Hello, everybody. Welcome to the TechSoup new member orientation and Q&A because we definitely want you to ask your questions and we hope that we have the right answers for you. My name is Aretha Simons. I'm the webinar producer here at TechSoup. You're seeing some of my other team members. Before we get started, I'm just going to share with you how you can engage today. This is being recorded. You are going to get the recording along with the slides. If you have a question, we would love if you would type it in the Q&A section for us. I know many of you may type it in the chat. We'll be able to grab it from the chat as well. We will send a video recording with the slides within 48 hours. If you need the closed caption, please type on that CC button. I'm going to move out of the way because I don't have much to do today. I'm going to pass this on to Nick who's going to guide us into our webinar. Thank you, guys, for being here today. Hi, everybody. It's great to see you all here. Before I get going, I just want to start with a thank you to all of you. TechSoup is a 501c3 nonprofit organization and so are you. We know that it takes a special amount of effort and engagement to run a nonprofit, to work at a nonprofit, and each of you has made an active choice to work in the nonprofit sector and do good work that supports our communities. I want to say thank you to each of you for making that decision and choosing to be part of the nonprofit sector. Today's panelists on the Welcome to TechSoup orientation, you've already met the wonderful Aretha Simons. My name is Nick Finn. We also have Kevin Mulhall and Kelly Garrett who are joining us today who will give you a little more detail on some of the ways that you can engage directly with TechSoup staff if you have questions. And now on to the meat of the new member orientation. And I'm going to start with a buzzword alert because sometimes here in especially very tech-heavy West Coast California culture, we can get wrapped up in a lot of tech buzzwords that may or may not make a lot of sense to the rest of the world sometimes. Some of them that are fairly common for the nonprofit sector are these. First, digital transformation. You'll hear funders and grant makers talk about digital transformation. TechSoup talks about it as well. Really, in simple terms, it's the process of becoming a more tech-savvy nonprofit of changing how you do your operations, how you deliver service, how you deliver on your mission, and leveraging the advantages of technology to do that. Another term you'll hear is civil society. And this is an important one. Civil society is really the gathering of non-government organizations that are nonprofits and NGOs around the world. And they form the core of folks who are trying to really change communities and change the world for better. But it's yeah, it's non-governmental people and organizations. And it's not so much big business as is the nonprofits. And then finally, we do hear talk a lot about cloud adoption. Frankly, this term has been around for some time now. For smaller nonprofits, though, really what we're talking about is just using more modern web-based tools. So as you go through the process of digital transformation, part of it in the modern world now is really understanding that these cloud-based tools, for instance, Office 365 from Microsoft, where you have servers in the cloud, and they are providing you with access to the data and the platforms that you need to use. So cloud adoption is just using those modern web-based tools. Okay, what is TechSoup? Even though you're a new member, or maybe considering becoming a new member, it's always helpful to understand more detail about exactly what is TechSoup? What do we do? Why are we here? Why should you care? How can we help you? So first of all, as I've already said, we're a 501c3 nonprofit organization in the United States. And we're also part of a global network. We work with other big nonprofits around the world to support NGOs and nonprofits in almost almost every country around the world. But here in the United States, and that's primarily the folks that we have on the line today on Zoom with us, we are a 501c3 nonprofit. And this is important because it means that we actually really understand deeply what it means to function as a nonprofit, how to operate, how the budgeting decisions are made, what it means to have to raise money all the time to fund your programmatic activities. And so we serve nonprofits exclusively and we really understand them well because we are one ourselves. Our mission really is to support nonprofits as they work with technology to help build a more equitable planet. And I want to draw quick attention to that notion of an equitable planet. We really are committed to the goals of making a better world for everybody. So no matter your race, gender, economic background, what country you're from, these are things that we believe need attention from the nonprofit movement and they need to be a global effort, not just isolated in one country. At the very practical level, we host a catalog on techsoup.org of affordable technology products from a lot of major technology brands like Microsoft, Del, Intuit, Adobe, and many, many more. If you have not yet looked at the catalog on techsoup.org, we're going to talk about that a little bit more in a few minutes here. But the partnerships that we build with these technology companies include us negotiating on behalf of nonprofits to get the best pricing possible for nonprofits. Because we know that one of the big blockers to using tech as a nonprofit is that it's really expensive sometimes. And so providing access to tech to usable tech means that we also try to work on helping nonprofits afford it. We also know, having