because that can lead to age discrimination or have you ever been arrested? Because arrest is not a conviction and it's usually unrelated to the job. Questions like, are you a U.S. citizen? Because that can lead to discrimination based on national origin. Do you have a disability? You do not want to run afoul of the Americans with Disabilities Act? Or people's family staffs? There are all sorts of questions like this that you do not want to have.  Speak frankly about your organization's weaknesses and challenges because the consultant is going to figure it out sooner or later. And what happens if you are not upfront with a consultant about this? Well, it's going to damage trust. It might turn out that they are not the right match after all. That they were a good match for the organization they thought you were, but not the organization you actually are now that these skeletons are coming out of the closet, right? And so you can end up with a situation where they might be with you halfway through the gig, but then once they see that, oh my gosh, there's a big fire here and they should have told me about this two months ago, they might lose their enthusiasm or they might not even have the skill to be fighting that fire, right? Or they might walk away from the gig because you broke trust with them and they might suspect more surprises to come. Tell them about if you have any fires, most nonprofits have one or two fires at least, and if there's any fire that's relevant, it's not going to come as a surprise to the consultants. They've seen it all before, an experienced consultant has seen all this stuff before, so just go ahead and tell them. If you're still not convinced, I'd encourage you to think about those times that you or a friend went into a new employment situation and after you've been there a few weeks or months, or maybe even on day one, right? You started finding skeletons in the closet like big scary skeletons. How did you feel? And what happens to your warm fuzzies about the organization, about the people who brought you into the organization? So now you have your final candidate, right? You have your, and they are awesome, they're almost a unicorn even. They're so awesome and you have a couple of good backup people just in case. What are you going to do? Well, you want to check their references and again, build a little matrix so you can be sure to be asking the same questions to each person that you are reaching out to for a reference, right? In an ideal world, these references will be from similar organizations or organizations that they've done similar projects with. That's not going to happen in all cases. Most consultants, they might only work with three, four clients in any given year and so they might not have a perfect exact match, but certainly ask for that if it's available. And then background checks. You want to run those in certain circumstances and only in circumstances. For example, it's necessary if they're going to be touching HIPAA protected data, or if they're going to be getting deep into like accessing your bank accounts or other financial data, or if they're going to be interacting with vulnerable populations. But if it's not something like that, don't run a background check, right? If you do want to run one, remember, just like in an employment situation, that context is important, right? Something might come up on somebody's criminal background check. A 20 year old DWI for somebody that you're looking to to help you out with a bookkeeping, probably not relevant to the job, right? You should let that one go. A DWI two months ago from somebody who's going to be helping out with driver safety instruction, that's really, really relevant. And so it's important to keep those things in mind and not just like a blanket, any kind of criminal record rules people out. So you got your person, they references all checked out. We're good. So we're at the contract phase. It is time to sign that contract. And this is a big milestone for the project. Congratulations. And do remember, even though you can celebrate here a little bit, there's still more work to do, right? You still have to do the project.  You can win lots of brownie points and continue to build up those warm pleasies by things like a timely, thorough communication, continuing to be honest about things, including around those things that are weaknesses or embarrassing, establishing a welcoming presence for this consultant so they know that they are valued and welcome in your space and treating them with dignity and respect. And of course, folks, please, please, please remember to send a brief thank you note to all of your applicants. Why would you do that? Well, because it's the courteous thing to do. It helps your reputation as a professional and as an organization. Those consultants are a lot more likely to speak well of you in the community if you have closed the loop and taken two minutes to send them a quick thank you note. And they're all more likely to apply for future opportunities just because they weren't the right match for this one doesn't mean they're not the right match for your next opportunity a few years from now. One last note here. You might work for an organization or you personally might value justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. Or maybe you're intrigued by all the studies that show that diverse teams get better results. Or maybe you feel strongly like we do at Flanthorforce that everybody deserves a seat at the table. If that's the case, I want to let you know that we are publishing a three article series and the third article is going to be by Cheryl and Peyton who is a expert in this particular area and she will, this article is going to help you intentionally with justice, equity, diversity and inclusion practices into your next consultant search. So if that's something that's important to you, email me. I'll be happy to send you that article so you can get on it. You don't even have to wait for us to publish it. And folks, that is that. I'm Sean Hale. My email address you can reach me at shale at flanthorforce.org. And I believe we have, we have some time for Q&A, right, Caroline? Yes. Cohen says, I get that folks aren't willing to participate in RFPs. Can you speak to using instruments like MSA or SOW? I don't know what those abbreviations mean. I want to say SOW is like a statement of work. MSA. Master's service agreement. So, and Cohen, feel free to jump on the audio if you like, but that the general spirit of it, whatever the, whatever you're asking that