Hey everybody, welcome back. It's going to be back again in this Tan Books podcast. We've done several of these now and we've had authors from Kerry Grass to Noel Mering most recently, a number of great authors and today I'm really excited to interview Connor Gallagher of Tan Books who has a special role at Tan. We'll get to that in a few minutes and he's got a new book on Parenting for Eternity, which is really good and you'll see that as I explain a little bit about it and ask him some questions about it. So first of all, Connor, welcome. Good to have you with us. Thanks for having me, Paul. It's great to be here. So before we talk about the book, tell us a little bit if you could, if you don't mind about yourself, your family and and how you got to Tan. Sure. So yeah, I'm the CEO of Tan Books. I've been running the day-to-day operations of it for 12 or 13 years now. My father and I and some others formed a company called Saint Benedict Press a number of years ago and we acquired Tan Books out of bankruptcy about 12 years ago, a little bit more. And so my day-to-day job has been to be running that and Paul, it's been almost a conversion. I didn't fully appreciate the treasure that Tan was when we first got it and it was a bankrupt company. So I'm trying to make the light stay on and just basic everyday business stuff. But as we got the business settled and it was running smoothly and the operations were working, then I got to turn my attention to the books. And it was, you know, I was raised Catholic, of course, you know, I've always been tried to be a devout Catholic. But then I got to experience the incredible power of the tradition that Tan has preserved for so many years, for 43 years before we bought it. So that's been just an ever ongoing deepening of my own faith and for my love of the tradition and for certain types of spiritual writers that the former owner so wisely preserved, especially during the chaos of the 60s, 70s, 80s, you know, he was one of the few people who preserved the voices of the saints and tradition. And so these books have just significantly impacted me and my family and has deepened my faith. So, you know, I've written a few books before, but then, you know, I know we'll talk about my book in a minute, but it heavily impacted me. And I think that this book and hopefully more to come is kind of the fruit of my own living with the rich tradition that Tan books has preserved. And I just want as many people as possible to experience the traditional expression of the faith as much as possible. It's a beautiful thing and it's impacted me a lot. So that's my personal or my professional life, but I got number 15 child is on the way. And my wife is the superhero. I'm kind of co-pilot. And the oldest is coming up on 20 and the youngest is one and then one in utero. So, and we've had our share of miscarriages. So there's been more than that, but we, you know, we've been extremely blessed and all of our children are healthy and happy and hopefully going to go to heaven.  So, you know, I'm surrounded by these blessings, but it's made me really contemplate, okay, what am I doing with these kids? You know, am I trying to get them into Harvard or to heaven? And if it's heaven, then what do I need to do each day? And that also influenced the book. But yeah, parenting is hard. And everyone knows that whether you have one or 15, you're 100% parent. It's just your times divided up differently. So yeah, that's, that's me in a nutshell and CUF 10 and dad of 15 kids and, and co-pilot to my incredible wife. But when you got a number of new titles there, parenting is hard, 100% parenting, I guess I get these book ideas in my mind as you're saying this, but, but people watching now. So you should know I was about five minutes late running late getting here today and I was going to say to Connor, well, you know, I was running around picking up my kids, you know, but I have eight kids, but then again, you know, 14, I mean, no sympathy here at all, right? So that, so that's impressive that we have, we have a good friend who a couple of good friends who have 13. So you've got the record now among people that, that I personally know are coming up, coming up on 15. So a lot there that you said that I'd like to unpack. And if I go too far or ask you questions that I should just ignore it, go on to something else, dodge the question, whatever you need to do. But, but you had expressed kudos there earlier to the previous owner who had preserved many of those. So who was that? Thomas A. Nelson, which is what Tan stands for. Most people don't know that, but yeah, Thomas, I heard it was Thomas Aquinas Nelson. I don't know if that's true if it was Aquinas, but man, if it is, it's just crazy. But yeah, that Thomas A. Nelson, God bless him. And, and so in the publishing house, and I've got to say the, the fact, what, what you've done and your family and, and your brother Brian as well, and, and really saving Tan books.  This, this is true. I mean, the, the two best Catholic publishing houses are Tan books and Ignatius Press. They just are. And you are Sunday visitors kind of hung in there. And there's a few others. And Sophia Institute Press is doing some good things now, but I don't think anybody can match what the top two have done. And I've got to say, I think no one compares to Tan in terms of translations and preserving classics. I mean, if you want to find a book by some Italian saints, you know, who died 100 years ago or, you know, Teresa Newman or Anne Catherine Emmerich or St. Gemma Galgani, I mean, it's going to be a Tan books book. And it's going to be something that was in another language that somebody from Tan grabbed and translated. And if not for Tan, we wouldn't even, we would even have access to so many of these. That's exactly right. And I am trying very hard to, you know, continue that tradition. And, you know, we talk about gold mining around here. You know, I mean, there is gold buried in so many places that we have to find and bring up to the surface. You know, for example, Paul, there, you know, I think the arrogance of modern Americans think that every good work has been translated into English. I mean, I think I felt right. And, and then I've, you know, as we're digging, we find that incredible books have never even been translated from the original Latin into English. For example, we're coming out shortly with a book by Thomas A. Kempis, who's, you know, the author of Imitation of Christ and everyone knows Imitation of Christ. What if I told you there's multiple works by him that have never even been translated into English? Amazing. That's amazing. That's amazing. And so there's many others and we are continuing to do this. And, you know, I feel a moral duty as a steward of the previous owner's legacy and the tradition of the church to try my darnedest for the rest of my years to continue what they did. And that's mind gold and bring it to the surface and bring the attention.  But how do we do that with a dead guy?  So it's a challenge. And a lot of our time behind closed doors, Paul, we're saying there are so many great dead authors that have been lost. And how do we make them known and loved and put a following around them? And I don't have all those answers, but that's what I'm trying to do. It's hard because they can't, they can't go on YouTube shows. But there's a way to do it. And I'm committed to doing that. Yeah, I have this image in my mind of Katharine of Sienna going toe to toe with the gals on the view, right? Or, you know, Chris Cuomo going at it with Augustine, you know, I pay to see that. Yeah, me too. Yeah. Yeah. So the very fact, given all those great books, Connor, I mean, the fact that the publishing house was in trouble 12 years ago. But that, but that's where book publishing was and still is. I mean, my, my, my first book, I think it sold, I don't know, 75,000, 100,000 copies. It was really my second book, my first bestseller. And that barely made like the New York Times extended bestseller list. That was in 2004, right? And today, and the, and the advance that I got for that was, was really, really high. And in those days, those days, it's 17 years ago, you know, books were selling that much, you know, they were people were buying and then came the whole internet age publishing. And this has been horrible too for, for print edition magazines, so many of which went belly up at the time. But so many people just quit buying hardcovers, print editions, right? Whether magazines or books or anything else. So you guys are really, truly done a good work, noble work coming in and saving town. So we try every day. Good. Yeah. Yeah. The, as for your book, okay, because there's so much more that, that I could ask you about that. But, but you, so you've done is this is not your first book, correct? No, I wrote a book when my, my oldest kids were pretty young called if Aristotle's kid had an iPod, subtitle ancient wisdom for modern parents. And when I was doing, when I was doing my masters in philosophy, I noticed that Nick, the, the Nicomachean ethics by Aristotle, it was all about how to develop virtue, how to develop true friendship, how to live the virtuous life amidst, you know, the kind of the evil world and Aristotle was giving great advice. And he named the book Nicomachean ethics after his son, Nicomach. And, and he named it that because he wanted it to be a roadmap for how to become a virtuous man for his son. So I was saying, well, if that's a roadmap for his son, it should be a roadmap for my son. And so I wrote if Aristotle's kid had an iPod, this was back when iPods were a thing, I should have called it iPhone. I didn't know they would go out so fast. But yeah, I was trying to show how Aristotle's philosophy applied to raising kids today, especially in the digital age. It's really more pertinent today than even back then because digital is even more crazy today. So that was my first. And then my other one was a little book about anxiety called still amidst the storm. And it's a reflection on the gospel of Mark four, where Jesus tells the water to peace, be still and he calms the storm. And I relate that to the anxiety of our modern world. And I try to show how living in the present moment with silence and stillness is really the remedy to our anxiety. You know, in fact, before COVID, I would tell people, Paul, I give a lot of talks to Legatus and other Catholic groups. And now, and before COVID, I would say we are living in a pandemic, a pandemic of anxiety. Yeah. And so now I say we're living in a pandemic of anxiety and COVID's not nearly as bad, you know, and so, so that little book was about trying to deal with anxiety, which I've dealt with and everyone has. But this is different and kind, you know, this book really taps into the tradition of the church. And so I, although I'm kind of proud of those, I'm really proud of this one, because I feel like this one goes to the, to the depths of tradition. And it's, it's finally the book that I, that I really wanted to write. And so I feel better about this than I did the others. Sure. Sure. All right. So there's your sequel. What if Aristotle had a Twitter account? And of course, the, you could just write in the beginning of that, he would be canceled, right? As he would, he would be canceling Aristotle, right? But, but, but yeah. And indeed, anxiety, I've gone through the same thing too. And I never thought I would ever have that.  