Welcome to the nonprofit show. We are thrilled that you are joining us today and spending some time here. Our guest today is Jacqueline Tezo, founder and CEO of JMT Consulting. She is bringing back the curtains and we are talking about dealing with your nonprofit financial anxiety and how she can help you dump that financial fear. So stay with us because Jacqueline has some great insight to share with us in regards to finances. And here's a little sneak peek of what we'll be covering today. Origins of where that fear might be coming from, how to ask for the information you're seeking, what type of financial information you're looking for, and the lovely, I love this one, is like let's level set our expectations and the response of that expectation. So that is what Jackie's brought to us today. We also want to remind you who we are if we've not met yet, Julia C. Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy is here and I am Jarrett Ransom, nonprofit nerd and CEO of the Raven Group. Julie and I are so very proud to have the ongoing support from these amazing presenting sponsors. So shout out of immense gratitude, goes to our friends at Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, nonprofit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University, 180 management group, your part-time controller, staffing boutique, JMT consulting, again, where Jackie's from. Also, thank you to nonprofit nerd and nonprofit tech talk. Again, thank you to these companies that allow us these conversations. And if you missed any of our previous episodes, here's where you can find them. Go ahead and pull out your smartphone, scan that QR code, download the app. And if you want to find us, you can still see us on broadcast and podcast channels. So Jackie, we are thrilled to have you with us today. Again, for everyone watching and listening, we have with us today, Jacqueline Tezo. She is the founder and the CEO of JMT Consulting. Welcome to the nonprofit show, Jackie. Well, thank you so much. I am so excited to be joining you. And I love this topic. Good, good. Where is it real to have you? Tell us a little bit about yourself, Jackie, and a little bit about JMT Consulting before we dive deep into our financial fear. Well, I am what I like to describe as a double geek in that I am an accountant and I love technology. I started JMT because I worked in a number of nonprofits and I saw how important technology was and how it could help the organizations I worked for. And I just started working more and more. And so now I am all about the intersection of the two. That's fantastic. It is fantastic, Jared. And it's so desperately needed because of all these different things that we're gonna talk about today. And Jared always says this, it's the scarcity mentality, fear. A lot of times these emotions override all logic, right? And so let's start off. Why do we fear these people and these departments? We were teasing with you in the green room that we think that the financial departments always get the worst office space in the building and they're in the back where it's dark. Jared said, yeah, so they can turn down the lights, close the blinds and shut the door. And why is this? Well, I think that it's such a key thing. I'm an accountant myself. I happen to love it, but I also know such responsibility. There's so much information out there. There are so many requirements and regs. And so that focus of doing the job and making sure I do it correct. And it has to be perfect, right? You can't say, oh, it's okay if I do halfway. I don't have to do that report if it's only half done. You don't have that sort of option. So, you know, we're coming from that kind of space. And I think that applies to others who are non-accountants where they understand and they're looking at it. And sometimes it's gonna be intimidating because all this knowledge of the numbers and what they mean is held in someone's head. And you're going to them wondering, okay, can I ask the right question? Do I know what it is that I even need? They're the keepers, does the information have to be perfect for me? All of those kind of things come into play. So I'm gonna ask you like a get check question and you got to be honest on this. When somebody ever came into your office and asked you a question, did you ever go, oh my God, they are idiots, why are they asking me that? Or it's because I feel like that's sometimes what we're afraid of.  But we're such high performers in programming or fundraising or C-suite, whatever, except for this one area. Yes, and you know, Julia, I think you're absolutely correct. I think that that is a very real fear for everyone. You know, in my family, my husband financial management of our home finances, he's like, oh no, I could never do it, you need to do it. And I think that that just is the case in so many environments and in organizations, we have things that we're very good at doing. Our program managers, our grant managers, our CEOs, so good at delivering on the mission of the organization and that whole numbers thing can be very, very scary. You know, and it's a difficult thing. And then finance, I think, also makes it harder because a lot of times and for a very long time, finance was about everything has to be perfect. We can't release any information unless it's absolutely perfect. And so that holding it very, very close, I think it also is a symptom. Interesting. Well, let me ask you this, like how do we ask and get the information we are seeking?  And so I see this all the time and Jackie, I have seen CEOs, co-founders say this, gosh, I hope no one asks me questions about the financials because I don't know what to say. Like, and they are the bookkeeper, they are the accounting person, they are the CEO, right? And so for these small shops, it's like, oh gosh, that's really scary to hear. So how do we ask and get the information that we're looking for? Well, I think, you know, it's us being able to ask for the information, but I also think there's a shift that needs to happen within the finance offices and environment itself as well. Part of that is I look at the finance office as being a service department for the rest of an organization. And the customers of that finance department are the program managers, the grant managers, the CEO, board members, funders, everyone. And part of that delivery of that service and that product of information is that the information has to be understandable for who you're delivering it to. And so part of the transition that I think is happening in the finance area is that more and more organizations are not looking at just sort of the traditional, oh, I need a statement of revenue and expenses, you know, statement of activities. What really is the meaningful information that I can give to my customer, that grant manager, that program manager, and way beyond just sort of paying bills or getting a statement of revenue and expense, but really information that's helpful to the organization and to that individual. And then on the individual side, it is about going in and sitting with finance and asking for just English language. I need to know how much money I have left in that grant. Right, it was in the Merrick language, is that the opposition? Yes. I've been the majority of my life as a fundraiser in the sector and I've owned up on this on the show before. Finances is not my language, right? But I have had to train myself to understand and to ask these questions and to really own up and say, look, this isn't my zone of genius, help me understand this because as a fundraiser, I need with integrity to be able to represent our numbers through a narration firm. And that is so important. You know, you're speaking to one of the key points that I think is starting to come more and more to the surface. The financial information in and of itself, a financial statement, that's not enough. It really is about telling the story of the organization and not just telling the story externally, right, to funders, but internally to everyone working at your organization, helping everyone to understand what is the story and that the numbers are just helping to reinforce and make a visual, if you will, of that story. And that's a very hard thing. It's a very hard thing and I'm very visual. So my head is going to the old school Mad Libs where it's like, okay, here's where I'm looking for, fill in an adjective, a noun, a verb, a whatever. So like what types of information are we seeking to build out this narration of the number story? Can you help us identify that? Sure.  