consultant to do to apply, the more work that they have to put into it and the more that they get a sense that there are, the general point is yeah, the more work they have to do to apply and especially if they get the sense that there are going to be dozens of other candidates, the less likely they are to do it. Of course, the other variable in that is the size of the project, right? If this is a six-figure project, well, there are going to be a whole lot more inclined to play the odds and to fill out a long thing. But what we've seen happen over and over again is you have these smaller projects that have like just really onerous kind of expectations of the people filling them out and then the nonprofit is disappointed because they don't get very many good applicants and they're not, and so that's the last thing we want to do. And so that's why we have kind of like here's the alternative to the RFP kind of process, if that makes sense. The traditional RFP process. It does, Sean, thank you. I think that the VIP invite is a great idea, but the once you've established maybe right before or right after the contract, I just was wondering about either doing a statement of work, which basically says here's what we've agreed and you sign it and we sign it and, you know, or it's a series of projects and you put it under a master service agreement. So that's what I was asking about. It's kind of the flip side of, you know, once the engagement has begun in whatever form that there's something that is a little bit more tangible and I'm thinking of it, it would be beneficial for the for the consultant as well as for the nonprofit. So I think I didn't mean it instead of an RFP. Okay, that makes a whole lot more sense now. I'm working on a project or two right now that has those. And so, yes, absolutely. For me, that kind of all falls under the umbrella of the contract, right? And so you and the consultant absolutely want to be on the same page about what's going to be delivered, all those other different things and the kind of size of the project and or, you know, like third parties might dictate kind of how detailed you want to get into that, but absolutely. That's great. Thank you so much, Sean. You're welcome. You know, I was going to put in a good word for the thank you letter. I just furnace and getting an assistant once had had several great applicants and I sent a course pick one, they took the job. But I sent thank you notes to each person telling them how much I appreciated their applying and how great they were and a little personal, you know, based on our conversation, a little personal thing. I got thank you notes back for my thank you note. It was the best feeling because I hate saying no, I just hate it. And I can't say enough good things about thanking everybody who tipped at the time to apply because I actually have seen some consultants in my field of nonprofit fundraising run down groups. They got mad at them and they weren't nice to them to the consultant and they have friends in high places, you know, they've worked with a lot of people too. And that is very bad, you know, but it happens if they're if the nonprofits read and then the last thing I just wanted to mention this, I got enticed to work on a capital campaign that was kind of a repair job, but I didn't learn till I got there that they had actually won a million dollar grant that had never reported on that grant. And the donor took the grant back. Think about it. It was like, I've never experienced anything so horrible, but here's the good news. I knew the donors, a foundation, and I called them up and I talked to them, and I did get some back, but not the full million, but still I got something. So there you go. That's wonderful, Carol. Thank you for those stories. Yeah, we don't want to necessarily encourage that behavior, right, by our fellow consultants, but or justify it, but it happens. And it's a reality of the situation. Susanna asked about places to get a background check. Yeah, there's a place that I use because I also I run background checks for people when they subcontract from me. If you want to email me afterwards, I can I'm happy to show the names, but there are literally dozens, if not hundreds of organizations out there that do background checks. A lot of nonprofits will already have one. They should have them set up if they're a nonprofit of a meaningful size at all for running on their own staff who are in critical positions. But yeah, email me. I'm happy to show the group, the name of the group that I work with that I work with. And I'm happy with them. They think it's like 10 bucks for a basic one. And it's very user friendly. Six months ago when I researched them, they were very good. I did want to just mention, Sean, we've had 11 shares of the live stream to different pages on Facebook. So whenever we do Facebook live, it's really great because people love just tuning in to check it out. And the recording, of course, will be on YouTube eventually of all this in our discussion. Eli will edit it a little bit. But, but be sure to give your slides with that great contact information to email Eli because he'll post them on SlideShare. And then they, I actually was doing this both for myself on the event page, but they've been just automatically adding them to our event listing, which becomes real shareable. And you've got it all right on my page. Excellent, excellent. I love the technology and I love that we have Eli in our corner. Yes, he's great. He's really great. So and everybody sign up for TechSoup to be it's free, please, please, please sign up. And then you can get all these great discounts. So I recently had a group I was working with that was paying full price for QuickBooks. And I said, have you been on TechSoup? For one-tenth the cost of QuickBooks, which is not cheap. It's a great platform. But I said, why are you doing that? We need that money in our budget. We don't need to be paying QuickBooks because they're giving it at a huge discount. So it's those kinds of wonderful things to check into. And Zoom and the Adobe Creative Suite and some cloud services, Dell, really great stuff. So yeah, yeah, does anybody else have questions or maybe you have a war story you'd like to tell if there are? Susanna has to have one, I'm sure. Are you still there, Susanna? She does a lot of work in grant writing. I don't have a war story, but I do. I want to get your feedback. I don't know what that shiny, sorry, I've got the blinds open and the sun is all weird right now. I'd like to get your feedback. Sean, thank you for a great presentation. I'd like to get your feedback on whether it should fall. I know the answer, I think, but whether it should fall to the organization doing the consultant search or the consultants to create the contract once they are hired. I have been in a situation many times where, as a consultant, I create a contract and I wonder if that is par for the course or maybe we should try and advocate it sort of to be more together. What do you think? I personally, I do it because it helps keep the process moving along. Most non-profit staff that I know, they tend to be overworked. And if they haven't, granted, if they've already gone to the trouble of writing something up and there's a good thorough description, a lot of times there's not a whole lot of anything. A lot of times it's like we need some help with our accounting as a mess.  