been in the industry for a long time now, that it's not enough for nonprofits to adopt a new platform and pay money and get it. That that's really when the work begins. Because once you have brought in a new piece of software or hardware, frankly, there's a whole back end that comes with that of needing to, you know, install it, manage it, administer it, troubleshoot it, help staff adopt it. There's training and education that has to go with some of these platforms. So it's not enough to simply provide access to a technology product. We also support nonprofits by helping them understand how to use it and how to administer it and configure it. A lot of that happens in the courses and trainings sector of TechSoup, which we'll talk about more in a little bit. But we provide very specific training on some of these platforms to help nonprofit staff get up to speed and be able to use it. And then finally, like most of you, we also have our own grant-based programming. And in our case, what we deliver on is strengthening global civil society through the use of technology. So, you know, we have a team of development folks just like you probably do, or at least a development person who's writing grant applications and putting together proposals for work that TechSoup can do. All right, so already you can see that TechSoup is a complex thing. We've got six different areas here where we try to help nonprofits in the US and around the world. And, you know, let's get into a little more detail about what those things look like. I'm going to start with the techsoup.org product catalog, where I was saying we have these offers for major brands, stuff that we've negotiated on behalf of nonprofits to give you as best pricing as we can. And I'm going to start with how do you get to the product catalog? I don't want to assume that people know automatically how the website is working. But as you see here on the screen, I've got the homepage of ts.org or techsoup.org. There are two main links there that can really help you get to the product catalog. There's one in the top navigation circled in red there. And then there's the orange button right in the middle of the screen there, right? So those will both take you straight to the TechSoup product catalog. Let's talk about what we find in that product catalog. Well, speaking of high-end partners that we've worked with for a long time, we do provide access to some really strong offers from Microsoft. And, you know, at the top of that really is Microsoft 365 or Office 365. This is the cloud-based version of Microsoft Office. Depending on how long you've been in the workforce, you may remember back 10, 20 years when you would receive compact disks of Microsoft software and Microsoft Office and you would have to install that on each computer yourself. Well, of course, in the modern world, as I was saying, back to that term cloud adoption, we now just have the cloud version of Office where there's no CDs or anything like that that you need to use to install it. You're just downloading it straight through the internet onto the local computer that you're working with. So TechSoup is a certified Microsoft partner for Office 365. And we also provide support services to help nonprofits, again, install, support, and implement Office 365 in a helpful way so that you can use it properly. We do also have access to the older versions of Microsoft Office, which are called on-premises. And on-premises is where you're just installing it on one computer. There's a limited number of updates you get, and at a certain point, Microsoft stops providing updates for that specific version. And over time, you'll find that it decays a little bit and you probably want to upgrade to whatever the next version is. And there's an option on software assurance. Software assurance is something that you can get with Microsoft Office that kind of gives you some upgrade capabilities or you can get it without software assurance. We also provide access to the Windows Pro full operating system, which means right now Windows 11, right? And you can get access to that through TechSoup as well. And that includes upgrades from Windows 10, assuming that the computer you're looking to upgrade meets the technical specifications. I certainly have two different computers at home myself. One does meet those specs and runs Windows 11. One does not meet those specs and is still running Windows 10. But these Microsoft products are available through TechSoup. And I have to say they are something that the vast majority of nonprofits that we already work with take advantage of. Another major brand in the catalog that we have partnered with for a long time and who've been really solid supporters of nonprofits is Adobe. As a communications professional coming up in the industry for the last 20 years, I started using Adobe very early on and have watched the arc of that company's growth and what they have contributed and really built as the modern technology version of basic design and production tools for print and for digital output. Adobe invented the PDF, the portable document format. And today they provide all sorts of software that help people engaged in building visual design on any platform. One of the biggest ones that nonprofits come to us for is Creative Cloud. Creative Cloud is, I think, arguably, the choice of design professionals around the world at this point in time. It has the programs in it that you may know by name, InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and many, many others. These are really very, very capable, complex pieces of software that you use to design. And when I say design professionals use it, it does require some training to use Creative Cloud. You can't just jump in there and immediately start