It's not connecting with the story. What we always talk to clients about is the statistical, demographical, all of that information is as important, if not more so in alignment and together with the financial information. So when I look at, you know, looking at an organization's financials, I want to see side by side, how many people have we served? How many clients? How many meals? What locations are we in? Yes, we have these dollars we spent, but side by side with them should be the impact of what our organization is doing. Imagine how much that resonates more than just showing a P&L that says, okay, here's your monthly expenses, your year's expenses, you know? So that information is so important and also some calculations, like how effective overall funding expenses to the results we're delivering, how effective are we really being? You know, it doesn't want, I don't want to see just dollars alone. Right. You know, that's very interesting because I feel like this is one of those areas where we don't have a central place where information resides. You know, it's like, well, programming knows that. Okay, well, accounting, finance, they know that. I mean, the fundraisers, they know this. And it seems like we don't do a good enough job trying to internally share our information so that we can each also be using that information together. And I don't know what your sense is on that, but that just seems to me like a strategy that a lot of our departments take because they're not working together. And you're absolutely correct, Julia. You know, technology has come such a long, long way. And we wouldn't, we now have the ability to have the information on the impact and along with the dollars, with the technology that we have today. And nonprofits are slowly trying to move in that direction because when you move into that direction with the technology, you eliminate the silos of information that exists within organizations and you truly can get to a, what I call a one source of truth that crosses all departments and where all the information, both the dollars and the impact can be in a single database. Now, does that mean you don't have a donor management program? Absolutely not. You have the solutions you need for each area of the organization, but they truly are talking to each other and they are coming into that one source of truth system. Now, because I'm an accountant, for me, that's a finance system. So I want my finance platform to be able to give it all to me. But you really do need to have that one source of truth. Okay, well, then I'm gonna push you a little on that because I love your phrase, source of truth. That resonates huge with me. But would you let somebody from programming into your system to get information? Absolutely, 100%. Yes. Okay, mine won't. Because I would be like, oh no, I don't want anyone to screw up what I'm doing. Oh no, you let them to have visibility and with visibility, we're empowering people to be creative, to be insightful in information.  We can't open up and release this information too soon. But visibility provides an environment for people to see how are we doing? And where do I need to shift a little bit here to the left or to the right versus waiting? Even waiting just 10 days to see something is too long in my estimation. Well, I really see the finance department as the backbone of the entire organization because it can, like that is where you bring the data. That's where you can make data-driven decisions, not passion, not heart, not gut, like data-driven decisions. From there, you can identify how do we steward these donors? How do we take action and impact on the programming? Like that is the steering wheel. And until we as a sector start to really understand that and stop putting the finance team in the back corner with the lights off and, you know, you can only come out for lunch and that's 15 minutes.  The source of truth? One source of truth, one source of truth. So we don't have tons of time, but I know we've got a couple of more talking points here and you're a double geek and I'm a nerd. So we could talk about this forever. I have a few. Let's talk about some normalcy around responses and in particular, time and data, Jackie. What does that look like? Well, you know, typically there are two issues that get in the way of, you know, financial information. There is either too much data or the other side of the coin, too little data. And then we also have the time required. So those two issues are constantly battling with each other. The time and the data. So I'm going to do time first because here again, technologists geek. The time one is one that can be addressed with technology. Right now, so many organizations, and this is for profit and non-profit. This is not a non-profit only challenge. We throw people at an issue, at a function we need to do. Our minds don't immediately go to, how can we automate this? Is it possible to automate this so that I can take this individual and then let them engage in work that's more fulfilling for them and for the organization? Technology will help us streamline and gains us time. And we all know time is money, right? We're paying a person. If we add staff, the very first thing I look to do is if we're looking to add staff, do we need to add staff or could we take an investment of those dollars and bring our technology up and eliminate manual effort and tasks? And also we want more data, but there's no point in having more data if you can't get to it or use it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, right. It's a fool's errand and I think that's become a major frustration in non-profit management. Yes, I mean, we want to chase the data. We want the data. We chase it ever or more viciously. It's always, it ludes us because there's too much work involved in utilizing that data. Plus we are looking for, well, how do I use that data? And what I really talk to organizations about is the forward perspective of data, right? It's not a snapshot right now or what happened before. Let's take that data as it's feeding in live and project forward for a forward-focused perspective. Imagine what we would do if our systems, every day, every month, we're updating and forward-focusing and saying to us, this is where we think you're gonna be in three months, in six months, if you stay on this trend. That's right, yeah. That data is huge. You can't do that if you're just relying on the time element of the manual because it's just not humanly possible. Our poor finance teams are working with the speed of everything else coming in at the speed of lightning and they just don't have time for doing this other level of work. So I'm like, automate everything you possibly can and use your team to then do that innovative, that forward-focused thinking. But Jackie, you know, this is such an interesting, you said in the very beginning, this is a shift in mindset. Yes.  