Then I will do a conversation. I'll figure it out. I'll write it up. I think this is what you said and we go from there, but just to keep the process moving. But for the larger organizations, the ones that have time, if they've built something more thorough, go with that or some of the bigger, more sophisticated ones are going to have a contract and things like that ready. But I wouldn't expect that from the most smaller medium-sized non-profits. A lot of times we'll work for boards. We're a board member who's volunteering to fundraise and they just want backup on that. And I find I usually always write it myself and I say, look, you can change any of this you want. I'm very flexible. But I go ahead and say, well, I'm going to do this, this, this, this, and this. And then I put in there 30 days notice. You can cancel, whatever it is. Don't worry. You have to move on to a new project. I'm okay with that. And so I try and put them at ease. But I find they're like, contract. We don't even know. But it is really good to write it out because then they can tick it off as you go along and you get done with all the tasks that you've discussed. And I often will add things in there. Today, of course, it's in my line, which is fundraising, of course, with a tech twist in my case. But I always say I'll create a cloud drive in their cloud of choice Google Drive. And I'll leave all my documentation, all my research, all my written charts, which I track everything, copies of grant proposals and correspondence. And I put it up there. And then after a certain length of time, you know, I'll get off of it and they'll just have it. But they can then use those documents to make new proposals and, you know, to review what went on. And I've had people say that they've used my research charts, like five for five years, at least.  I'll always put in there. Well, these guys are not good for this project, but you might look at them in a couple years for this other one you're thinking about. And so they just have that forever. And they're usually really grateful. I like these cloud platforms, because I can work from home. I can work in Dropbox or Google Drive or whatever. And then they can access it. And they're all over the place all the time. So it's good. But yeah, so I put in those tech things. And it's, it's just great to write it out, but they never seem to want to write the contract themselves. I don't know why that is. So I've gotten real used to that. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you both. Those are great tips. And maybe that would be a nice presentation for the future is how consultants can create contracts. Because I always feel like I might be leaving something out, you know, when I do create them. I'm not a legal expert. So but, but yeah, no, thank you. Those are great tips. Thank you, Susanna. Cassandra, you had some questions at the beginning before we officially started. Did you, did we answer them all? Are there any that you'd like to address right now? Or maybe you got up to get another cup of coffee. No, I'm here. I just know that if I mute and mute the video that I have less problems with the bandwidth. Yeah. Yeah. And I can stay on. So, but yes, I've been here for the whole meeting. I'm very interesting. I appreciate everything that you share. I think that I'm good for right now. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Well, okay. Is that everything Sean? Do we need to let you go and have a life at home with your kiddos? Yeah, they might want to see me tonight. I might. I think so. No, but it's been, it's been fun. Good. It's been good seeing folks that I've known before and who I've met today. So thank everybody for, for joining us. And please do feel, you know, if a question comes to you at 3 a.m., like please send me an email. Don't call, but please do send me an email and I'll be happy to follow up with you. Thanks. Have a good week, everybody. All right.


Ukrainian troops have captured a part of key Berkhovka settlement in Bakhmut, head of Russia's private Wagner military company Yevgeny Prigazin, said on Monday. Reminding that the Russian troops had regrouped in Berkhovka recently due to its strategic importance, Prigazin stressed that Russians are now fleeing the settlement. Now part of the settlement of Berkhovka has already been lost, the troops are slowly fleeing, he said. Prigazin went on to urge Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu and chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces Varlari Jarazimov to lead the Russian troop to victory. Shame. Shoigu, Jarazimov, I urge you to come to the front, raise an army with pistols so that they go forward. Come on, you can.


This study investigated the effect of three genetic variants RS7482144, RS766432, and RS9399137 on hemoglobin F, HBF levels in patients with allocemia major and intermediate. The results showed that the HBF levels were significantly correlated with the presence of the variant allele of RS7482144 in the HBG2 gene, as well as with the variant allele of RS766432 in the BCL11A gene. Furthermore, the presence of the variant allele of RS9399137 in the HBS1L MYB gene did not have any significant impact on HBF levels. Overall, this study suggests that the presence of certain genetic variants can affect HBF levels in patients with allocemia. This article was authored by Shabnam Bashir, Sakib Mahmud, Shahida Mohsen, and others.