That I'm too confident in myself. But, but in, but in this modern world, and it's not just a matter of having a bunch of kids, right? I always tell people all the time that I'll say this to my wife all the time that even if you weren't running, running around chasing your kids and dealing with kids issues, you'd be chasing around dealing with something else. And probably something that's not as edifying, not as wholesome, not as good for you. And, you know, maybe wasting more time online reading more junk and doing other things. I actually don't have a Twitter account. Well, wait, no, I actually do a publicist created it for me about 10 years ago. And she said, Oh, you'll love it. You'll love it. I've never even looked at it. But, but I, and I told her I stood the last thing I need is to be tweeting, right? I mean, I already get to 400 emails a day, do this all week. I'm just going to implant a microchip in my brain. And I'll just kind of blink. And I mean, what can you do? But, but yeah, it's this world of anxiety, the hustle and bustle. And, you know, Cardinal Orinze, among others have said, right, that are not Cardinal Orinze. Yeah, Sarah, about just silence, the perfect silence and how often do we read in scriptures, right? That the Jesus went off alone in silence to pray, right? He didn't fire off a tweet, right? He didn't go argue with somebody. Sometimes the best response is just silence. I find that drives people crazy, by the way, too, if they send you an email or kind of a nasty email, they expect you to do, you know, bam, right back.  I don't even know how to react to that. They're just used to texting and getting instantaneous responses. Yeah, we live in an age of tweets and little bursts of pride and bursts of anxiety.  It's a bestseller, deep work. And the whole idea behind it is, you know, and this should be at the forefront of every Catholic's mind that, you know, as intellectual creatures, we really need to go deep into almost a contemplative or meditative state on whatever it is that we're doing, whether you're a computer engineer or an author or an accountant, you know, to be able to focus deeply is actually something that's very unifying with God, no matter what we're doing. We don't have to be contemplating Scripture.  First off, you get a better work product than your competitors, because everyone's so distracted. And secondly, you reach a certain fulfillment as a human being. And we're not functioning like human beings. We have so many distractions. We're just a culture of ADD. So deep work is one of my favorite works. And I think that's the reason I write books is, you know, running a business, it's chaos. But I usually write in the morning, you're a writer, you probably have your own writing habits, but I try to get my cup of coffee and my Gregorian chant going early in the morning, and then I write for an hour or two. And it's, it's, it's beautiful. It's like, it's, it's like, you know, kind of a spiritual ecstasy for me for a couple hours. And then I have to go and go into the real world and battle all the chaos, you know. So what, what time do you write in the morning? Do you get up at a certain time to start writing?  When I was, when I was younger and, you know, I had to run every single part of the business. I was writing at 6 a.m. in the morning. So, I mean, actually, it's weird, but, you know, as my business has, has, has evolved and I have better managers to run everything, so I don't have to run the day to day. It's actually enabled me to sleep in a little later and, and to write a little later.  And, and, and that early, the earlier, the better. But, you know, with, with all the kids, you know, I have babies getting up at 6 o'clock. Right. And I try to let my wife sleep in because she's usually up with some kid in the morning. So I kind of, I kind of have morning shift. Sure. And so, but by the, you know, teenagers or the middle middle-aged kids, they're coming downstairs at 7, 730. And so they take over and then I hit my home office. So, you know, when babies are around, I don't really get to write at 6 o'clock in the morning as much anymore. So. By the way, this is just like me. So, so I, I do the same thing I set. So I set my alarm for about six and then another comes on at 620. And I get up. I usually, it depends on if I had enough sleep the night before when I fell asleep. So, so we don't have any babies at home right now. So that's a big difference. But, but, but my wife gets up and, and she goes, she teaches exercise. She comes home about 7, 715 takes the kids the mass. I'm on, I, but I'm on duty, right? From about six to nine during that time, getting breakfast and so forth. But I try to get a good two hours in writing during that time. And I've had, I've had colleagues at Grove City College come to me and say, you know, I just can't write. I can't get the time. How do you do this? And I'll say, okay, here's what you got to do, right? You know how you take time during your day to go to like karate practice, right?  Sometimes you might only get an hour and a half. Sometimes maybe an hour. Guess what? Sometimes you might get three, right?   And you write during that time. And I mean, think about it. This, this is one of the reasons I like doing this podcast. It's all advice for authors. If you did that, if you wrote for two hours a day, it is easy to write a thousand words. It is, it is. I found that like, if I don't have to research, then in an hour, I can usually produce, I mean, it has to be edited, but I can produce about 750 words an hour if I'm really humming. Sure.  But yeah, the uninterrupted, what I call deep work, the deep work of one or two hours is more than most people do in a day. You know, most people, most people live in just nonsense ADD mode and their mind switches focus from one project to another 80 or 90 times a day. Actually, statistics have shown that. So you have to batch your time and cut off everything and go into your mode. And it's like triage, isn't it? I mean, because you're dealing with all, putting out all these other fires.  For those two hours, you do nothing else but that. If you wrote even 1000 words a day and believe me, you'll do more than that, right? Connor and I, but do the math 1000 a day. Oh, you like one of the most prolific authors ever. Yeah, 5000 words in a week times, times 50 weeks in a year is 250,000 words. Yeah. That's a 700 page book. Yeah, exactly. It's just the discipline and organization of doing it. And then, and then like for me, being an academic and so I'm off in the, in the summer times, I'll have, I'll get periods where I could spend a whole day on a project. I mean, those summers are really precious, right? So you might not get that at all. But even if you just get it, get the hour or two in a day, it makes a big difference. So are you familiar with the book, The Intellectual Life by, it's an old monk, last name, certilogens, mispronouncing it, but it's called The Intellectual Life. It was written by, I think, either a Dominican or a Benedictine monk. My son knows it and he's been encouraging me to read it for three years. Yeah. And he's saying everything you're saying.  If you just dedicated an hour a day to Thomas Aquinas and reading him and, and thinking about him over the course of a couple of years, you would become a fantastic Thomas.  So, you know, you see the people who have become great scholars in different things, and it's usually a little bit every day consistently over an extended period of time. That's what it takes to become a success at anything in life. You know, we just don't do it very well. And you can, and most monks are a plumber during the day or a gardener or a baker or a brewer, right? They all have, they all have those kind of duties. And then, I mean, I know people who learn languages and they'll do Duolingo for just a few minutes a day. And that doesn't sound like much. And it's not, and you need, you need more.  So, all right, now I got to hit this book now. So because we only have an hour in total, we could take more time, but I always try to keep it within an hour. So Parenting for Eternity, a guide to raising children in Holy Mother Church, like Connor Gallagher and Steve Cunningham, our fabulous producer, will be putting stuff up on the screen. And so there's so much here. I've got bent pages. I've got annotations written all over it. And so it's trying to think what's the best way to even begin to cover this? And I guess I could start from the very beginning. I'll jump around a little bit. But you have these really nice endorsements. And the one is from Father James Altman, which is the first one, and I got to read it because to be honest here, Connor, I thought, well, he's being really nice. This is kind of effusive, but he's exaggerating, right? Mr. Gallagher's words are so full of grace that your heart cannot but be moved to the core. I'll put my money where my mouth is. I'm getting every one of my parishioners a copy of this book because it's priceless. It is priceless because your children's soul is priceless. Praise be to God and thanks be to Connor Gallagher for, well, there are no words, just no words for the grace you will find inside. And again, I thought, well, he's probably just being nice. But when I read this, I thought, this is a kind of book that a priest should give to all the parents in his parish. I mean that. And then Kerry Gress, in his latest work, Connor Gallagher stirs a generation of parents from the hypnotic trance of the modern world with an awakening to their children's eternal destiny. And that is indeed what you do. And then I got to note this and then I'll ask you a couple of questions. You start the book with, is the epigraph the right word? I think maybe with a quote, a dedication, dedication. And this really hit me to my miscarried children. I might get choked up when I read this. I am sorry I do not think of you more often. Intercede for me that I may one day embrace you with the father's love. And I even, well, wow, this really hits me because I think of this to Connor from time to time.  