Correct. To me, fascinating. That's a fascinating thing because we generally don't include finance in these generative discussions. And you're absolutely correct. And I think here again, there is a tide. We're really at the sort of beginning of this tide that's coming. And finance is going to catch up 100% and it's gonna be a wonderful and exciting thing and so productive for the organizations, for the leaders of those organizations and for every one of the staff and finance members of those organizations. Yeah. And that's what I was going to say, Jackie, is I'm seeing the best success with my clients that have a forward-thinking leadership team and that includes their board to say, okay, let's forecast where would we be in six months and 12 months? Going back to COVID, Julia, we had a lot of guests come in and say, so we created our budget and we're revising it quarterly, right? Because there's just too many changes and now there's this huge loss of funding from COVID, pandemic funding from the government that is being lost and not really brought back through individuals or other grants or contracts, Jackie. So really looking at this from a, and I love a good forecast, the forecast cash flow of, okay, this is where we are today as a snapshot. But what does that mean for 90 days, 120 days, 240 days? And I'm curious if you see a huge thought partner in this, because I do, and the fundraising piece, right? Because when it comes to some of the trends is monthly donors, like that's a huge trend right now. That is a forecasting element that coincides with finance. Are you seeing that more and more? And I am starting to see it and it's a great thing but we are, as I said, it's a sea change. And so, and the other part of that sea change is our poor organizations, they're in a rowboat when it comes to like the technology. When you wanna be forward, focused, you can't do this stuff in Excel. You just can't make it happen in Excel unless you had one or two people and that's all they did all day long was doing these updates and all the whole bit. So here again, technology is another tool, another arrow in the quiver, of being able to create this environment, get information in from the donor management fundraising systems from the advanced department. From the programs, seeing trends of what's happening and if we did a 2% increase over here, more and more organizations, their services are more and more and more in demand as you ladies know, their funding is not keeping up. So strategic decisions have to be made for these organizations and you need that forward focus to be able to do that. Yeah. Okay, I have another question. If we're listening, we're a nonprofit leader, board leader, whatnot, and we're totally vibing with what you're sharing, Jackie, but we realize our organization is simply not doing this. What's our first step? Like, how do we take that boat and make a one degree change to move the cruise ship, right? And that's what it takes, a one degree consistent change. Yes. Where do we start to make this change? Well, you know, I am reaching out to our clients and organizations every day right now because we have our innovate conference. And this is a perfect place for an organization to get exposure to what are some of the trends that are coming that are starting to build right now and are coming, what are the technologies that are available out there listening to speakers that are focused on this sort of forward model and how to get started in that model. So the very first thing is our innovate conference, but also conferences are a huge area where organizations can get support and can get exposure. We then also have JMT and there's other organizations firms that do this as well. We come in and talk to organizations about, you know, what is a technology strategy in alignment with the strategic goals and strategy of the organization? You know, most people talk about a technology strategy is that the sitting out over here. And that is not how a technology strategy should happen. It should really be aligned with the strategic goals of the organization, the mission, the vision, the culture of the organization. I love what you just said because it brings it into the heart of the organization and makes it a partner and a working piece as opposed to just something like you said that's kind of over there. It makes it central to how we think and how we process and how we manage. So you mentioned innovate 2024. How long have you been doing this? You're gonna be in Boston the first weekend or the first week of May. Talk to us a little bit more about this. So this is, we've been doing it for 19 years. Awesome. Yes, it is open of course to our clients but to all nonprofit organizations. We really focus on exactly what I was talking about for really looking at providing expert insights, industry trends, glimpses into what the future of finance looks like. For example, for this innovate, we have the Chief Technology Officer of SAGE with us, Aaron Harris. He is truly a leader and innovator. We're gonna be speaking about AI. Everyone's talking about AI but we're gonna actually bring it down into what it really means for organizations. Awesome. This will be really hot. What did you say earlier? Like in just plain English, just break it down in English. Yes. I love it. Exactly. I love it. This has been great. I think the thing that I really enjoyed today, Jackie, has been the approachability and the logic behind looking at this in a new way. And I think when you said in the beginning and I'll repeat it again, finance has to change their mindset too, right? I mean, so we're all in this together. We are. As we navigate forward. I'm thinking, Jared, about Ellie Hume, one of our friends from your part-time controller and some of the leadership over there, they keep saying now's a good time to look at a career for a young person in finance because it's not just the general ledger. It has a lot of strategic aspects. It has a lot of implementation. It's forward-moving. It's forward-thinking. And Jackie, you kind of, I don't know, bubbled that up to the surface today. So, Jacqueline Tezo, founder and CEO of JMT Consulting, check out JMTconsulting.com where you can learn more about their amazing team and the work that they do all over North America and Australia, correct? Amazing, amazing. Well, it has been a delight to have you here and to talk about all these amazing things. As it is, we have amazing sponsors that allow us to have these conversations. They include Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, Nonprofit Thought Leader, Staffing Boutique, your part-time controller, 180 Management Group, Fundraising Academy at National University, JMT Consulting, Nonprofit Nerd, and Nonprofit Tech Talk. Again, these folks come together so that we can have these amazing conversations. We've had more than 1,000 shows which we reached last Tuesday, our 1,000th episode. I'm glad we passed it because it's a hard thing for me to say, Jarrett, 1,000. I know, and now we get to go on to say 1,000 in however many, you know? Yeah. For four, that is wonderful. Well, thank you. Thank you so much, Julia and Jarrett. I loved our conversation and I hope we can pick it up again. We will. Well, we sure will. And the nerd in me totally sees the geek in you. So we are on this together, Jackie, thank you. Thank you. It's been amazing. You know, every episode we like to end with this message and Jarrett and I laugh all the time about how it takes on a different spin and I hear it differently. I know she hears it differently. I'm gonna say this to all the financial teams out there and that is to stay well. So you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow.