producing world-class visual presentations. It takes some work to understand how to use Creative Cloud and to be a trained designer as well. Another product that we provide access to is Acrobat Pro DC. This is the choice, you know, the top-end choice if you are needing to publish, manipulate, or edit PDF files, right? PDFs, again, portable document format that Adobe itself created. But we all work with PDFs these days in our daily work. And Acrobat Pro DC is one of the best ways to be able to manipulate those PDFs. And then finally, if you're not a formally trained designer who knows the ins and outs of Creative Cloud and you need something that's a little simpler and more streamlined, TechSoup is pretty excited now to be offering access to Adobe Express, which is a new offer Adobe provided to TechSoup and nonprofits late last year. Adobe Express has similar design tools and publishing tools as Creative Cloud, but it's a simpler version. There are a lot of templates in Adobe Express, and it's really intended to help folks who may not be professional level designers with that level of training. They can give a crack at Adobe Express and use templates and produce still pretty great graphics and support materials for their nonprofit. Another really popular brand of products that we provide access to is Intuit QuickBooks. And here we're switching obviously out of operating systems like Microsoft and out of graphic design like Adobe. Intuit QuickBooks is all about how you can track and control your nonprofit finances. And this is a great opportunity to bring back that issue of digital transformation because it was a real surprise for us when the pandemic hit in 2020, how many nonprofits were actually still relying on some paper and pencil accounting systems to keep their books balanced, even if it was only partial, suddenly with everybody working at home and requiring isolation from each other, it was not possible to go into the office and work with these paper and pencil accounting systems. And it was a real reminder to everybody that a digitally savvy nonprofit needs to be using some kind of digital system for tracking its finances. And Adobe Intuit QuickBooks has by far been the most popular choice of TechSoup for nonprofits on that. And of course we do provide support for migrating the data into QuickBooks if you need help with that. And we do have some educational content to help nonprofits who need to learn more about how to use QuickBooks. QuickBooks online is really the version that is most popular at this point. And I think there is an advanced version of it that is also available through TechSoup. You'll get a copy of this presentation in a follow-up email in a day or two. And a call out that these links in the presentation are all active and you are able to click on them and get to various TechSoup properties. And that includes this online FAQ for QuickBooks that you may want to check out if you're interested in Intuit QuickBooks. There are many, many other partners that TechSoup works with in the product catalog. I just share here on the screen several of the other major brands and all of these are again talking with TechSoup and trying to do the best they can to offer affordable solutions to nonprofits. There is more than software in this catalog. In fact, TechSoup has been a real pioneer in providing access to some specific hardware to nonprofits. Broadly, of course, we're talking about laptops, desktops, servers, networking, internet hotspots, headsets, and each year there's a new piece of hardware that becomes available through TechSoup. But I want to talk about a couple of them. So we have great relationships with Dell, Lenovo, and HP where nonprofits can purchase product from all three of those brands through a TechSoup offer at significant savings. Those are all new machines. JourneyEd is another popular hardware option through TechSoup. The one I really want to call out though, because I'm proud of it at TechSoup, is the refurbished hardware program. So early on in the computer revolution, it became clear that there were some catastrophic consequences of simply throwing out old computers all the time. The amount of digital waste starting to build up in landfills and companies that were trying to process that stuff was fairly daunting. There was significant thinking going on that some of these computers are still completely usable and they just need to be refurbished and they could be used elsewhere. So TechSoup has been a leader in supporting nonprofits with access to refurbished hardware. We work with numerous vendors to bring laptops, desktops, and other pieces of hardware up to spec or to verify that they are still at current spec and then provide them to nonprofits at a price point, which definitely beats most new hardware. And during the time of the pandemic again, where we had major issues with supply chain and skyrocketing pricing on new stuff, that refurbished hardware program was extremely helpful to thousands of nonprofits and it continues to grow. So I want to call that out for folks here as well.  