And from time to time, it'll just hit me when I'm driving down the road by myself or whatever that these were souls. I mean, some of these were well, the very first one was 17 weeks. It was really sad. We had our two youngest children with us for the ultrasound was not expecting it. And I think someday if I make it to heaven, am I going to get up there and there's going to be four other kids. I'm going to say, who are you guys? I don't know. But you look like my daughter Amanda, right?  And let's say, well, these are your miscarried children. And I'm going to feel bad. I'm going to think, why wasn't I thinking of you every day? How selfish is that, right? That I wasn't. But time passes, you don't think of it very often. And so that kind of plea from you, I am sorry that I do not think of you more often. And then intercede for me which surely they can, right? And I just, I love that. That is just beautiful that you thought of it. Yeah, thanks, Paul. You know, I feel the same way.   So I believe in Catholic teaching that they're, they've made it to heaven. And, and even, you know, some of them, I was able to baptize with water. So I mean, I'm good. I'm good and believing that they're there. Well, if that's the case, what in the world am I doing by forgetting about them? I mean, I have some powerful intercessors here. And so they can help me maneuver through the silly things I do.  They don't have to see all my own mistakes and I can put on a good face for my kids, but my kids in heaven, they know it all. They know it all.  And so I'm not as well. That's a scary thought. That's a scary thought right there, right? Yeah, when we get to have it, it's all going to be made known, you know? So now it is a beautiful thing.   I don't equate those things. You know, it's somewhat nature taking its course. But still, it is a sadness when you think about it, but it's also a beauty. And I think it's worth parents thinking about that. It is indeed. And so you begin with, and I'm telling you, I've got so many things bracketed here. I could just read it. Is this on tape, by the way? Is it, is it, is there a, an audible version out? I am, I am reading it tomorrow at the audio station. Yeah, so. Oh, you're reading it personally. I am. You should. You should. So I know you have all sorts of time on your hand. So that's, I've never done it before. So we'll see how it goes. Yeah. But it's so personal that, that, um, I mean, of all my books on tape, I don't read any of them, but I mean, this is just so personal. I think it begs, it begs for you to read it. Sorry.  If you could, you would imitate God and number the hairs upon your little one's head, treasuring each one. And you quote Matthew 1030, Lou, 1234, but that little soul, that little soul shall never return to dust. It shall, God willing, forever rejoice before the splendor of all that is good, true and beautiful, reveling in inexplicable joy, overcome with inexhaustible glory.  Uh, how for the, the malnourished children, your heart plummets, how foolish we are. If you're little, if your sweet little one had cancer, suffering the pangs of chemotherapy, needles and fear of the unknown. If your little daughter's head was bald and covered with scarves, and I've seen that. I used to work in a hospital over four years. I worked in children's hospital in Pittsburgh. It's just heartbreaking. Imagine if it was your child. It's hard enough seeing it being anybody else's child, right? Where your son no longer had the strength to throw a ball. You would rightly move heaven and earth to save your child's body with the most innovative treatment. You would, without hesitation, work a second shift or even beg for money from family, friends and strangers. You would expose your own sorrow and plead for mercy from your creditors. You would cease to care about your own health, wealth and reputation. Your personal dreams would gladly be abandoned and replaced with one simple dream of holding your child's broken body in your arms one more day.  So here we go. But you must confront the following question with, with scrutiny and sincerity. How much of this paternal affection do you, do you direct to your, toward your little one's soul? All your efforts to save that little heart that pumps blood, but so little effort to save the soul that lives forever, right? And this is what you mean. This isn't just about parenting in the here and now, or at the soccer game or the baseball game, or even dealing with a very sick child in the hospital. This is about, as you say, parenting for eternity, because the soul is eternal. Yes. You know, I think that I tried to write a book that was not tactical.  You know, I mean, it's not that I was trying to go to the most core issue of parenting. And it is, it is ridiculously simple, so simple that we miss it. But every single thing that we do as a parent, Paul, every little thing, every big thing, there are eternal consequences to what we do as parents. And we are impacting our children's salvation one way or the other in everything we do. And so I think about, you know, the great extents I go to take care of our kids' bodies. But then, but then I, you know, I'm shoddy on saying the rosary at night, or I don't take my kids to adoration as often as I should, or I don't, I'm worried, I'm more worried about them going to the dentist than I am going to confession. I mean, you know, when you step back and think about this thing, why are we worried about 80 years and not 8 trillion years? And, you know, and something that really dawned on me, actually, I didn't put it in the book, but kind of just the summary of the book for me in a sense is, you know, Paul, if I said to you, imagine a triangle or a square or an octagon, you can do that. You have shapes that you can put in your head. But if I said, imagine an 87-sided object, like you already can't do it. It's too big. You can't, it's just an idea. You have no picture of it. So if I said imagine a thousand years, you can do that because we think about a thousand years back, or we have science fiction about a thousand years from now. But if I say eternity, it almost doesn't mean anything. It loses its meaning. It's too big to imagine. If I say eternity, you don't have any picture of that, except maybe pearly gates and clouds, you know.  You will see all those stars. You'll see the entire Milky Way, you know, just collapse into a ball of ash. And you'll see actually a new heaven and earth created, you know, that's glorified. But, you know, you see these things, these astronomical things out there, and imagine your child living so long that they're going to see the sun burn out. And indeed they will. They will live that long with the soul. And we don't think like that, and we need to start thinking like that. I hope that makes sense. Oh, that's beautifully put.  By the way, I'm reading right now Paul Figpen's book that Tan published last year, Saints Who Saw Hell. Yeah, and you quote in here too, 15 statements from Jesus in the New Testament about hell. And when you read those visions, the saints visions, what Jesus said about hell, it is a beyond conceivable beyond conceivably awful place. And so to live in eternity with that, conversely, yeah, that's why these are the first things, right? This, this is what matters most. And you say here, I'll pick up this quote, Have you gone to great lengths to construct your entire life around your child's health, education, social life and sports, so they can be well rounded, productive and successful citizens? A resounding yes comes to mind. But have you given even 10% of such effort to their spiritual formation? Have you considered heaven and hell 10% as much as you consider worldly success for your growing child? My wife is probably better at it than I am. If it wasn't for her, they probably wouldn't do prayers every night. I do them with a couple of the kids. I know I don't do as much. And this is a wake up call for me. I got to tell you that this makes me think I should set this out and be more intentional about doing these things because you got to wonder too, Connor, are we going to be held accountable someday for having not parented our children for eternity? And I don't mean that in a way like, oh, now I'll do it because if I don't, I'm going to hell, right? I mean, the importance is everybody's soul, right? But in a way, a lot of this, the parents are the first educators. That's where spiritual formation takes place. And if we're blowing it, that does not speak well for us. You know, I actually thought about putting, it was a short thought, I didn't last long, but I thought about putting a millstone on the front of the book. Yeah, yeah. And here's the thing, Paul, at least for me, when we read that passage in Scripture, it's better for you to have a millstone tied around your neck and cast into the sea than to lead these little ones astray. We sometimes think that means we're going out proactively like teaching a kid the wrong thing or teaching them to do something horrible. But it's not so much that it's also just to neglect. I mean, when God has given us all of revelation at our disposal and the sacraments, and we just don't take advantage of those things, that's leading them astray through neglect. I mean, it's the sin of omission is just as real as the sin of commission.   And I'm worried about logistics, who's picking up the kids going here and there? Oh, we need to pick up a gallon of milk. Oh, the kids got this practice or that, or we have the logistics. And God, I think, is very merciful for those things. But yeah, he is.  