Okay, everybody get started now Today's tech talk webinar is on the little grade book categories And let me get my screen share going here Okay, right now. I'm showing of course our little horse shell that you may have remembered from last time and back last week We had just a series of assignments And I had the week one assignment week two assignment, etc. So now I've got some discussion forums and And some quizzes so I have a collection of week one activities forums assignments and quizzes So today we're going to categorize these um if you want in the grade book I should say I was gonna say um if you're If you're running a really super simple motor course with just a handful of any kind of gradeable items You may not need to even bother want to bother with categorizing these items But if you're starting to use use gradeable items in your course all the way down the run of the term As you can see We have 10 instances each of the forum assignment and quizzes here, which that'll be of course 30 in your grade book Which we'll take a look at right now So as we scroll from left to right There's quite a few items in there Let's move into the categories and items View of the grade book I'm looking at my notes over here in case you're wondering why i'm looking down. Yes, paul uses paper So here's here's the uh the grade book view in the categories and items view So you'll see all the assignments You see all those discussion forums And you'll see all the quizzes and so you might think it might get to a point here Or it might be good to have some categories set up in your in your motor grade book Let me just list off some of the basic benefits of utilizing categories versus not utilizing them in your motor grade book First of all, of course, you'll see here in a minute. Um, there there can be a better level of visual organization in your grade book You can have subtotal Subtotals and waiting for different categories of items separate from that overarching Aggregation method i mentioned last week you can have different aggregation methods with them For the gradable items within a category if you like You can indicate to drop or keep the highest grade. Um, both that aspect and the Waiting of categories in your grade book. We're going to cover those in in future week segments And related to that is you can also employ different aggregation methods in one grade book So that relates to what i just mentioned to this. So For this session, we're just going to get into why and how to go ahead and implement Some categories in your little grade book So again, i'm in the categories and items view of my grade book and that drop down it got up here That's where it is how you get to that So at the bottom of the screen Look at my notes over here. There we go at the bottom of the screen. You'll see that category I'll click into that I'm going to go and click expand all we won't cover everything Well, here we go So let's say i'm going to go ahead and make a category for all my forums first Give it a logical name up here You'll see here is where if you if you wanted to you could indicate an aggregation method separate and different from the overarching one Of natural which again is the system default Which is where we kind of talked about what we did talk about this on last week So we're going to keep this category aggregation at natural also We'll talk in a future segment about the exclude empty grades feature And some ideas involving the keeping the highest or dropping the lowest scores in a grade collection of gradeable items Basically to utilize that you'll need to have all those gradeable items within that category have the same point value But we'll cover more of that later I'm going to go and scroll on down and click on save changes We'll make this new category called forums So it should come in at the bottom of the View here. There we go forums Let's make another one for assignments Same straightforward process Click that add category button And we'll just call it assignments And like everything else in loodle you can create something And then later on go revisit that items Settings to make any changes too My high cpu usage is affecting something So here we've got the forums. We have the assignments category and we'll make one more for quizzes now You know like our little secret elab setup in here This isn't the media zone. It's a separate lab undisclosed location Okay Let's go ahead and get all of the assignments into the assignment category. It's just a simple matter of Putting a check in the box for each one of these over on the right side So just that one assignment in Through one there we go Okay, and at the bottom Let's move selected items to the Still the check was those assignments. Yeah Always gonna double check yourself down to the assignments And here that churns for a minute and that puts them all in the assignments category So speedy Okay, we'll do the same with the forums form 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Okay, these are the forums We're going to move those into the forums category I'll also send out a link in my follow-up message to the little about org page for little categories Now let's move all the quizzes into the quiz category move selected items to quizzes Okay, so if you look carefully you'll see The forums category Contains all of the individual forums The assignments category contains all the individual assignments any other indented under there and then the same with the quizzes Let's just say for example that we wanted to move A category or for that matter any individual item Again, we're within the categories and items view and you get a lot of organization done for your Move a great book. Let's just say we wanted to move the assignments up To appear above the forums category. It'd be a simple matter of this little icon right here And that's how you move things within the great book You'll have quite the the click and drag we have the luxury of having on the little course star page But when you click this little icon up here, it gives you some targets And if you worked in versions of moodle prior to version two, you this looks familiar Put the little targets up here. So the target if I want to move the categories go to the very top here very straightforward And that is about the gist of what we wanted to cover today The why and the really the basics of how to create categories In your move a great book We're going to talk again in the future. Like I said about waiting About keeping the lowest and highest scores a bunch of other Detailed aspects of the of the move a great book. I'm going to go to click on stop share And again, I'm going to go ahead and send out a follow-up message with a link to the recording version of this webinar and a link to like I said earlier of the moodle.org resource page for the topic of moodle great book categories Thanks for joining and we'll see you next week. I think next week we're talking about Yeah A little great book category waiting. So I'd like to wait for that. Have a good week