Hi, you guys! Lindsay here. Welcome back to my channel, Inside the Hymn, so it's time for my February plans. And I have to remember that February is a short month. There are only 28 days and it's already, the time I'm filming is this, the third. So what I have planned needs to be kind of a small list so that I can get through everything. Trying to, as I do every year at the beginning of the year, I try to set reasonable expectations for myself, as we always do. But when it comes to plans, I get real excited about new things, you know how it goes. So, but for February, keeping it simple for now. Okay, so let's start with, I guess we'll start with the refashion. So PS, thank you Marie Kondo. She has gotten everybody to go through their closets and donate a lot of really great quality stuff, simply because it doesn't bring them joy anymore. Not that it's torn, not that it has a stain, just because they're like, ah, no, no joy from this guy, going to the Goodwill, which I am benefiting from immensely. Part of me wanted to think, oh, it's a new city, it's a bigger city, maybe that has something to do with it. But this is like another level. The turnover is so incredibly high. Every time I go there, there's new stuff and really, really good, cute stuff. So much so that I started a Poshmark. So if you want to buy any of the stuff that I have found at the Goodwill, go check out my Poshmark. I think my username is ithresale, like inside the hem resale. I'll put a link in the description box. You never know, maybe there would be something there for yourself or your granddaughter or daughter or, I don't know, I'm just finding like good quality stuff and I'm like, why not? I think I'll try and resell it and see what happens. So I only have like fewer than 10 things there, but oh well, something else fun for me to do. Anyway, so I found this. This is a BB Dakota dress. It is a double knit, like a pinky mauve with black. My only hesitation about this, and I thought about it in the store is what do you guys think of it with my coloring? Does it wash me out? Is it still cute? It's a little close to my skin tone, but that's kind of like cool now. So that's why I'm hesitating on what to make. Part of me just wants to take it all in everywhere, like take apart the seams and just make them all smaller and then keep it as a little fit and flare double knit dress. But a part of me is like, I don't know about this up close to my face.  I don't know, but this is definitely what the fabric I'm going to be using because it's February and it's like, you know, pink and red and all of that everywhere. So I thought this would be fun. And I really do love like the lace look of this. Just a little bit concerned about the coloring, but look at it now in this kind of more natural sunlight. It's not so bad, right? If that's the case, then yeah, I'm just gonna size it down and make a little version of it. This is a 2x. So there's that. So that would be my refashion for this month. Super simple. I might even try and add pockets because, you know, pockets are awesome. Okay, next up is, this is a project that I've sort of started on in that I cut it out and cutting it out was a beast.  So I'm making, I guess I'm making this version. Yeah, with the pockets. But I got enough buttons to make to put the buttons on the sleeve for here, too. So I guess I'm combining. Yeah, am I making the collar? I don't remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm making mostly this version here. And my fabric is a gray Melton wool. It's very nice. This is one of the pieces here. And the lining is this. You've seen this at Joanne a thousand times. So it's like this. Isn't that so pretty for the lining? I'm so excited about it. Basically, I've gotten together like the outer part, but they're still all separate. I still definitely have a lot of work to do on it. But I do want to finish it because this week it's going to be 70 degrees. Like it winter is already almost over. Pucks a tonny fill didn't see his shadow. Spring is coming. And so I've got to get this made before it gets too warm. And that would be so disappointing to finish it and then not get to wear it for months and months. I'm not even planning on going anywhere cold. Like, I mean, obviously I'll make my trip to New York, but we're doing that like at the end of spring. So there's no reason I would wear it then. So anyways, I got to get cranking on this so that I can at least wear it a couple of times before it gets too warm. And then Cricket put up a legitimate women's skirt pattern on their design space that you can use the maker machine to cut it out. And so I was like, well, I definitely have to try that. And I don't know. I'm, I'm taking a little bit of a risk design wise because the skirt is like paneled. And so I saw these fabrics on fabric.com. They are rayon cotton blends. And I thought it would be cool to do the panels out of the same fabric and different colorways, right? So like we've got black dots on cream. We've got cream dots on black, but they didn't have the third one that they had. I don't know if it goes, but it's navy dots on red. I don't know. What do you guys think? Is this like totally crazy? Am I going to hate it? If all three of these are put together, he'll let me try and figure out a way to show you them where all the right sides are out. Right side, right side. I mean, that doesn't look terrible, right? Oh, but the red one is only going to be one panel. And then the rest of the panels are the other two. So it's mostly the black and white and the, well, the other black and white. What do you think? That looks kind of cool, right? I don't know. I'm feeling very like on project runway all stars. When the woman comes in to do the critiques, she always goes to this one guy and she's like, oh, you've got green and blue. And he's like, yeah. And she's like, he's like, I think they go together really nicely.  I feel like that's me right now. Like, I feel like these go together. Okay. Am I losing it? I hope not. If not, it'll be a really fun skirt. But anyway, so the skirt I figured out after reading the instructions can be reversible. Hello. How cool was that? So then I was like, well, I have to get something completely different than those dots. And so I decided on this. It's the same substrate, meaning it's the cotton and rayon again, but in this fun print. And then I was like, well, you know, if I'm going to make a reversible skirt and have this be one side will be kind of plain. It will be really cool to make a top to go with it so that when you wore this side with the top, it looked like a dress. Enter. Oh my God. Simplicity 8789. Do you guys think I've lost it? Are you like totally convinced that I'm just off my rocker? I don't know. I'm pushing myself to be a little bit more creative and maybe make choices I wouldn't normally make. I don't know. I didn't have any fabric in my stash that I wanted to make it from. So I had to go buy something and I thought, well, if I'm going to go buy something, then I'm going to make it fun at least. So that'll be interesting reason enough for all of you to stay tuned at the very least. I am super excited about this. I feel like this is going to work out even if the skirt does not work out. I just, I just love the idea of this so much that you can tuck in a flowy top and have it not come undone. I've never made underwear or panties or bathing suit or any of that before. So and as you guys know, my bum is like the hardest part of my body to fit. So I don't feel like underwear is going to be any different than that or different in that regard. So I'm a little bit nervous, but I'll figure it out. I'll make it work. So yeah, so there's that guy.  