All of those other silly things are put on hold and they focus on what's important.  And we need to work on that right now, today, tonight, when they go home, you need to treat it like it's an urgent, eternal thing because it is. And with a brain tumor, you might even have, you would have time to assess this more, right?  So you really start to push, but what about the kid that dies in a car accident, completely unexpected, right?  Have you have you sufficiently helped prepare that show? And by the way, it's tough for us as dads too, because, you know, in many cases, well, obviously there's two income families, right? But in many cases, we are the primary breadwinner, even though, as you know, our wives do most of the real work, right? But a lot of times, my wife will say, do you really need to write that? Do you really need to do that? And well, for the money, yeah. I mean, and it's not to buy a boat, right? I tell you that, right? I mean, it's just, it's just so, so, so we got money next year for tuition and for this and that. And so there are things where, you know, it's kind of stuff you don't want to do. I'd rather be sitting around reading Aquinas, right? But no, I got to bang this out or whatever, because I got to make money. It's part of my moral duty.  But I'm trying to emphasize that we can go about our daily life with an emphasis of using every engagement with our children to spur them on to heaven, you know?   I mean, yeah, that might seem awkward at first, if you're not used to doing it. But I can also tell you, Paul, that not that we do everything right, but I have caught my 19 year old in adoration at on Bellman Abbey campus. And that's like, oh, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven, you know?   And so it's, you feel awkward kind of coming back and retroactively trying to fix errors that you've made. But we have to be comfortable going to our adult children or our teenagers, at least, and saying, hey, look, I didn't do this right. You know, I've been a bad example, or I didn't, we didn't use to say the rosary every night, and we need to start doing it. Silly me, we should have done it. Hey, we didn't use to go to confession as much as we should, or hey, we didn't use to go to adoration as a family. I know, and I raised you that way. I could have done a lot better. Forgive me, please, because I didn't always set the right example. But hey, I have to embarrass myself now. I have to recognize we haven't done this well. And we've got to go try to do this. So, you know, even if they're not there, I think that most of the time the kids will respect mom or dad showing sincere regret for the past and sincere attempt to get better. And my kids forgive me. I asked their forgiveness. They forgive me. And, you know, it's very important and very important to be open and candid. And I was with my second oldest son on a really long drive just last week. And I was kind of telling them about some of the crazy stuff that I did.  I can't believe I'm alive.  Right. And that I tell by, you know, by my theological son, well, I struggle with confession. You know, I'm a former Protestant. It's not that I don't, I haven't, I don't believe in the idea that sins can be forgiven by a priest or anything. It's just odd seeing I'm uncomfortable doing it.  And he starts telling me, well, you need to do, you need to go to confession. So if all things to have your kid say that to you, that's, that's a good thing. I would say it means we've done something right. It means my wife has done something right. I'll at least say that. I tell you, my 17 year old daughter, I found myself almost getting spiritual direction from her at the time. I'm saying, again, how's this happen? It's a beautiful thing. And I think, you know, we just, yeah, we have to recognize that we're, that we're flawed parents.  I'm a quasi intellect. But I mean, you know, I think we overthink and the church has given us and I tried to put some of this in the book, but the church has given us such simple and direct things that we know we need to do. And I, I am tempted to overanalyze these things and complicate them when, you know, that's the Pharisees and Sadducees and the Gospels all day long. You know, what God wants is a sincere heart, a pious heart of humbly worshiping him and not being embarrassed about being that we so badly want to think our way around simple piety. I do. I want to find every reason that I can articulate my faith better than just show a simple humble expression of it. And that's, that's Pharisees. That's, that's what that is. Yeah, I had to reason my way into the faith, right? It was not, it was not an emotional experience experience. And also too, you get people who want to kind of win a theological argument, right? Convince somebody, but sometimes it's just, you're better off just living a righteous life, right? And modeling the faith. No, let me say this, Paul. You know, I, I know for a fact that I've raised my kids to be conservative. No doubt about it. In fact, they can tell you all the problems with the Biden administration just fine. Okay. I know I've raised them to be orthodox thinkers, you know, they know catechesis and, but sometimes I step back and say, wait a minute, have I raised them to be Christian?  And, and I'm much better at teaching them to be, you know, a Trump supporter than I am a Christ supporter.  So I'm, this is an experience myself. That's why I wrote this thing is trying to, to really think, okay, am I teaching my kids to, to, you know, to just be a simple follower of Christ, a humble and pious Catholic doing what the church, holy mother church teaches us to do day in and day out, and don't over complicate this because that is of the devil to over complicate this. By the way, one of the really nice things about being Catholic is the church provides these parameters, these guidelines, the sacraments, the liturgical calendar. So, so as a parent, you've got a structure backing you up, right? So you still have to do the faith formation at home and so forth.  I mean, this is just a gigantic help, you know, not, not to criticize my evangelical friends, but, but if you're in an independent non-denominational church, you might have Bible study during the week and so forth, and you meet on Sundays and you have fellowship. But to have that every day layout, guidelines, step by step of what to follow, that provides an order in your life that that even if you're screwing up as a parent to some extent, if you've taught your kids to follow that, you've helped them considerably. Yeah, this is not, this is not an Rubik's cube to figure out, you know, the church has given us very simple guidelines. Rosary, and I tell people, look, I've kind of boiled it down.  And you have all of the things you can pepper on it with saints, devotions and novenas and litanies and all these things. But if you're close to our lady, if you repent of your sins regularly and confession, and you, and you believe in the true presence of the Eucharist, and you receive him worthily because you went to confession, it's going to work out. We don't need to over complicate this. And so I did emphasize those things a lot in this in this little book. I was just reaching from my rosary ring to grab it. But it's one of those things where, you know, I had people say, I can't find 25 minutes to sit down and kneel in a church and say a rosary every day, neither can I. So, so, you know, if, if I might get through, I might get through it on the treadmill, on the elliptical, right? I might get through a couple of decades, whatever. And if my goal might only be one a day, I'd like to do two or three, right? But my goal is minimum one rosary, one divine mercy, chocolate. But, but, you know, start low, right? You do what you can. We do it during tours, like when we're doing the dishes at night. Right. I mean, that's, that's when we do it. And it's chaotic. And we're yelling the Hail Mary over the vacuum cleaner.  And every once in a while, I try to remind my kids, I know, I know we're moving all over the place and everyone's doing something, but try to have the piety within your heart.  So we have to try to, even if though we're doing it while we're moving, whether it's on a treadmill or driving, right, or doing dishes, you know, we do need just, just interiorly just pull that back saying, okay, I mean this, you know, yeah, and you could probably get more fired up and run faster in the elliptical if you're listening to Led Zeppelin, right? But, you know, but, but hey, you should, it's a time where you can say a rosary instead. Our time is flying here. I can't believe this. So I'm going to ask you just a few things here. So I love that you, that you're your first chapter after the introduction is called the four last things first. I thought that was clever, right? The four last things first. So explain what the four last things are and why you say we need to put them first.   But there's really only four certain things. It's death and judgment and then heaven or hell, you know.  I mean, it is, it is, there's, there's no getting around it. There is no other day beyond that. And so, you know, we have to begin with the end in mind, whether it's a, whether it's a business plan or whether it's, you know, a travel to Europe, you have to pick your destination and all the little decisions to get there. That is the destination. And so I think it's actually helpful for us, Paul, to, to envision actually to almost meditate upon the fact that our children are going to have their own judgment.  And you're sitting on the side as a parent. And your day of parenting is over. It's, it's done.  It's over. And it is up to that judge.  