Yes, good evening. My name is Ishmael Abdul-Hawk, and I am here today at the UC Davis Access Media. And what we're going to do this evening is have a discussion pretending to interfaith relations and the contributions that have been made by Muslims. So today here I have with me Imam Abu Khadir El-Amin, and then I have Imam Antar Jannah, and then I have Imam Omar Sharif. And just briefly, I would like for you gentlemen to give us a little insight into who you are, where you come from, and your association with this particular topic that we're discussing today. Imam Abu Khadir El-Amin, would you like to go first, please? Yes, thank you. It's an honor and a privilege to be here with you. My name is Abu Khadir El-Amin. I'm the Imam at the San Francisco Muslim Community Center. I've been serving at that community since 1984. I feel it's a privilege to be here representing that community. I've been a Muslim in this community for a short period of time, in some context, a long period of time in other contexts. I feel like it was just yesterday, the ideas about Islam and what it meant for giving me a new lease on life in a different way that I could recreate myself and make a contribution to the society at large. So I've been serving in San Francisco, been involved in interfaith activities prior to going to San Francisco, but greatly encouraged by the leadership of Imam Deputy Muhammad who encouraged us to get to know our neighbors, to get to know our civic leaders, our police department, law enforcement officials, our neighbors, our Christians and Jews that lived in the community with us. So that's been a labor of love on my part, and our community, we're all connected with people like that because we're a minority community in terms of numbers. Many of us have mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters that have different faith persuasions than us. So interfaith for us comes natural every time it's Thanksgiving. We're a faith gathering before that, and I'll just stop there. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Imam Antarjana, would you like to give us a brief introduction to you? Yes. My name is Antarjana, as he said. I'm the executive director of an organization called Masjid, it's acronym for Muslim of Dan School of Jannah, Iqsan and Dawah, based in Sacramento, California right now. I've been a Muslim since 1975 when Imam Muqtadi Muhammad took over the leadership of the Nation of Islam. I joined, and since that time I've been involved in interfaith dialogue. I was the national director of the CREATE committee, the committee for the removal of all images that attempt to portray the divine. I think we made a big impact on the interfaith dialogue all around the world with that organization. After that, I became the resident Imam of East Palo Alto, like Imam Antarjana, on the same day in 1984, and I served until 1994, and then I went into the California Department of Corrections and became a chaplain in 1994, and I retired in 2014, after 20 years, and now I'm directing Masjid, like I said, Masjid organization. Thank you so much. We appreciate that. Imam Omar Sharif? Yes. As indicated, I'm Omar Dawood Sharif, originally from Chicago, Illinois. I came into the religion of Islam back in 1970, under the leadership of the Imam for Elijah Muhammad, and I was a minister under his leadership for several years, until 1975, when Imam Wafdie Muhammad became the leader, and of course we went through the transition at that time, and I was an Imam for a brief moment until I moved to California, and I moved to Sacramento, California, where I eventually became the Imam for Masjid As-Sabur, which is a relatively new, no it's not a new community, but let's put it like this, we're in a new building. We were blessed as a community to construct the building from ground up, and it's about three years old now. I was the Imam there for about eight years prior, and until I took a back seat to our present Imam, who is Imam Hazem Rashid, who I'm assistant to him, and grateful to be able to serve in that capacity. I'm pretty much, that is my history in a nutshell, so we can move on from that. Thank you. I appreciate that. From our three U Distinguished Gentlemen, what I would like to do at this time is I would like to get into the transition period from 1975, and before you answer that, give me a little bit of background prior to you coming into the fold of Islam. I would like to start with Imam Abu Qadir Alameen. Before becoming a Muslim, where I described, declared my faith, I was heavily influenced by young people who were attracted to the message of the Honorable Muhammad as it was being publicly proclaimed by individuals like Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X, so that first got my attention while I was a teenager. My older brother, Eugene Robert Earl Jr., began to attend the mosque, and he began to bring literature home, and many of my peers began to attend the mosque. I didn't attend the mosque at 13 or 14 years old when my older brother and some of my friends began to attend the mosque, but I began to read the literature, and I remember once I was 14 years old, it's a little background, and you know, not angels, so I think I can talk about this. Absolutely. Maybe somebody will benefit. And I took some pills. Pills were popular in our neighborhood, you know, you probably heard of Red Devils, Lilly F-40s, Bullet Hits, Junkets, Alder, and I took quite a few, and I thought I was going to die. I was 14 years old, and I said, oh Allah, oh Allah, just let me come down, I won't do this again. So, and that was really, I was sincere, but I didn't do it to that extent. So that was my first introduction to Islam, was seeing young people that I grew up with changed their life. The message had a transforming effect on them, and I knew them in one way, and then when they got involved with the teachings of Islam, as they understood it at that time, they underwent a great metamorphosis. They went from being dishonest to being honest. They went from being rough-necks to being courteous and respectful and decent. So I saw a major change in them, and that made an impact on my life. And then at about 17 years old, after experiencing some things, some traumas in my life, I began to declare myself as a Muslim, though I wasn't a part of organization. So, I started learning a little bit about some of the beliefs, and I ascribed to those beliefs. I didn't know how to pray or any of those things, but I was in my heart a Muslim, and I committed myself to Islam in 1967. I stopped drinking alcohol, I stopped smoking weed, I stopped doing those things, and I didn't have a support system, so that lasted for about 90 days. But I was sincere. Then later, 1970, a life-changing event happened in my life, and I decided that from then on, I would be a dutiful Muslim, and I began to learn from Elijah Muhammad. I learned my prayers, I learned the beliefs of Islam, I learned to believe in Allah and to believe in the Quran and believe in Muhammad the Prophet, and I began to apply those states to my life, and it helped me to become a better person. So that was my early beginnings. And then when W.D. Muhammad became the leader, I'm trying to be brief without, you know, not really telling the story, when W.D. Muhammad became the leader, I was serving a life sentence in prison, and the language that he brought was different than the language his father was bringing. Though his father brought a language that helped transform our lives and make us better people, with the M.W.D. Muhammad's language and his new direction, I saw opportunity for freedom, and I said I can get out of this prison under this new message, and I began to apply myself in that way, and I was able to come home, I came home December the 4th, 1978, and I immediately went to the Mastery, and got involved with the community, and been there ever since. Which Mastery did you go to? When I first came home, I went to the Mastery of what was called Mastery of Muhammad in Oakland, California. Imam John Fakir and Fahim Shuaib picked me up from the jail, and brought me to the Mastery, and my first day there, they put me on the roster. And I said, it was so short, I can remember it verbatim. I said, Alhamdulillah, I thank Allah for being here. I hope I can be an asset to the community. As-salamu alaykum. Praise be to Allah. Imam W.D. Muhammad appointed me as Imam in 1981, and I've been serving in that capacity ever since. Thank you so much for that introduction. I appreciate that. Imam Antar. Okay, my story is similar. I think a lot of us came through the same door that Malcolm came through. Before, I