I'm just going to use one of the ones I have and I'm going to use stash fabric, which is always my thing with so my style. I like to use the stash fabric. I don't want to go out and buy new fabric for so my style. So I have a couple of lightweight knits in my stash that are like prints or whatever, but I really think I want to just make a staple that I'm really going to love. So I have this olive green um shoot it's not pima cotton. It's oh I can't remember. I got it from style maker fabrics forever ago. I'm not even sure if they still have any, but you know I don't have an olive green t-shirt. I think it will be super cute in the spring with white jeans with blue jeans. Um so I think I'm just going to make a basic t-shirt maybe even one of the free ones um out of this. I kind of want it to be like a little bit slouchy though. It's maybe all size up you know that's kind of the vibe I'm going for. I think I'm just going to keep it simple and not over complicated with any of the patterns or anything else. Just something super super wearable and maybe if I like how the pattern turns out I can crank out two or three of them this month because I do have a couple different color ways of this. I got real excited when she got it and I was like send me all the colors um so yeah but I think for this month it's just going to be the olive green. So okay I know I started this video saying that it was a short month and I was going to keep it easy on my plans but so far I have a labor-intensive coat, um a t-shirt, a skirt that's reversible, a top, and a refashion. Maybe it's still too much. Um no it'll be fine. It'll be fine. Oh my god I totally forgot about something. Darn! Oh my okay so I have uh two more projects, three more projects but um golly where'd the fabric even go? Here it is. You guys are gonna die so it's the um deer and doe myostosis myosodis whatever that shirt dress that's really oversized and really cute out of this. Isn't that awesome? It's like embroidered cotton. Oh I love it so much. Okay so maybe I did buy it off too much for January but I gotta get it done because the cricket thing has to happen this month. I really want the top to go with it because it just makes sense. I promised myself I'd do the refashion, promised myself I would do so my style. So it is what it is. I guess I'll just have to sew every single day darn. No it's good it's good to sit down and do these videos. It kind of gives me like a reality check of like things I've committed to things that sponsors are paying for and stuff like that so that helps me because now I know I can't I can't lounge around and relax like I gotta I gotta get to it um but if anything gets cut it's gonna be that coat. Oh darn it is just it's very labor-intensive. That'll just be pushed off to the side for last because no one cares if I finish that or not. That's what it comes down to and honestly like that's not as important to me as the refashion and sew my style is. So sometimes you just gotta prioritize but anyways I'm rambling on and on now um that's gonna do it for me today. I'd love to know what you're working on if you're doing sew my style um and you're making a t-shirt this month. Let me know what your plans are.  They have so many cute t-shirt patterns. I'd almost forgotten about that. So let me know if you're gonna be doing sew my style and what your plans are for your t-shirt. Other than that I'm gonna go because I gotta maybe sew something tonight. Um thank you so much for watching and I'll see you all very soon. Bye!


Skips it for Holiday, and he created it once. The entry for Zegas, double comes, Holiday left alone, bad idea. O'Shea Bresset check in, Canada native, White hits the three. Take that JJ Redick. Why are you messing with this guy? This guy, this guy, this guy, this guy. Derek White, of course, the Reddit words love to talk about the Jakes, but I think the Jakes is officially dead. That's his fourth triple of the first half in the Celtics lead by six. Shruder quickly to go over two point guard line. Shruder can't score a three percent. Ryokovic wanted to call. Tatum, all kinds of space. Time to shoot as Tatum returns and faces Barrett. Draws contact and scores, plus one. January J, in the post. Shackle was 65% from deep. Best in the FDA on that stretch. Tatum on the attack in the two-hand. Shackle. That's where you got to live right now. You got to live at that rim. So, it's a virtue Tyler Parker said, RJ, that's a foul to Lex. Tatum with another jam, plus the foul. So the Celtics back in front, Bards against Tatum. Great matchup. One by JT. Tatum in his bag against Chris Boucher. Trying to shake him. When Tatum comes that one off.  Tatum's younger brother, Jaden, one of the better primitive defenders in the FDA. Boucher sticks the three. RJ Barrett checks the white. Shrooder with a quick hands, trying to take it. Tatum in the back from Cornette. White pulls it off Boucher. Oh, my goodness. Boucher. Hornford's got the mismatch against Shrooder. Boucher kicks it. Hauser drills it. That's an absolute dagger in the fourth quarter. Great job, great patient. And Hauser with a big shot. It'll run for the Raptors, cutting it to six. White picks up the dribble. Holiday. It's the trip. Tatum against Shrooder, out to Holiday. Four, three, it's good. And a foul against the Raptors on the deck. Raptors want to push the pace. This is where they're most dangerous. Barrett the trailer, behind the back against White. Great defense from Derek White. Man, RJ Barrett missed two bunnies. Barnes shades over. Skip hands for White in the corner. Quick trigger, yes, sir. That's incredible. The catch alone, making sure he's in bounds. And then knocking down the big shot, that was incredible.