And as a control freak, that doesn't sound good. So if we envision that, um, I, I mean, that's a little scary, but I think it's helpful for me to say, all right, I need to help my kid right now before that judgment occurs. Yeah. Imagine that the little toddler that you're pushing on the swing at the park, four years old is someday going to be standing there for God being judged. And you're not going to be there, right? At that point, you've either helped or hurt the process, right? So, so the four last things, don't think of them last, don't think of them at the end, right? Think of them at the beginning, think of them first, right? Be prepared for them for the beginning, for when they come later. You got it. And that's, that's parenting for eternity. You have, you have the, the longest chapter in the book. This is, is interesting that it, that it's the long, that it's, that it's the longest chapter. So there are about 10 chapters altogether, but after that come the virtue of piety and the virtue of humility. And the, the virtue of piety is the longest chapter by far. In fact, in my math is right, it's 45 pages, which is much longer than the other chapters. And that's for good reason. What, what, what, why, why, why the virtue of piety? What do you mean by that? Why is, why is this a big deal? Well, I think it was a big deal for my book because I'm not very pious.  And so I need to remember that.  And that does help me.  And I can kind of laugh that off. But, but in, but piety is this interior sense of reverence and awe before God and taking it very, very seriously. And so I try to, I try to, you know, explain in the book that through the sacraments, through our devotion to our lady, we're trying to teach our children to have a sense of wonder and awe for all things divine. And so they need to be awestruck, you know, they, you know, when they watch a, you know, a high impact movie, they might have this look of wow on their face that we need to raise our children to see divinity. I mean, divinity is so out of this world we can't, again, we almost don't think about it because it's too hard for us to understand. So we need to try to instill in our children, you know, this sense, for example, if I recall, I say, you know, when we're, when we're praying before the Eucharist, when we're at mass, you know, mom and dad need to show physical reverence for God in the blessed sacrament. So much so that where our kids see it, like, right, my kids think I'm a big, strong, tough guy. But before our Lord, they need to see a humble, pious man who is willing to prostrate before our Lord. And that really hits them, right? To see the kind of tough masculine dad who's throwing the football on the front yard, you know, maybe swearing, I can't help it. I try not to use real bad language, right? But, you know, they know what I'm like, right? And then to see you actually there at mass, right, during the consecration, with tears in your eyes kneeling, right? You say, you forgive me, right? Forgive me. And that it hits them. It does. And that's the best catechism is seeing your physical recognition of Connor is nothing for that Eucharist, nothing. And I need to physically display that in front of all my children sitting in the pew. And that to me, that's my expression of piety. And I need to instill that in my children. And hopefully it's sincere, right? Which of which I think it is in our case, my kids laugh sometimes when, you know, during the, during the liturgy, Laura, the priest says, Lord, I we say, I'm not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed. And they'll hear me sometimes say, you know, to myself, Lord, I'm a no good for nothing lousy, right? And I mean it. I mean, you know, my daughter's kind of giggling, but I'm looking, I'm like, well, I'm really serious, right? Welcome to the club. Right. And they think you and they're thinking to themselves, you're not really that bad. And now you should, you should, if you knew my thoughts and some of the things I've done in the past, I'm a good for nothing lousy piece of, you know, dog doo doo. I really sound like Martin Luther here, right? Right? What did Martin Luther say, a pile of snow, come snow covered, whatever, whatever. Yeah, done with snow on top, you know, right? Yeah, exactly. Well, and you say that the three areas particularly related to the virtue of piety, the devotional life, the liturgical life, and the sacramental life, which is exactly kind of a summary of what we've said here, right? And in the last 20 minutes, I got no more than 10 minutes left. And I don't want to take more of your time. We want to keep this under an hour. You follow the virtue of piety with the virtue of humility. And that is, I guess you probably already hit on some of that. I'll let you think if you want to say something else about that, I'll give you a minute. The quote that you share here is from Kajetan, married the Bergamo, and let's see, quote, in paradise, there are many saints who never gave alms on earth, their poverty justified them. There are many saints who never mortified their bodies by fasting or wearing hair shirts, their bodily infirmities, excuse them. There are many saints too, who were not virgins, their vocation was otherwise. But in paradise, there is no saint who was not humble, right? That's not amazing. That says it all.  But then the only other virtue I really wanted to focus on is humility because Paul, in a way, I've come to believe that there's really only one virtue. I mean, there is no other virtue. You're not charitable. You're not fortuitous. You're not or you don't have the virtue of fortitude. You don't have the virtue of anything unless you're humble. And all God wants from us is a humble soul. And anytime there's virtue present, there's humility. Anytime there's sin, there's pride. So from a parenting standpoint, I encourage, I encourage parents to, when you're recognizing good behavior in children, try to point out, okay, that's kind and humble. Or if you say, oh, that was very brave of you and humble.  And so I find it's so foundational that we have to as parents point out and help our children learn to look through the lenses of humility and pride. So they see life in that way. That's a wonderful gift to give children.  You will not accept Christ, right? Unless you humble yourself into believing that you need that to begin with, right? I mean, it's the proud man that thinks that he doesn't need God. I don't want to get into this, but the fact that June is celebrated as pride month, right?  I mean, pride is the first of the deadly sins, right? You have pride led to the fall. I mean, pride is the complete opposite of being humble of having humility. It really does. I think you're right, Connor. It starts with humility above all. Yeah. And, you know, the book that you read the quote from is a book called Humility of Heart. And as the CEO of Tan, I can tell you somewhat authoritatively that it's the best book we've ever published. Sorry. It's not, it's not even the devil and Karl Marx by Paul. It's definitely not that. No, no, that's an outstanding book. But I'm saying the best book we've ever published is Humility of Heart. And it has the unfair advantage of being about humility, which is the foundational virtue, but it's also beautifully written.  But if you had to pick one book, don't read my book, go read Humility of Heart. It's transformative.  And, and that's a natural thing for people. And so I'm pushing humility, pushing humility. And they're old enough now I'm saying, read this book, read Humility of Heart. It's everything. If you, if you have humility, you have everything. If you have pride, you have nothing. See, that's a perfect example of what Tan does. And this is a good way to bring this all full circle. Yeah, I've got a writer, Humility of Heart, Tan books, 2011, Cajetan, Mary, Bergamo. And I don't, I don't know anything about that book, but it's probably really old, probably 1600s, right? Yeah, it was originally an Italian, I think, way back when, and then Bishop Vaughn, who was kind of a famous Bishop, he, a Cardinal Vaughn, he translated it into English in the, in the late, in the early 1900s. And it was like his final Will and Testament, you know, of translating this into English for the first time. It's the greatest book we've ever published. Wow. Sarah Maldonado, get me a copy of that book in the mail now. We'll do it. We'll make it happen. Yeah. Well, so, so we got, we got to put this to a close, but this has been a fantastic Connor Gallagher, parenting for eternity. And Steve Cunningham will put the book up on screen. Thank you for all that you're doing that the new authors you're bringing in the old authors that you're preserving. And, and anything you want to say in closing, how about Tann's mission, right? Especially under you and your brother, your family to, to make people saints, to make people holy. You know, thank you for that. And, you know, I struggled for a long time writing our mission statement. And, you know, the first few years I had a page long mission statement that no one could remember. And then a few years later, I had a paragraph mission statement that no one could remember. And so finally, I bought it down to one simple thing. The purpose of Tann books is to help people become saints. And that's, that's all I'm able to remember. But it's supposed to infuse every decision we make about who we publish publishing people like you with great works, like you've done with Devlin, Karl Marx and more to come. But, you know, we want to make books that help people become saints in a very dangerous, evil world. And that's why I wrote this little book is I want parents to think their primary role is to not to get your kid to Harvard, but to get them to heaven. That's what it's all about. Yep. It really is. It really is. Well, great job. Thanks for this. And I think Father Altman is right.  You had to get by 50 of these and give them out to parents in the parish. It's a short book. It's not that long. And, and even if you didn't read the whole thing, if you just, if you can just get the very essence of this message, this is a wake up call. It really is. And, and indeed, you're spending all that time, we as dads, you know, working to make money to pay for our kids to go to wherever, wherever, put a roof over the head, the mom, she's helping the kids education, maybe they may may be through work as well, helping them pray. But, but ultimately, you've got to prepare them for judgment day, which could come out of nowhere. Right. It could come right now. It could come tomorrow. It doesn't have to be 80 years from now. You might not have much time. So thank you very much, Connor. Yeah, yeah, this was great. And everybody, thank you for listening. Go to our website. Just if you can't just go to 10 books and go there, order this book, order Connor's book, check out our other titles. And we will see you all again soon in other podcasts. Take care. God bless.