I'm working on it, but to call out for you how you do that, once you go to the product catalog page, remember that I showed at the beginning of the presentation, then on the left hand side, you can navigate by donor or company. You can look at category or there's the tab to the hardware page right there. Okay, so that's an example of some of the pure product orientation we have in the TechSoup catalog for nonprofits and NGOs. But as I was saying at the front end of this, TechSoup also recognizes that there's much more to tech than simply buying stuff. Just having a new platform or new software or new hardware, it doesn't mean that it's solving any problems for you. And in fact, frankly, at the beginning of that process, when you've got the new thing, there's a real bump you have to go through learning how to properly implement that platform or set up that hardware, how to make sure that staff are actually using it in the way that you intended, learning how they need some training or guidance on some of this tech, and then managing and administering and troubleshooting these platforms over time. So TechSoup has worked over the years now to provide and we continue to build new ones a series of services that we offer nonprofits to help you in the management of these technology products. So first, as I've done already a few times now, here's how you find those offers in the TechSoup navigation, it's that second tab, the services tab. Some of the hard examples here, we're going to talk about include the digital assessment tool, there's help desk, there's an Office 365 service and managed IT service, website services and digital marketing for nonprofits, TechSoup courses, which we'll talk about some more, and then boost and consultant connection. So, let's talk first about some services to really support the folks who are doing the technology work in nonprofits. We have a help desk service, $35 monthly or 350 annually, for unlimited support on one device. So there's one tricky thing you've got in the office that you consistently need help with that help desk service can help. I'll try not to say help again for at least a minute. We also have the Office 365 email and data migration service. So as I was saying, if you get Office 365 through TechSoup, and that's important because you can get Office 365 elsewhere, but if you get it through TechSoup, we can also support you with the migration of data, with the migration of the emails out of an old system like that, super helpful service for thousands of nonprofits. We also have remote Office standard or pro installation support, and that's if you're using the older version of Office that's the on-premises version. We offer something called managed IT, which is sort of like the larger version of help desk. Managed IT is really where you're working with TechSoup to manage all of your technology at the at your nonprofit. And it's a holistic approach where we're helping you really spec out what you need to do, the schedules for maintenance on some of the stuff, how to continue administering and troubleshooting it over time. I mentioned that digital assessment tool in the navigation that we saw. This is an interesting tool that can help nonprofit staff see more clearly where there's room for growth in how their nonprofit is using technology, and I don't just mean growth in getting more of something. I mean growth in terms of making the nonprofit more sophisticated, more able to respond to situations, more resilient. The digital assessment tool covers several different topical areas that all nonprofits really have to think about and walks you through a series of questions that you can answer within the tool that help you understand, you know, is your finance and accounting technology stack where it needs to be? Does it need some help? Or is it fine and you should be looking at another part of your operations? For instance, a CRM or something. So check out that digital assessment tool. There's some cool advice in there. One of the primary things technology does for nonprofits is help us communicate. You think about email marketing or just emails, you think about a platform like Slack, think about the website that your nonprofit probably runs, think about text messaging. All these are just ways that we actually communicate human being to human being and technology is giving us lots of different channels to do that communication in. And we've certainly recognized that that is something that nonprofits need help with. So we continue to build out a suite of website and digital marketing services for nonprofits. And this includes the capacity to actually help you revamp or rebuild your website if that's what you need. Now I'm going to be completely upfront about it. Most folks really underestimate the cost and work that's going to go with that. If you are thinking about redoing your website, a really important first step is to be very realistic with yourself about what you have available in your budget to support that effort and what kind of timeframe you're on. Nevertheless, plenty of nonprofits know this is a priority and they've budgeted accordingly. And TechSoup does have services to help support you in the process of understanding what you should do about your website and then to help you rebuild it if that's something that you want to do. We also understand websites are the thing that you put up and people come and read what you have to say on your site. There's also an element of communication where you are reaching out to supporters, maybe clients or folks that you serve, maybe members of the media, who knows? But these are digital marketing services which help nonprofits with the outreach portion of their communications. And those are a new set of services that TechSoup has been working on for the past two years. Very helpful. If you're a nonprofit that uses Google ad grants, you may have noticed that it's really difficult to hit the $10,000 monthly cap that those Google ad grants provide you with. If you're not already using Google ad grants, you should check them out. They are a monthly stipend that Google offers to nonprofits. Sorry, it's not really stipend. It's a grant that Google offers to nonprofits where you can advertise in their search platform. And there's a limit on the dollar amount that you can bid on those ads. But if you're using Google ad grants already and you're having trouble figuring out the best way to configure it, that is also a service that