Okay, welcome to our next next talk for this afternoon today We have Jen person who is the director of defend digital me and she'll be talking about fundamental rights and framing of our future in a talk called come and play collect them all Thanks very much Jen. Thank you. Hello So today if you saw The film the other night right Aaron Spartz about Aaron Spartz the Internet's own boy you might have seen this trailer and if you haven't I hope you enjoy it, right? So I subtitled this talk Fiction or future who controls our present frames the future and What I want to talk to you mainly about is as a coordinator of defend digital me. We're a campaign group that is Looking at the protection of children's digital rights, especially around data privacy with regards to the national pupil database So children's data in schools and I looked at a scenario that was a fictional future 2022 children are restricted as to who to get into University The country of birth and ethnicity data stops some from going to school at all and Perspective employers screen applicants lifetime web browsing history. Do you think this is a present a future that we want to see factor fiction 20 years ago Larry Ellison Was asked this question about how he saw the digital future of a global database at Oracle He said he thought it would exist and that we're going to track everything Now our campaign group looks specifically at children's data And we have become concerned about some of the data that is collected on a national base basis in schools and the changes that are proposed today that will start in the 2016 17 census That's the school census So from next September country of birth for example will be collected from every child in England Currently some ethnicity some nationality data is already collected that is going to be expanded to the rising twos and everybody up to age 19 So when parents and children give their data into schools, what do they think happens to it? Well, some have told us in our research that they expect Some statistics are gathered and sent to the Department for Education When they read the privacy notices in schools It says we share some of this data for the purposes of education with third parties No pupil or parent or school has yet told us that they understand what that means and How many third parties our pupil data is currently shared with? So fact or fiction. This is framing our future Who gave a comment about some corn flakes getting to the top? You might remember this one Good guess Boris Johnson 2013 addressing the Center for Policy Studies in London He was talking about IQ and children in education and how he felt children would be restricted From what they were able to learn not what was possible same year There was a discussion at the select committee for education and a renowned professor of genetics and genomics Suggested that within five years that was in 2013. You can do the maths Everyone would have their personal DNA sequence that a chip and from that that data would be used specifically in schools His idea in 2013 So these are current concepts in how personal data is used in health and Education and some ideas that some policy makers and academics have for the future So how do we want that future to look? How will we will you as technologists as developers as policy makers as people in civil society in government? you as parents as pupils as People in society. What do you want the future to look because if we do not help frame it? We will not see the future that we want to achieve And I want to suggest three things to you today That we need to frame our language differently That we need to frame our legislation differently and that we need to frame our technology differently Because how we frame our conversation about data and how we frame our legal boundaries today Will change how that information is used about in our future and it will shape our future If you saw the fantastic talk yesterday By dr. Jess Barker she talked about cyber security myths and monsters And she talked about the three principles of cyber security people policy and technology that make data safe and Those can get carried across not only in around the concepts of cyber security, but thinking in general about data and data protection a Lot of what we hear about today's future and data is about smart Smart cities smart technologies all based on sensors on picking up more information about you and me you may have read in the papers very recently about how our Oyster cards data would be used picked up from travel in London and stored and researched on unused You may have Heard about how health data was planned to be used in 2013 in the care data discussion How everyone's GP records were to be extracted linked together with all the hospital records and a central database and Reused for a wide variety of secondary purposes beyond our care There is lots of ideas about how data should be used and could be used in the future But I want to ask not only do we need to think about smart future. We need to think about a wise future intelligence has to be being about clever not just about cyber security and Applications of sensor data, so we need to be intelligent in all senses about how we want to frame our future Surveillance is a broad concept We need to think about how our data is used on a day-to-day basis In order to make sure that the data that is collected about us is used wisely and how do you want that to be? We need to protect public interest data research Most people would agree and the Epsos Moray poll in 2013 showed and Engagement work with academic bodies has shown most people Support the use of data that's gathered about us by the government in our public services whether it's in health or education or Tax or benefits or any other area of public service If it's used securely if we know how it's being used and if it is not used on a commercial basis But in the public interest it is trusted and it's trusted that it'll be used well. I Want to show you a case study of a way? I believe and our campaign group believes it is not being used well today and that undermines the future of our future public interest data use Let's start with a language. You've probably seen or heard most of these terms used about personal data in the last few years We hear a lot about data sharing In actual fact most of the time when we talk about data sharing It means you have given your data to a public service to be used in a direct way with you perhaps in a transaction with your tax return or in a medical treatment Or as we'll come back to giving your pupils data into schools. I don't know about you But when I do that, I think my data is going to be used for the purposes I give it to the body for so that Organization needs to manage my child's data in school because they need to know who they are where they're going what they've done When I go to the doctors I expect them to use the data I give them in confidence and securely to treat me that same data is being Increasingly used with the concept of data sharing that we should be Expecting that our data that we've given for one purpose is used for another and secondary purposes by other government bodies and in public interest research as I said that gets widespread support But who else is it being shared with I think we need to reclaim some of the language around privacy and The nothing to fear nothing to hide motto around surveillance Constantly we are told the more data. We have the more secure you'll be all the evidence shows differently And if you will go down to a little bit later How followed at all the investigatory powers bill the current legislation that's going through Parliament about how? Data will be used from our internet use. You'll know that the way you use the internet today Will be very different if nothing changes in current legislation by the next emf So in two years time if you come to emf camp and nothing has changed in the proposals for the legislation for the investigatory powers bill You will not be using the internet in the same way You might not see any change But the change will have happened because legislation is going to require everybody's internet use to be monitored and stored by the ISP the providers for a year at least and made available to government bodies So how do we look after data today? Well, we have legislation the data protection act You'll be familiar with to protect the identity of people from exploitation effectively But I think we need to again to reframe the language around data protection It's not the data itself that we just need to protect. That's perhaps the concept of cyber security How do you make sure the data is maintained its integrity its quality and its security in one place? But a lot of the laws around data protection are actually to protect