Hello and welcome to the session. Let's discuss the following question. It says in figure 6.44 abc and dbc are two triangles on the same base bc. If ad intersects bc at o show that area of triangle abc upon area of triangle dbc is equal to a o upon d o and this is the figure 6.44 here abc and the triangle dbc stands on the same base. So let's now move on to the solution and let's first write what is given to us. We are given triangles abc and dbc stand on the same base and what we have to prove we have to prove that the area of triangle abc upon area of triangle dbc is equal to a o upon d o. Now to prove this we need to do some construction. So what construction we do is draw a perpendicular ae on bc and df on bc. Let's now start on with the proof. In triangle aoe and triangle dof that is this and this angle ae o is equal to angle df o because each is 90 degrees and angle aoe is equal to angle dof because these are vertically opposite angles. Now since in two triangles corresponding angles two corresponding angles are equal therefore by the angle angle criteria triangle aoe is similar to triangle dof. So two triangles are similar therefore the corresponding sides are in the same ratio. So this implies ae upon df is equal to aoe upon od. Let's name this as 1. Now we consider the area of triangle abc upon area of triangle dbc. Now area of triangle abc will be given by 1 by 2 base which is bc into height and height here is ae and in triangle dbc area of triangle dbc will be given by half into base into height and which is df that is this and here we have height as ae and we write the area of triangle is equal to 1 by 2 into base into height. Now 1 by 2 gets cancelled with 1 by 2 bc gets cancelled with bc and we have area of triangle abc is equal to area of triangle dbc is equal to ae upon df. Now from 1 we have ae upon df is equal to a upon od. So we have area of triangle abc upon area of triangle dbc is equal to ae upon od. So this is what we have to prove. So hence the result is proved. So this completes the question and the session. Bye for now. Take care. Have a good day.


join be joining us today from around the world or viewing us on an archive we are super excited to have Amina Bell from your part-time controller on to talk about the realities of donor restricted contributions this is gonna be a great conversation because it's one of those things that's fraught with a lot of challenges maybe I should say but Amina's gonna help us understand how it all works and how we can deal with it if we haven't met before I'm Julia Patrick CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, Jared Ransom the non-profit nerd CEO of the Raven group is off today she's actually doing a board retreat I believe and so she'll be back with us tomorrow again we are here each and every day now marching towards 750 episodes because of our sponsors plain and simple and those friends of ours include bloom rang American Nonprofit Academy your part-time controller staffing boutique fundraising Academy at National University non-profit thought leader and the non-profit nerd if you would like to get to any of our archives whether you can join us on Sunday in your PJs while drinking some coffee or during work because you've got to figure out a problem you can find us on Roku YouTube Amazon Fire TV and Vimeo we have channels on all those portals and we also know have the non-profit show on podcasts so we started doing this this last year super excited that we I think achieved Amina 10,000 downloads in our first six months so queue us up and if you want to pop us into your ears we'll join you right there okay Amina Bell from your part-time controller we have you down here as associate but you have some exciting news because something big happens tomorrow right yes so thank you for having me here Julia I'm I'm super excited to be here yeah and I've been an associate with YPTC I've been with YPTC for 10 years now and I'm moving into a new role of strategic partnership so I'll still be doing client work but also helping out with our business development portion so I'm really excited to be involved with with that aspect of the business wow now your part-time controller works with nonprofits throughout the country where and they're they're all over including some folks in my community which by the way I was at an event on Friday night and sat in the table right next to the YPTC table nice in a giant ballroom okay but anyway where are you coming to us from what city I am coming out of the Houston area so in our Texas Louisiana Arkansas market wow okay cool wonderful well let's get into it because I have so many questions this is such a hot topic but I feel like we need to back up the bus a little bit and have you help us to understand what the definition of donor I started to say droner that Friday and flip donor restricted contributions are and how we should look at this before we move into the conversation absolutely I think that's a great place to start so a restricted contribution is a contribution where a donor imposes some type of parameter about how that contribution should be used and normally we kind of put it in two buckets it can be purpose restricted to the donor is indicating a specific use like I want my contribution to be used for kids backpacks or it could be for a specific program and then the second bucket is imposing a time restriction where the donor is placing so specified time period on when the donation can be used and that can be temporary or permanent in restrict in nature as as in the case of endowments but it donor restriction should be really contrasted with designations internal designations that sometimes management imposes such as a board reserve or if they get donations and they may designate the funds to be used for a specific purpose in terms of accounting the only restrictions that we count as a restricted contribution is one that a donor imposes so it must come from the donor so it's really what I hear you saying it's a world of two reckonings and that you have your accounting and the fiduciary aspect as well as then you have a management aspect absolutely yes but the management aspect can always be changed the restriction for a particular donor cannot be changed without permission from that donor so you know and this might be a little bit of a curveball but are you seeing more and more donors using attorneys in legal frameworks to make sure that they're asserting exactly what it is that they want versus just a conversation you know I I'm seeing not necessarily in my personal experience more attorneys but more documentation where the donor is spelling out their intentions or more language around hey if this is what you say you're gonna spend it on we're gonna kind of hold you in terms of your reporting to this is what you spent it on well so that really gets us into the part of this discussion calling you know honoring donors intent and it seems to me and in what we're living in this perfect world right now this example of COVID you know think of all the people that were like no my money's gonna go to XYZ and then COVID hits and then all of a sudden things changed because we had different needs how does that work in relationship to what that original intent was and how do we navigate that yeah so you know once a nonprofit decides to accept a donor restricted contribution they have they have a legal obligation to fulfill that donor intent and if for some reason because I had a few clients as well during COVID where the needs drastically change they just they went to the donor and they said hey because more often than not the donor is wants to support the mission they they want to support the organization having that conversation like these are where our changing needs can we can you release these restrictions and they were very successful in doing that and then just documented that in writing but if you don't get that you there could be potential repercussions there could be lawsuits from donors where even board members can be personally sued improper use of those contributions can cause penalties from the IRS even the loss of the taxism status even audit findings for organizations that have audits so it's really important to honor that intent even if it's just for the reputation of the nonprofit because it really could impact your future fundraising efforts and the donors trust and in your fiduciary responsibility you know I love that you you brought this back to that issue of you know your your community support how you're viewed and one thing that circles around my mind is the aspect that you said in the very beginning and it's also community it's communication you know you need to keep you need to keep in contact with these donors so that you can have that courageous conversation or explain how something's changed or how a need has evolved because I love what you said donors want to move things forward and when they want to help but they don't want to read about it on the front page of the newspaper so part and parcel to that and this is a big thing you know and again you are an accountant so no surprise there but help us understand a little bit more about tracking these restricted contributions because you mentioned something that was really interesting to me under the two buckets time and then I'll call it task like where you want the money to go how do we look at this with those parameters yeah so it's really important on the onset of a nonprofit accepting contribution to really evaluate how they're going to track these restricted contributions and a lot of it is driven by the donor or the funder's reporting requirements but also an important aspect to evaluate is your overall capacity of your accounting department so what what type of accounting system do you have I mean there's some that are really robust in terms of fund accounting but like many of our clients uses QuickBooks which isn't your traditional fund accounting software but it can be leveraged to use existing mechanisms tracking methods mechanisms so that you can get the reports that you need so you kind of need to evaluate how often am I tracking how granular should that tracking be am I tagging every transaction that we're expending to a particular donor or am I just doing periodic adjustments based off of the reporting requirements and so you know like I mentioned your your accounting department's capacity really comes into play when when evaluating how you're going to track then how often but it's really it can be a cost that should be evaluated at the onset of accepting that contribution so as we're going into looking at this even more when we're looking at evaluating restricted contributions and I mentioned in the green room chatter that we're here we're we're seeing this concept being rebranded as trust philanthropy meaning you know that we're going to say to our donors we're not going to be doing as many restricted donations and contributions as we are going to say you got to trust us and here's what our mission vision and values are and this is how we're going through it but talk to me about evaluating this because you brought up something that's a hard cost and that's just tracking it yes spending a chunk of our money on on the administrative sign absolutely I mean so a restricted contribution can be a very important source of support for furthering the organization's mission but it can have its challenges and so you know evaluating your