we're now providing and we can work with you to help on the ad grants. We have new services coming as well that are of interest that I'll call out here for you. If you have a website already that's well established and you are most likely already using Google analytics on your website to at least track basic information like the traffic to and from the site, right? If you're doing that, you probably already know that in July of this year, Google analytics is undergoing a pretty major change. It is evolving to the next version of Google analytics. And lots of nonprofits are still struggling with how to make that transition because it does require changing the code on your site. And it also requires figuring out where you're going to store the legacy data from the old Google analytics that you were using. If this is too technical for you, don't worry about it. But if this is something your nonprofit is struggling with, know that TechSoup is about to launch a Google analytics migration service. And we'll be talking about that very, very soon in email. We're also launching soon a domain registration service. Domain registration is the process of like, what would your website address be? So for instance, techsoup.org is what we are in the United States. But lots of nonprofits are launched by folks who have incredible capacity to help the world. They may not have the digital skills to set up the domain that they need for their website. And they may have a hard time figuring out instantly who to go to on that. TechSoup can help. Okay. One of the earlier things I mentioned was that there's often a need within nonprofits to educate staff and leadership on how to use new technology platforms or existing programs that you're already using. By far, the most popular example of this that I always lean on is Excel. What an incredibly powerful tool Excel is so powerful and so deep that I never, never always know exactly what all the bells and whistles in that program are. So TechSoup has a course on Excel. In fact, we have a few to help folks really get the most out of it. But that's just one example. You find the courses in the TechSoup courses drop down there under services, right? Let's talk a little bit about what's available in that courses platform. They're available. Well, first of all, they're available to nonprofits and, you know, most libraries are nonprofits as well. So we include that specifically in the call out here. This is what the courses site looks like. It is a separate site from TechSoup.org, by the way. You will need to set up a separate login to access TechSoup courses. Over 70,000 learners have accessed more than 200 of our courses so far. We have courses available both in English and in Spanish. All these courses are designed specifically for nonprofits. Again, going back to that earlier point, the TechSoup as a 501c3, we really understand how it's different to be a nonprofit than just a small business. Anyone can sign up for these TechSoup courses. So that means anybody on your staff or volunteers as well. I've already mentioned the Excel. There's many other topical areas, managing data, CRM, which is the Customer Relationship Management Database, Cybersecurity, much more. And then one of the standout features of our TechSoup courses platform is the Microsoft Digital Skills Center. We've worked with Microsoft for some years now to provide a set of courses in education to help folks be able to really use the products from Microsoft that they have access to through TechSoup. One of the great offers through the courses platform is the nonprofit foundational skills track. Sorry, I hit the back button there by accident. And as you look at the names of these courses, what you'll see here is that they cover several different topical areas that matter to nonprofits anywhere from project management to Excel, organizing your remote team, fundraising, grant writing, email marketing itself, Google Ad Grants, which I mentioned earlier, overall tech planning, which is very much about how should your IT infrastructure work and cybersecurity. It's critical that nonprofits do an excellent job of being secure of protecting their data. Your donors require it. In many cases, if you're serving customers or clients, the government requires it. And so the security offers through TechSoup and this educational opportunity are really great. So with that dizzying overview of the many things available through TechSoup for nonprofits, I'm going to pause here and now introduce a couple of my colleagues to talk about a couple of specific ways that nonprofits can engage with TechSoup when you have questions. And I want to frame this first. The first person who's going to present is Kevin Mulhall from the customer success team and then Kelly Garrett from the client services team. They're both wonderful people. I've worked with them for years and I'm really grateful that they can be on these webinars with us. The customer success team is here to help you really make the products and platforms you get through TechSoup work, right? They're here to help you with the things you got from us. Kelly's team on the other hand, client services, they are here to help you manage your relationship with TechSoup itself. So one is very product. The other is how do you work with TechSoup itself? So hopefully that'll keep those two ideas separate. And so Kevin, I'm going to ask you to step forward here. Welcome to today's webinar. Thanks Nick. It's a pleasure to be speaking with you all today. Again, my name is Kevin Mulhall and I'm a senior technical customer success manager here at TechSoup. Nick did an absolutely dynamite job explaining what customer success is. Though I do kind of have a slide at the end to kind of reiterate that, but that summarizes