accepted Islam. I was from East Palo Alto, and it was involved in a lot of crime. And ended up in federal prison, and 20 years old. And that's when I came in contact with the Muslims on an academic level, because they were trying to get me to come to the meetings. But I wouldn't go. But I would read the papers. And I would try to get familiar with it. And I didn't understand it. But when I paroled, I had read a book in prison called, Thinking Courage, by Napoleon Hill. And Napoleon Hill talked about Prophet Muhammad in his book, if you get an original copy. And so when I got out, I was running a room for my auntie, and it was a snack shop up in the corner on Randolph Street in San Francisco. So I'd go there and buy food, sandwiches, and they'd give me free papers. And so I started reading the papers. And these papers were different than the ones I was reading in prison, because Elijah Muhammad had passed, and David E. Muhammad was the leader now. And so I started reading, and then eventually I picked a book of my father's shelf in his bookshelf. He got a copy of A Best to a Black Man. And he must have went to a meeting or something, probably following a nice-looking sister there or something. And he gave him a book and a bean pie, so he brought the book on the shelf, and I read it. And when I read that book, that really turned me around. And I decided I wanted to join. I joined the Nation of Islam in 1975, and I moved right into the F.O.I. house on Oakdale Street in San Francisco. That was where the men who were working for the nation selling fish and things like that, we stayed there. And so I put on the fish crew, then I worked in the snack shops, I sold the papers, you know, I did all of that, and finally ended up in Oakland at Master of Warrantine. And then E. Muhammad moved to town. He became the resident Imam of Oakland, California. And that's when I was the director of the CREA Committee in Oakland. And E. Muhammad came and we were working together. And E. Muhammad made me the national CREA chairman. And then, you know, the rest is history. That starts our interfaith dialogue.  I think we were 30 at that time. I was 30 years old. All of us were around 30. And he started appointing people to positions. I think he was 48. And he started appointing people to positions. And I think that was a really bold move. Because, you know, we got to do that today. You know, get young people involved in the faith. And following his example. But that's how I ended up becoming a leader. Wow. That's interesting. I appreciate that. It was so deep because what it tells me about both of you is that you came from a good Christian background. And you knew how to already operate within that circle. But the soul was calling you to something more. Something more. And for you to be kind of like a bridge between the two. Already being, as you would say, preempted or preconditioned for the interfaith movement. I'm due live. E. M. Sharif. Yes. Well, I think my path was a little different than my brothers here. I don't know. Though I do appreciate and understand fully your story and can identify it. But yeah, my path was a little different.  I'm six foot nine. And I played sports basketball for a grade double. Actually, since the sixth grade I've been playing basketball. I went to, went a scholarship to school. A couple of schools. Well, one that I finally went to was Midwestern University in Wichita Falls, Texas. And there I spent my three years there. And the path started for me there. Because I came home one summer, in the summer of 1967. And that's when a lot of things were happening in the African American communities and in our society as a whole. There were a lot of things happening. And so I was fortunate enough to run into some people who were beginning to see things a little differently than we were raised as the brothers. I already gave you some inkling of the kind of things that went on in our communities. But I started seeing things from another perspective. When I went back to school, I saw the Boobasuits, which was a dashiki, I guess I could call that. The whole outfit. I had transformed from a, I would say from a Negro to an African. But that's what we were doing in those days. That transition was happening. That's a whole story in and of itself. But I got back to campus and of course my coach was astounded at my transformation and appreciated as much as I did. And toward the end of my last year there, which is 1968, on campus they had what they call Old South Week. And this is when they were dressed up in confederate uniforms in March all through the campus. It was their celebration of the Confederacy. So at that time my awareness had raised and I said, well, this is not going to do. So I organized the African Americans on the campus at that time in the fall war.  And we started from the opposite end of the campus and met the mid-campus and you can imagine it was kind of disrupted their party. And from there my eligibility was up that year. So if anybody knows anything about the black athlete when your eligibility is up the perks and things that I was used to that I was maybe getting a little difficult then to come to my rescue was no rescue. To make a long story short, I came home in this awareness and fortunately got drafted by the Baltimore Bullets so I had a letter of intention to go do that. But meanwhile, you know I got involved with the revolution as we used to call it and I went from the Panthers to the Black Nationalists to the Pan-Africanists to everything you can imagine. I went through all the isms and wound up in 1969 at a conference I was with the organization called the BCD and this was at the Pan-African Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. And at that time is when I realized something was wrong because the leadership had gotten to the point at that time had become somewhat co-opted and we were now fighting amongst ourselves if you can imagine that. So at this time they had a speaker and his name was Minister Louis Farrakhan and I knew nothing about him I grew up, I said before I grew up in Chicago Chicago was the headquarters for the Nation of Islam I grew up not knowing not one thing about the Nation of Islam I grew up as a Catholic in the Catholic Church I went to public school so I knew nothing about them I lived not more than less than two miles away from the main temple I still knew nothing about them growing up to show you how God works so all of a sudden I'm on security at the conference and I'm sitting in front of the stage I'm on one side and the other gentleman's on the other side and we're sitting here stern all of a sudden Minister Louis Farrakhan walks on the stage and I had no knowledge of him or nothing he started talking and I couldn't believe what I was hearing I was listening to myself who is this, what is he talking about who is this guy Elijah Muhammad I'm sitting here just going crazy I want to turn around but I'm not supposed to so I said I can't take it I turned around and Minister Farrakhan was representing the honor of Elijah Muhammad well I knew at that point that something had to change because the people I was following were going to eventually get me killed or make me crazy so when I got home from that conference back to New Jersey I told my wife I said we're moving and we moved to Philadelphia where I then joined the nation of Islam from there the story is old I was a soldier of course selling papers doing all that we do I was in Pennsylvania for about a year I was pulled from there brought back to Philadelphia I was the minister at 12D for oh I guess for the remaining five years until 1975 when he met with Muhammad Wallace Muhammad as he was known at that time came to be in the leadership of the nation of the of the world