current general and admin costs you know for an organization that may be struggling in just funding for overhead maybe this donor restricted fund isn't the best thing to accept right now if you don't have that capacity but also you know if you're evaluating whether this restriction really goes to further an important mission in your organization or some strategic plan so building up some type of infrastructure for your long-term goals it really should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis because if you're accepting a donation for kids backpacks but you know you're working on you know medical infrastructure that it might not be the right fit in terms of accepting that contribution so I think it's really important for accounting and development and the management to really have these conversations internally to make sure they're on the same page that there is a policy for accepting these types of contributions and that everyone's kind of understanding the implications on the overhead cost the personnel cost and can the organization really support out honoring this donor incentive right you know it's it's too makes me think of two things you know donor career mission creep that you you want to take the money and you see the money you see the check and so you're like oh yeah we can do that when really you can't and it but it's so hard for us we struggle so much to get money in the door and what you're saying is like it's it's like a tough it's a tough thing to hear amina but I think you're right and I really love that you said bringing in management development and accounting and having that be a you know a more robust conversation yeah definitely I mean it's a it's a tough fundraising world out there and there's a lot of competition for funds but even you know in terms of some things that I've seen as well is sometimes the organization can restrict funds unintentionally in terms of their solicitation of funds or their appeals that go out or even in their grants applications or budgets using wording that are too restrictive or not general enough you know when donors respond to that those funds are restricted so coming up with kind of a strategy in terms of like you said building that donor trust so that they're giving you funds that support that mission but are not very specific so that your your hands are tied with how you can spend those funds I'm fascinated by that because it seems to me that most organizations to your point marketing or having a drive or running a campaign probably don't think of it that way you know they probably think oh the money comes in I mean I've seen more and more organizations that will literally make a policy that says for every dollar in so much is going to go to this this this and that including in endowment and for a lot of donors that's kind of a scandalous thing because they don't want to fund endowment necessarily they want to put their money into action right now as opposed into the future I mean what are you seeing about that yeah and you know a lot of what I'm seeing now is nonprofits actually being open about hey there's a cost to programming you know these programs can run themselves we need buildings and lights and personnel to deliver these program costs and so incorporating a realistic even overhead percentage cost and being honest about that to donors educating your donors I think I've been seeing more and more so that donors are educated like those kids backpacks you know they have to get distributed somehow yeah and and and you guys need to help us with that um curveball but do you can you give us kind of a guideline for what you think might be a good way to look at this in terms of some of those percentages you know I think it depends um for some of my clients I've actually done analysis of kind of what their programs are and what the cost is to support those and really come up with the percentages based off of your actual data so I think it might it might depend on you know how much funding you already have that covers your overhead um because if you if you're well funded in GNA you know it may not be um a big deal to incorporate a high percentage when you're asking donors but if not you know having that conversation with donors and coming with a realistic percentage um not just a general you know 10% off the off the off the head but really doing that analysis to make sure that you know it's covering those personnel costs the percentage of you know the lights and the utilities or anything that you may need I like that you said that because I I also think it makes you more of a trustworthy partner for any uh philanthropist if you're you're like yeah this this is what it takes I mean most of us who donate to nonprofits we don't really have any idea what's going on I mean how hard the work is I mean how many of us you know maybe contribute to shelter services but have ever been in a shelter right so I mean I like what you're saying here and I think that's a valiant way to kind of look at this is to say this is going to go pretty far with our our trust factor and our communication factor and maybe even get more engagement from our donors I mean do you think that's realistic I do I do I think I think you know keep going back to that point that you made about communication and engaging with your donors I think they want to be engaged you know I'm a donor I want to know I want to know when there's a need that maybe isn't as sexy as a specific programming need um so that I can I can help and I think that um transparency really helps donors to feel like they're a part of providing what your your greatest needs are I mean and now as you know being a nonprofit accounting now I never restrict my donations okay that was my next question so funny because that was exactly what was bubbling up in my head I was going to ask you two things what are you as a private donor doing and then my second part of that was do you see this as maybe a cultural or a demographic issue so for example older donors versus younger donors donors maybe from different parts of the country um do you see any anything that might indicate that there's some swings there you know I don't I don't know if I personally have um notice any demographic uh differences I think that there's been a drive for evaluating nonprofits like the charity navigators and so you know there's there's been a historical push to we want to see high programming cost and low you know admin and fundraising cost and so that really drives donors to to want to see those high percentages but because I I know you know I've had a variety of nonprofit clients I know that you know the need there's a need there for just those overhead costs as a donor now I'm like whatever the greatest need is you know I do my research and if I trust the organization and the leadership then I trust that you know it's going to be used to deliver those services in the right way well you know like we were saying earlier you know this this new language of trust philanthropy it's getting people on board to understand that there are costs involved in doing these uh you know providing these services and the mission vision and values can be great and tug at your heart but there's a reality to delivering service absolutely yeah very very interesting you know it's it's uh seems to me as as well that um overall as a sector it doesn't seem to me that we're reporting enough or not reporting but maybe collecting data enough on how much of this is you know restricted versus non-restricted and I know that we will see in budgets that come out annual reports from organizations about that but is that something that we're not talking enough about or we don't understand it why why isn't this at the forefront that is a really good question um I think that more and more I'm seeing you know more nonprofits pushed back on this more philanthropists talk about this um in the recent uh recent news I don't know I don't know because it's it's a really important issue because you know I can't tell you how many organizations are well funded in the restricted funds and are struggling to to you know to to make payroll and so um so it's it's really um something that I think should be in the forefront and one one thing that I also wanted to mention you know when I do budgeting for for some of my nonprofits I try to separate out those specific nonprofit those specific donor restricted contributions and expenses okay from the general general and administrative budget to kind of give a clear picture to my clients on uh what are the cost of funding needs for our our gna versus you know you know how well funded we are here and and that can also inform the strategy of how you know uh they're getting funds or the funds that they're going after are willing to accept super smart because again that helps bring the conversation forward to let people even think about this because I don't think we I don't think we discuss this enough yes you know and it's somewhat of a mystery and then to your point you can be super well funded on one side of things and then scrambling on the other and yeah I also learned a lot today from you about the concept of really moving forward on that communication piece I loved what you had to say about most donors are going to want to help move the organization forward they just need to know how and if they can understand that maybe they're not putting their money to the best investment level they can make a change absolutely um and so I think I just think that um nonprofits sometimes can be afraid to have that conversation with them and and I think that um we just need to be more forthright and have in that conversation um because even you know I've I've advised the client before who created a specific budget for for a grant proposal and it was for a brand new program and the budget was delineated very specifically we're going to hire this specific staff person um and in the end the needs by the time the program was rolled out the needs changed and the donor would have been perfectly fine in just you know having a line item for staff salaries not a specific um you know staff position but because it was written that way you had to go back and you know make sure that it was okay with the donor um so you know I I just think that um donors are more on board um once they really understand and trust the needs of the organization and so I think it's really a cooperative effort between you know the development department and in accounting and management kind of having that unified strategy to get those funds yeah do you find that um because this is now the second or third time you've mentioned that do you find that development is coming back to accounting and saying well we got this before you're like wait a minute we talked about this I mean how do you navigate that yes that has happened um quite a few times um where development's like hey we've gotten this these funds now we can use it on this and we're like no we can't because look at how it was written or look at how it was funded and so I I think I mentioned it because it's really important to to discuss those things you know to discuss the analysis of the accounting and what what those actual percentages are before you know that solicitation is made um yeah definitely it's really interesting Amina because you know I think on the nonprofit show we are so blessed we get to talk to different people every day and finishing up our third