people. They're not about protecting the information They're protecting you and me from how it would be potentially misused potential harm So we need to always consider when we're talking about personal data and data protection Think of the people behind the data and I'd like to reframe that discussion when we always talk about data protection Remember, we're also talking about people So some of our current legislation is shifting We don't know what will happen now with EU data Changing laws that are coming in the general data protection regulation would have given some significant changes I believe they still will it comes into effect in 2018 or rather it's already been enacted But we need to see the changes actually made Effective in the UK. So who knows what will happen with some of those changes But we do know what has happened with some of the data uses that we have already Seen in the past in the recent studies and I'll show you a case study where the boundaries of what? legislation we had to protect our data to protect us and our identities has moved and This is the core of our campaign We're campaigning to protect 20 million children's identifiable data in the National People Database and when I say children if you're under 35 that means you This data has been collected since 2000 It's wide-ranging fully identifiable Everything on personal data that's given into schools the full attainment record everything that is generated in schools and that is transferred Through perhaps the local authority or directly from the school depending on whether you're in a local authority or academies or other school setup That's varied and broad We're asking the Department for Education to stop handing out individual children's Identifiable personal data to third parties because at the moment it goes outside of the database. It's copied given to third parties and So we have chunks of data of children's identify by a data sitting in various places Around the UK at the moment we want them to change that practice to bring the data into a secure setting So whoever uses that data cannot walk away with the information itself But uses it in a secure way for research for the purposes. It's been intended and then can walk away with their Their research results, but not the data itself. Why? Because there's been 650 releases of this data to third parties since 2012 You yourself can look up the releases on the website that the Department for Education does publish and in May They started to print to this website this web link on the new revised Privacy notice that they give to schools which is supposed to go to every child to tell us Or parents what's happened and who uses their data Our research so far with on a small basis, but with 75 schools is has come back with even results like We don't give any data to the information to the national people database. We've never heard of it No, we only we only pass information to the schools that we're connected to in our area so there is a complete breakdown between a privacy notice that's being Distributed at national level to what is being actually understood on the ground and used and implemented That is an example of legal boundaries changing because in 2012 the Education Act was changed to modify Who could use data and for what purposes? The prescribed persons Act 2009 was updated to say these groups of people may now receive individual pupils data from the national people database and The the Education Act changed what they could use it for the purposes They could be given data for for the purposes of education and the well-being of children Now you could drive a bus through those purposes because most people that could apply could in some way meet that concept Now the department does have a process of application you have to apply and fill in a form and State the purposes for which that data will be released We started to ask them in detail about it last summer in July 2015 and at that time of the then 462 releases they had been they had never done a single audit of any recipient So the data had been copied sent to the recipient and sat with them and At that time the Department of Education didn't know did they ever delete it they were meant to have it on license for a year or two Perhaps how long have they kept it for what have they done with it since is it still secure now? Those questions had been asked because it hadn't been audited So we started asking some of the recipients include Fleet Street Press the Telegraph for example received five years worth That's approximately 10 million children's data for the period of 12 months We obtained this document through freedom of information It's a publicly available and what do they know they gave the assurance in the replication letter Because at first they'd asked not for tier 2 data, which is identifying and sensitive data They'd asked for tier 1 data, which is identifying and highly sensitive All tiers there are for our identifiable data. There is not Unidentified so anonymous data doesn't doesn't come into this. We're talking only about identifiable children's data and They gave cast iron assurances that none would be identified through the use of it. Well none would be identified outside the Telegraph our contention with this is that The data controlling the responsibility with the Department of Education Sits at the point of release from the Department of Education We would argue that the Department of Education may have outsourced the responsibility for what it considers research into some of the children's attainment data and perhaps the Telegraph is using this for Comparison tables and they publish articles about it and so therefore they're considered researchers I think you and I might disagree that they weren't the same quality or bona fide people that we expect to be Academic bona fide researchers in the public interest from say universities This data was handed out to the Telegraph and when we questioned it in 20 July 2015 It was confirmed they had never deleted it They had not yet the department had not yet received confirmation that it had ever been deleted So it was intended to have been there with 12 months and at the time it was about two years out of overdue and nobody knew Effectively what had happened to it? Now the department to argue that is you know securely monitored that they they have a robust Approvals process we think it needs to be much tighter and they need to be auditing They need to be really questioning. Are these recipients who the public expect their children's data are given to? Something else to look for the future is the education technology market is expanding at a rapid rate of knots There's a huge amount of classroom data collected today in apps and websites and parents and children are Invariably signed up for them in schools without permission being asked at home and I can even say from my own experience I know children get set up with with email accounts get signed on to apps and We can start to question there who is or owning their personal data What consent are children giving really and they're not in a position to be able to give that and understand the implications for Companies such as this one that parents in America have had a discussion about and I quote from They're very concerned that the types of data that are being used is Gaming children effectively getting them to change their behavior in the classroom and that's the intention of the app That is quantifiable that they can report on it But that actually changing children's behavior is not What technology should be used for in the classroom? and this is a group of parents who have have serious concerns about the direction of education data in the US and I know from from what we we see in you will to probably better than I do If you're in the education field at all that more is on the way here So how can we reframe the future? Well, I think one of the things we can do is really to understand if you're a policymaker a developer Any or anyone who has an interest in technology and children's data? Look at its application really try and understand how is your own or your children's data being used and If you are in a position to do so ask policymakers. What are they doing? Looking at the future landscape of legislation particularly around the EU We also need to consider the bigger picture of legislative changes in the UK that are potentially on the horizon The importance of the Human Rights Act is continually undermined I personally believe in the media and we have heard repeatedly that there is a proposal to replace the Human Rights Act with a bill of rights The Human Rights Act offers as protections in privacy along with all the other principles the fundamental rights that apply to everyone equally and We believe they should be protected We