community and when he came in and I'm just going to say this we were at a point in time in the nation of Islam and Surin if the ma'am had not come in I dread to think what our community would eventually would have looked like because things were beginning to go amiss he came in it was like a breath of fresh air his language was completely different if you don't mind I like the digress for one minute I can remember before that time when he came back to the community two years prior to the honorable Muhammad's passing his father let him go and told him go teach anywhere you want you teach, you go I remember going home one day to Chicago and I went to the temple just because that's what we did so I went to temple one Wednesday night and I knew I never had met him didn't even know anything about him other than some of the stories they told so I'm sitting in there I'm just a guest at this time I'm not a fish or anything I'm just a guest and all of a sudden this brother comes on he starts talking you know our language was was kind of raw back during the nature of Islam so I'm listening to him and I'm saying what is he talking who is this and what's he talking about he's talking about submarines and birds and things like this in nature he's talking about nature and relating it to Islam something we just had it was like I said it was a breath of fresh air so I'm listening I said oh my goodness so eventually when I left I found out who he was two years later he's the leader like I said it was a breath of fresh air I was delighted when he came in so I was a minister at the time we were called imams we weren't really imams we didn't know nothing about what an imam was what it was really like to be an imam but we transitioned from ministers to imams so I was that I was that until I left Philadelphia and moved to California and when I left the state I became an imam in Sacramento so I'm skipping a whole lot but that's pretty much my history in terms of how I got to where I am today so forgive me for no it was very much appreciated it brought back so many other different points of reference in history doing the 60's in that turbulent time in the inner cities in the top of systematic oppression that was going on and so I see it was necessary for listening to each one of the growths that are taking place in you gentlemen believe me you could have a program on that alone that would be so eye opening to people who don't really know the things that we went through why we went through them to transition that's a very interesting history that people know nothing about sounds like a purifying fire but I wanted to touch basis also on on your relationship imam about with imam W.D.Mohamed could you elaborate on the personal relationship that you had with the imam I think my personal relationship with imam W.D.Mohamed began way before I met him because I met his mind I met his ideas I met his spirit I met his devotion in the things that I read about him and the things that he shared with us and the kind of encouragement that he gave us to have trust and faith in God responsibility for ourselves, for our family for our neighborhoods, for our communities so long before I met him I had already met him I met him before he became the leader reading about him in the newspaper and he had came back like imam Omar mentioned he had came back he had been excommunicated from the community and he came back and he was talking 1972 you would hear the van called in neighborhoods you would see minarets going up you would see Muslim women and children and families and neighborhoods and we were going to make our contribution to beautifying the fabric of America so long before I met him personally I had met all of those things that I wholeheartedly embraced and incorporated into my desire for the kind of life that I wanted to have so then when I first got a chance to meet him it was in 1976 he came to San Quentin Prison and he taught a lecture called the natural elements testified to the truth of the Quran and Muhammad and he tied that to nature and to history and it was such a beautiful lecture and at that time I was the secretary for the nation of Islam we just started calling ourselves the world community of Islam in the west San Quentin with George Jackson the same place where he was I was there when he got assassinated that's another story and I was holding a clock and a pair of shoes tailor made shoes and a $300 check for the man and a brother from Sacramento introduced him to Muhammad and they were giving him some gifts and one of the things that the man said his name is Emory Bilal Hanson he said when we heard that you had accepted our invitation to come here we wanted to lay down palm leaves for you you can't be too sure he said so but we couldn't get the palm leaves so we had a pair of shoes made for you a brother named James Abdul Musawir made a pair of shoes for the man handmade shoes and he put his initials in them in gold WDM so that was the first time I actually got to meet the man I gave him the clock I gave him the check Bilal gave him the shoes and I got to shake his hand but I had met him before that and then once he moved to Oakland to become our resident emem I was actually there the day he accepted to become our resident emem and I was just so happy that that happened I normally was going to the mosque in San Francisco but I also had a little part-time business so I would supply my customers with products twice a month so I was in Oakland to pick up some of my products and I would always drive by the masjid if I was in Oakland and when I drove by the masjid I saw the security brothers on the back door I said oh security on the back door must be somebody important here today so I'm staying so I'm back to San Francisco where emem Talabdina and sorry it was our emem at that time I went and emem Muhammad was there and after he threw his he said he wanted to throw his hat in to be the resident emem we accepted him as our emem I was the first person to greet him after he said he was our emem I greeted him I said brother emem I'm here anything you need me to do I'm here and he said well just disperse so we developed the closeness and then to be real brief I moved to Oakland I was living in San Rafael at that time and in my zeal and in my fervor I said emem Muhammad is in Oakland I'm moving my family to Oakland I want my children to go to the muslim school and against my wife's better judgment I moved to Oakland my wife said we can stay here and keep doing like we've been doing and you drive to Oakland so you know you know how I thought and I moved so close to the masjid I could hear there there from my house and whenever emem would go out of town emem and Talabdina would bring his car to my house and park it in the back it was secure so you know we became close friends as much as a follower a supporter supporting a great leader and we wanted to do everything that we could to make sure that his stay in Oakland was a benefit and we wanted to do the things that he was encouraging us to do to go out in the community build friends and relationships and to be involved in what was going on in our neighborhoods and make our contribution to beautifying the society so that's what he encouraged us to do so it was fun and then he didn't micromanage us he would tell us to go out and if we made a little mistake he would sometimes you know pull you to the side and if you made a big mistake and a lot of people knew about it he would correct you in the public but he did it with such love that it just brought us closer to and we appreciated having that opportunity he would send us into the churches and he would tell us what to say and then we would go and represent his message to the people in the churches and we got a great response