year going into our fourth year it's been a lot of voices and we generally hear people talk and we talk about the relationship between the donor and development but we don't often spend enough time talking about that triad internally of management programming and development um because we're like so you know we got to get the money we got to get the money right right but I really like that you kind of brought this home to say no wait let's talk about this because we can go off the rails and then what a mess and I can see why development can really lose favor with accounting and then it's like ah they're not gonna let us do it or you know it right it creates a bad energy I guess right absolutely yeah so that communication needs to happen internally first definitely because it could be a really great partnership yeah yeah really could be and I think to your point and I loved what you had to see in the very beginning in that it's the trust factor from the get-go and so if you don't honor the intent and you don't um keep working on understanding the intent and navigating it as it might change you put so much at risk absolutely so much at risk it's amazing well wow you have been a delight to to meet and to have on and I've learned a lot today Amina I I would say this could be kind of like a hair on fire show for me because I was like oh wait I hadn't really thought of these things that way and so thank you thank you for bringing forward so many interesting ideas and in different ways of looking at this Amina Bell associate with your part time controller maybe you'll be working with her in the future on partnerships with the entire your part time controller staff Amina you've been a wealth of knowledge and it's been a lot of fun having you on so thank you very very much thank you so much for having me oh and Julia I it's been an honor truly well it goes by fast doesn't it I know even for me I gotta say again everybody I'm Julia Patrick CEO of the American nonprofit academy Jarrett Ransom the nonprofit nerd herself will be back with us shortly in the week again we've had an amazing conversation today with an expert such as Amina Bell because of our sponsors and they include our friends over at Bloomerang American nonprofit academy fundraising academy at national university staffing boutique your part time controller nonprofit leader and the nonprofit nerd these folks are with us day in and day out and it's a really exciting opportunity to learn things I have to say Amina I learn something new every day awesome I do too it's been great Julia it's been a lot of fun hey everybody as we end this episode we want to remind ourselves our viewers our listeners our guests to stay well so you can do well we'll see everybody back here tomorrow thanks Amina


It is generally considered that journalist Walter Littman conceptualised the term agenda setting in the early 1920s. Littman understood that the media constructed the world for the individual, and so the way people thought about the world was not really what they thought about the world. Rather, it was the way in which they thought about the world that was constructed for them by media representations. Not simply, the agenda setting theory asserts that the media can set the agenda for public opinion by simply privileging certain stories or issues over others. By 1972, Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw decided to formalise the theory by situating the idea in context. They chose to focus on the 1968 presidential campaign using media materials from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. They attempted to match what the Chapel Hill voters said were key issues of the campaign with the actual content of the mass media used by them during the campaign. They found that the media appear to have exerted a considerable impact on voters' judgments of what they considered the major issues of the campaign. In short, the data suggests a very strong relationship between the emphasis placed on different campaign issues by the media and the judgments of voters as to the salience and importance of various campaign topics. So how does agenda setting take place? According to Cammie Barnes, there are several processes at work, namely salience transfer, priming, framing and gatekeeping. Barnes describes salience transfer as the capacity of the media to influence the relative importance individuals attached to policy issues. Barnes references the famous experiment by Ian Gar, Peters and Kinder in which experimental groups were given baseline priorities, but were then exposed to different news broadcasts with different policy emphases over a period of four days. When the groups were asked to rate the priorities again, the researchers found that the subjects issue rankings re-aligned to match the agenda that they were given. Priming on the other hand is the way the media can draw attention to issues even in a way that appears to have no agenda at all, but actually provides a context that is being put into place in order to set the stage or prime the audience for particular issues. Ron Smith explains that the amount of time and space that media devote to an issue make an audience receptive and alert to particular themes. Likewise, audience perception of events are impacted by historical contexts with which they are familiar, through experience or through the media. Smith gives the example of the way that media reporting may be very strong leading up to an event such as the Olympics, the Super Bowl or a World Cup, making it almost impossible for audiences to ignore the event. Another way in which agenda setting takes place is through the process of framing. Famous sociologist Irving Goffman in 1974 put forward a concept called frame analysis, in which he examined the ways that media and other influential institutions construct a suitable environment or frame to enable the interpretation of ideas in a particular way. Ron Smith gives the example of initial reporting through which the media may present the facts of a story in such a way that the audience is given a particular point of view or a frame of reference and interpretation. By doing so, the media have thus presented a frame through which the story is interpreted by audiences from then on, so it sets the baseline for future reporting on the issue. The last idea we will cover is gatekeeping. Gatekeeping as a media concept has been around for many years. Put simply, gatekeepers are those individuals or institutions who have the power to control the flow of information. They keep watch over the gate of content flow, if you will. However, the processes of gatekeeping are radically changing as new media technologies enable a variety of stakeholders to change and redirect the flow of media materials. As Barnes points out, the new media environment creates multiple gates through which information passes out to the public, both in terms of the sheer number of sources and the speed with which information is transmitted, as well as the types of genres the public uses for political information, like movies, music, docu-dramas, talk shows and so on. Citizen journalists, news bloggers and participatory media all contribute to the vast amount of not only news but new opinions and new agendas. This can be positive because the flow of information is broken loose from the corporate stronghold, but also there are negatives too because credibility, bias and accuracy can be difficult to monitor and ascertain. But then again, we have just seen that actually, they have always been difficult to monitor and ascertain.


Penguin Random House Audio presents Before We Were Wicked by Eric Jerome Dickey Red For You by Dion Graham We are torn between a nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known. Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness. Alejandro Jodorowsky, Chapter 1, Los Angeles, 1996. That Friday night we'd been sent to club fetish by our employer, San Bernardino. I was a bill collector, a small-time enforcer, and had to talk to a stubborn man about an overdue debt. It was ninety days late with the Ducats. That was the night I met her. I was driving. At the top-down of my convertible bends, warm air turning cool as we moved through desert country down unforgiving La Cienega Boulevard. La Cienega was Spanish for the swamp, and rightfully so, since it was always inundated with traffic. My co-worker and I had rolled north from the edges of Culver City to the overcrowded area up into Hollywood. Had left the working man's zip codes around 10 p.m., and mixed in with the pretenders and tourists, rockin' BMWs, Lamborghinis, and Maserati's. A couple of DeLorean DMC-12s were on the road with the luxury and sports cars. A Ghanaian who called himself Jake Ellis was at my side. He was my wingman. We were well-dressed, fashionable. As I walked us from Lamert Park to the plastic and pretentious side of Los Angeles, the mile-and-a-half stretch of sunset between Hollywood and Beverly Hills, known worldwide as the Sunset Strip. Bright lights, six lanes of snarling traffic, hundreds of clubs and bars existed on a snaking street that stretched from the bustle of downtown LA's Garmin District in her skid row to the Oceanside Mansions of the Rich and more famous than Rich in Malibu. One end of sunset was poverty and obscurity, and the opposite end was fame or fortune, or fame and fortune if enough people loved your acting, your directing, or the cocaine you sold. That 22-mile boulevard was a metaphor. It was every man's journey. Not many made it from crackland to cocaineville. Men like me had started in the middle, but still had spent all of their lives trying to make it from one end to the other. Women had done the same. I wasn't even halfway. Most days felt like I was still at the starting gate, but I was young. I had time. As we crawled past the comedy store, Jake Ellis asked, Brav, we sent. Checking out droves of foreign women as the club hopped, I nodded. We said, bro, we said, you strapped? Yeah, but I'm leaving it in the stash spot. Security's gonna search us. Jake Ellis nodded. Some fine women out tonight. Always. From all over the world. Every woman in the world ends up here at some point. Women in Ghana and Nigeria still look better. I'll bet they do. How would you know?  I cruised the section of West Hollywood bounded by Dohani Drive on the west and Crescent Heights Boulevard on the east, went down a mile and a half of that metaphor called the Sunset Strip, where celebrities went to overdose curbside, hollered at a few honeys from the car, took advantage of rocking a convertible, then turned back around, headed to our official destination. The strip was in party mode. It was always in party mode. When the sunset, the lights were brighter than Vegas and the sky was polluted with billboards pimping out the latest up and coming Hollywood movie. People sat in traffic, bumper to bumper from sundown until two in the morning, headlights for miles, brake lights for days. The mile and a half commercial strip was packed with restaurants and clubs. Sunset Boulevard was drug central, cocaine university, the Hollywood culture on steroids. Jake Ellis asked, learned from that girl you broke up with? I called La Peter a few times. That's a couple of messages of my pageant number. Nothing. She's got a new dude and she's not looking back this way. So it goes. None many women can handle what we do. Never should have told her. I told you that for-