need to look also at what's called the digital economy bill if you're interested in policy I would recommend you look it up if you haven't already been familiar with it The wording around data sharing and data linkage and de-identified data and anonymous data is all used rather interchangeably public interest research and Statistics and improving how our national statistics are used has been conflated into this bill There are very separate distinct sections of this Legislation one big chunk of it is around using public services data in a very different way from today and releasing Everybody's administrative data data that you give in for uses by by services for your direct care by a wide range of public bodies if that concerns you look it up the digital economy bill coming in Will start to be debated in the autumn We need to protect Public interest research and the trust that the public has in good quality public interest research To allow it to be undermined by misuse or seemingly too broad use by others is a risk I don't think that there hasn't been properly adequately considered and we should be speaking up about The investigative powers bill if you're ready aware of again as I said if we see no changes in this legislation proposed By the next emf camp this data communications data What's known as metadata would be recorded about every use of the internet that you and I and our children have in the UK All of these individual items the website's visited the billing data the location username and password I'll Leave you to look at some of those if you're more interested in this aspect of how data is used in surveillance I recommend you look at liberty privacy international Org and if you're very short of time but interested a bit big brother watch has done a one-page effect sheet on the Investigative powers bill and I'd urge you to write to your MP ask them a question And if you're interested in doing that get involved I've left at each door There are postcards with some recommendations and information from ours on how you might do that and also on our website We have a guide if you've never written to your MP if you think it makes no difference I urge you to change your mind and do it take action because it does ask them a question They do need to come back to you with an answer Another change coming up 5th of September statutory safeguarding in schools requires web monitoring which involves key logging That means every child's internet use will be monitored in schools from September the 5th Something you're not aware of please look at our website for more information and again If that's something that concerns you ask your MP. Are you aware of this? It's not been debated in Parliament It's going through only under statutory guidance, which means schools are required to follow it unless they have a very good reason why not So are the boundaries in Technology I don't think so the fabulous weekend we've had here shows you the possibilities There is so much potential and possibility for technology to use data Well to use data in the right interests and for all of our benefit We want to see the public interest research continued and make the future better But when we do it we can reframe that you and I and our involvement with it can design the future differently If you're involved in app development think about privacy and a really clear Understandable accessible privacy policy that doesn't just look about protecting you and what happens if you use people's data But explains to them clearly how their data will be used and not on 15 pages of small print Think about your language come back to those words and think what do these data concepts really mean and think about what you'll do And that's what I'd like you to take away this campaign is our key campaign today About the National People Database we're concerned about his use we'd ask you to consider getting involved think About this country of birth collections coming up ask your schools if you haven't already heard about it Send us your privacy policies or the the collection letters that have been sent out to you send us examples Spread the word and your friends and family if you're on social media ask about it get the discussion going If it's web monitoring again, look on our website for more information, please consider getting involved Thank you Thank you very much. I think we've got time for a couple of questions if we got okay two questions first of all have you done any requests on subject access requests for any of the data see what kind of data is held for different years and secondly, what kind of Do you know if they've had any refusals for data? How many people are getting applying compared to how many people are getting the data? Two great questions, which I'll answer separately. So I can answer for my own experience subject access request has been refused three times the Information Commissioner's office has upheld and yet Suggested that to the Department for Education It would be good practice if they were to release to parents who make their own subject access request That is you can ask the Department or any public body who holds information about you to release the information a copy of the information about yourself So we I did this for my own children and it's been refused on the basis that it's given an exemption under the research uses section 33 if that is detailed for you, but We're we're discussing that with the moment at the moment with them and the second question is refusals one request that was refused was by from the Ministry of Defense where they put in request to target Certain levels of achieving children in certain schools to be able to target them for recruitment that was refused and Another that was refused was again targeting children for universities who wanted to go Effectively and market their universities to particular schools So it does look that there have been but in as of 2014 There had been nine refusals over the last two years. I had great talk. Thanks two brief questions firstly Whatever you think about DRM type technologies that there are technical means of restricting People's access to data once you release it to them So I'm wondering what your opinion is on whether any technical measures are in place to restrict people's usage of release data And if not why not and second question is more philosophical I Understand why you campaign on this thing. It's an important issue But do you feel in general that government surveillance or corporate surveillance is a bigger problem? Two good questions. I think I'll start with the last second first I think we have various issues in commercial use of data and Public data use which are different but are linked. We often see Data that is public data being piggybacked effectively by commercial companies getting access to it But we also We also see a lot of commercial companies who collect an awful lot of information about us that we don't see how it is used behind the scenes and To come I guess to a core issue that is joins them both is What do people understand what happens to the data once they give it to anybody? Is it commercial company? is a public organization and We are I think badly let down privacy policies that seemingly give consent But in fact don't show us how Third parties get data and then pass it on to others reuse it connect it with other privacy policies that become unintelligible I think there is a big scope for improving especially for children how privacy policies are communicated and I think it should be a really significant issue that should improve both commercial and Public data use and to come to the second Your understanding of DRM is I'm sure superior to mine the only technical Restrictions I know of I Haven't yet actually put in a freedom information request around the very specifics the license that Users have to sign and you saw an extract from and in the presentation will give them certain criteria that they need to follow once they receive the data and That includes how they can use it on their console or how they use it in there in their location a Big problem with that is is actually trusting that that is maintained And if you don't audit how do we know it's being with you know upheld so we can have all the Technological restrictions I guess in place that we want but as we've seen in some of the talks this week human error is generally the biggest problem we've got of data leakage and We can't always restrict that but it's something I we are working on with the Department of Education and hoping that they're going to change some of their technological Access using APIs and other things and how they can get into data and share it more safely and yet make it more secure Okay, well, thank you very much Jen and please join me in thanking her for a great talk