and the people loved him and the people loved us and they said well you know give us some time to work with our people because we were dealing with racial images in religion at that time and the racial images in religion we thought was doing damage to our community and the human beings are fit to be worshiped as an object of worship we believe that only the creator of the heavens and earth the one that's unseen is deserving of our worship another human being shouldn't bow to another human being so that was the gist of it but at the same time he was trying to help us to correct a defective spirit that had impacted our whole community I appreciate that thank you E-M-M Antar can you elaborate on your relationship with the E-M-M, your personal relationship well when when I joined the Masjid in Oakland I was the local creed committee for the image and yeah, remove all images from worship and we would go to talk to the pastors like E-M-M Alamein said we would give them 90 days after we talked to them to remove the statues because we were going by the Bible Exodus 20 verses 0 and 5 said you have no graven images of anything in the air, on land, or below the sea absolutely we were taking the Quran we were taking the Bible and everybody had statues and pictures so if they didn't take them down we picketed the churches non-violently we were blocked in from coming in and out of the church and we were just trying to protest and so, E-M-M moved to Oakland when he moved to Oakland he witnessed what we were doing and we were a very active community around the Bay Area and then he appointed me to be the national creed chairman and it blew my mind what does that mean so I got an opportunity to travel around the country under his leadership and right after that I was making doer noon prayer in the Masjid and I looked over at the corner of my eye and he was making doer too and he came over to me after prayer and asked me, did I have a driver's license and I said yeah, I got a driver's license he said, let me see it so I showed him my driver's license he said, you know, I'm here now in Oakland I want you to ride with if you would like, you ride with me and my car is coming from Chicago and then I need somebody to be with me not to drive, because I can drive but just to be with me while I'm in Oakland and he offered me a job to be his assistant at that time I was getting ready to be a professional boxer manager, promoter, I had everything and I had to go back to all those people and tell them quit I went to work for you, man I've been for about $800 a month of me a little less and so for the nine months that he was in Oakland I was with him like every day and traveled with him out of town and I was also traveling with Craig so I got an opportunity I'll write a book about it one day or do something a video or something because for that nine months that was a very interesting time for me as a young man to be with him the leader of the community every day and one thing that was beautiful is I got to see him as a human being all the personality worship and all the stuff was out the window I got to see him as a man as a father, as a husband as a human being in the leader of our community and that was a blessing for me and that was my kind of orientation to leadership that's wonderful thank you, I appreciate that it's immensely I wasn't quite as fortunate as my brothers here to have been in that close proximity to E.M.F. Mohammed as far as physically it's concerned I relate very closely to what E.M.Cardiella means that in terms of I met him long before I actually met him through the mind and the expression of his vision and leadership that he was giving us and that made me very close to him and I want to say this about E.M.F. Mohammed we talk about him and all these glorious terms which we feel that way but I want you to know he never solicited that kind of thing from anyone he was a very humble down-to-earth person and if you tried to heap those kind of praises on him you would be in his disfavor because he didn't want that and because his objective was to deliver the message that he understood from the Quran and that was the whole purpose in life and everything he did reflected that now I had the occasion to meet the E.M.M. on several occasions but only in where someone, I was with someone in public gatherings actually and in private too but I was with someone who allowed me to be with them while and then I would be able to meet him shake his hand, give him the greetings and so forth on one occasion I had the opportunity one of the meetings that you brought him to and after that we would go have lunch and so we were in the restaurant and somehow I wound up directly across from him and so I was a little nervous because I had what I'm going to say to E.M.M. because that's the kind of feeling we had to respect but as I said it's not something he elicited it's just something we had in us but I said okay he's just a brother I said he got to talk next thing you know we were talking about movies he liked movies as much as I did a movie person so we got to talk about different movies that we've seen and it was just a pleasant thing to have experience with a man who I so greatly admired as much as I admired his father there's a history there that has to be told in full one day so people can understand this trilogy of how this community came to be how this community of African-Americans came to El Islam and it started with this gentleman called Farad Mohammed who gave it to Elijah Mohammed who raised a son, E.M.M. that's a significant history that people should understand because it is so significant not just to African-Americans it is significant to America to understand what happened and the effect that it had not just on our community but the community at large and the world I know it sounds fantastic but it is true and if you understand it then you'll understand what we're talking about especially in light of today when we see the kind of leadership that we have today that juxtaposed to that leadership that we're talking about is significant and it needs to be told so that was my experience with E.M.M. I appreciate that so much and I'd just like to for one moment after listening to you gentlemen and my personal self reflecting 96 Seattle Tacoma International Airport E.M.M. Plyman El Amin E.M.M. Clyde Rachman and there was a couple others there A.K. Hassan and I'm on Crutch's leg mangled up and I'm sitting there and here comes the E.M.M. and then he calls me out by name okay alright Salam alaykum how are you doing my good brother where are you on your way to Clyde comes in E.M. Clyde comes in and says E.M.M. we got to get priority seating for the elderly hold up I'm not elderly are you talking about you see I'm talking to the brother right here now back up they went on to scurry it out the way so I understand the humanism and the down to earth in this of him and didn't want to be seen in that particular type of life I'm grateful for that experience you know for the opportunity to sit and talk with him and to him to enlighten me so much with a lot of information it was a pleasure of having you you gentlemen on the show today hopefully in sha Allah God willing we'll have another opportunity to discuss and talk about you know some other in depth topics but mostly back onto this interfaith aspect because right now it was just a little bit of lead in history and to you guys and to where you come from into your points of reference and means of dealing with that again I'd like to thank all of you for coming here it's been a lot of pleasure thank you you know and coming to the Davis media access and with that I'll say good night to our guest and and to the television land audience thank you so much God's peace be with you