our team up in a nutshell. Wanted to see, Aritha, do we still have the poll available to queue up? Perfect. I'd like to start with a quick poll question. Is your organization currently using Microsoft or Office 365? So of course, no obligation to answer. We'll give it about half a minute to fuel the results. Very excited to see what they're going to be this time. Okay. Very good. 78% it looks like. Very interesting. Kind of bounced around between the 90s and then the 80s. And I see that we're kind of even looking like we're trending down a little bit. So this should be good then. Okay. For those of you not currently using 365 or maybe not fully aware of what the platform is, Microsoft 365 is Microsoft software as a service solution or SAS. 365 core licensing for all intensive purposes comes in two general versions. Microsoft 365, business or enterprise. In the case of business, this would include business basic, business standard, and business premium. In the case of enterprise, this would include enterprise E3 and E5 and Office 365 Enterprise E1, E3 and E5. The two versions exist as either web-based or hybrid licenses. Web-based as the name implies provides access only to the web versions of the various applications, such as Word for the web, Excel for the web, et cetera. Hybrid licensing on the other hand provides web-based access as well as a desktop application entitlement providing you the full version of Office. With over 150 different charity subscription SKUs, there literally isn't a programmatic service or function that a 365 license can't address. If you're ready to begin the journey toward accessing Microsoft Cloud solutions for your organization, there's a three-step process. First, you'll need to create an account at the Microsoft nonprofit portal, nonprofit.microsoft.com. Next, your account will need to be validated. Our validation services team provides support for this for Microsoft in the back end, and it typically takes five to seven business days to process this. The final part will be introducing what we refer to here at TechSoup as the Cloud Manager tool to an authorized individual account. This CSP introducing will allow you to access the storefront where you can purchase 365 licensing. If you find yourself stuck in any part of the process, we do have a team at the already to assist via chat as shown in the bottom right corner. Next slide, please. Understanding a move to the Cloud can be a challenge for organizations. We offer a free consultation service. During your session with us, we'll be able to assist with registration, choosing the appropriate subscription licensing, provide recommendations for services and courses, license implementation, and ongoing support to you at no cost. Next slide, please. So as promised, I wanted to give you all a quick overview of what my team does. For the sake of time, I've broken this down into five general areas. The first technology review and planning. So as to Nick's point earlier, our focus is on both recognizing the applications that your organization would benefit from, as well as working to strategically plan the onboarding and adoption of those products. Organizational strategy. Things like lifecycle management, particularly as it pertains to the onboarding of IT technologies and your organization. Adoption of technology is one part of the process. Buy-in is the other when it comes to internal buy-in, that is identifying opportunities for potential financial and volunteer supports. We understand that some of these technologies are not inexpensive. We also understand that organizations and oftentimes working on very tight budgets. Our goal is to find the best solution for you, not what we think necessarily is the best solution to push. We are your advocates here at TechSoup, and our goal is to get you into the right sized product at the right price. Triageing managed support projects and services. As it was shown earlier, we do work with managed service providing partners. We understand we're not the only organization in the game, so to speak. That said, it's very important for us that our customers are getting the best value for the services that are being done for them. And to that effect, our team is happy to review both scopes of work and to help with the generation of requests for proposals. It does not need to be something that's handled or managed internally with TechSoup. We understand that some organizations want relationships locally with managed providers. Our goal is to make sure that you are being advocated for in that process. The last point, providing quotes and invoices for bulk product requests. Understanding that the purchasing process from different organizations functions differently. We understand that it's important that accounts payable, chief financial officers and other decision makers are able to see what the product is and what the product costs. Our team is happy to perform that process for you. And with that, I am going to hand it back over to Nick. Great. Thanks, Kevin. And so now we move to our next esteemed guest, Kelly Garrett from Client Services. And as I said, Client Services is really here to help nonprofits manage their relationship with TechSoup directly. And Kelly, take it away. Hello, everyone. I'm Kelly Garrett, the Associate Manager for Client Services as Nick introduced me. I've been here with TechSoup for several years now and work with the Client Services team that provides the customer service. When you contact us by phone or by chat, that's who you're talking to as Client Services. We strive very hard to be there for our members and make sure that we're assisting them as best we can. You will always be speaking to a live person, so phone or chat. It is a real person you're talking to. We don't have any AI set up or anything like that. So if you're ever reaching out and talking to us, you can keep in mind you're talking to somebody and it's not an AI bot or anything like that. Nick, next slide, please. Perfect. So Client Services can answer lots of questions. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that we are a relatively small team that can sometimes get backlogged with communications. We're experiencing that right now. We're having long hold times for our phones and chat support. And it's taking us a little bit longer than usual to get to reviewing newly registered organizations for qualification, aka validation. So we always request, please be patient with us. If you have anything urgent, give us a call, use the live chat, and we'll work with you as quickly as we can and get to you as quickly as we can. While you're thinking about requesting products, you're thinking, maybe I need to contact customer service, which is Client Services. I always recommend that our members check out the product page or the offer page on www.techsuit.org. Basically, what you can do is, as Nick showed earlier, go to the product catalog page, kind of look by category or look by donor partner, or use our little magnifying glass to search for a particular product that is located up in the right-hand corner next to join. And once you find the product that you're interested in or the service, that's when you want to click on it to open the product page. Product pages have as much information as possible to cover all of questions that members have. It's also got important information that our partners want us to relate. So QuickBooks Online's here. The partner is Intuit who creates and owns the product and is donating it through TechSuit. On the product page, there's always going to be three tabs of information that you'll see highlighted here with this red box. On the left side is description. On the right side is the rules, eligibility, or sorry, description is on the left side. On the right side is rules, eligibility, and restrictions. Those are always labeled like that. The middle tab can sometimes be labeled differently. Sometimes we'll have subscription details. Sometimes we'll have system requirements. Depends on what the product is. So always recommend going here. Really thoroughly reading through all three tabs of information since most of our products and services have as no refund, no exchange policy. It's something that we really encourage you to make sure you're reading through everything and don't just add it to your cart and check out and then go back and look. At that point, you might be unable to cancel the request in your My Account, which you do have a cancel option underneath request history, or requesting a refund might not be available at that time. So something to think about. One thing I do like to call out is if this product does not have it in the name, but if you ever see a product that says access to discounted rates in the name of the product, that's going to mean that you're going to pay TechSoup's admin fee. It's always listed in red here. And then you'll pay the partner an additional fee that's discounted compared to their usual retail rate. A good example of that is Zoom. Zoom offers a 50% discount for their Zoom one pro or business products.  And from there, you do go to Zoom's website, apply the coupon code, and that gives you the 50% discount. So always like to throw it out there. Access to discounted rates means you're paying two things. If you don't see that in the title and you don't see anything mentioned in the description about paying the partner, then it's going to be just a straight admin fee to TechSoup. Like QuickBooks Online here, the renewal every year is paid to TechSoup and it's currently $75, which you can see here on the product page in red. Perfect. Next slide, please. Another great place to get help from or get support information from without having to wait on the phone or wait on chats for us to get in contact with you is going and clicking the help option in the top right corner of the page. It's next to the login button or if you're logged in already, it'll be next to the circle icon that has a person outlined in it. So if we click on that help, you will be taken to our new TechSoup support page. We recently updated it from our FAQ page that we previously had. A lot more in-depth, lot easier to search stuff. We're very excited about it and we're continuing to expand it with more product information and things like that. So really great place to start off and if the product page isn't answering your questions, check out our TechSoup support page through this help button. Next slide, please. Once you click on the help button, you'll be redirected to TechSoup support. There you have a search feature and you also have common question headers that lead you to additional support articles. So a lot of stuff is answered in here. How do I update my account information? I don't want this person representing my organization anymore. How do I replace them or invite someone new? How do I change my email address? All this stuff, it has instructions right here and usually links you to the right place in your My Account area, which is where your fulfillment emails are stored, your organization details, your personal member information, things along those lines. So great places to go here and then always double check in your My Account to see if there's anything listed there that you're looking to access. Next slide, please. So as I mentioned a couple times, we have phone and live chat support. Live chat support is open from Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. We are located on the West Coast, so we are based on Pacific Standard Time. So and on a later slide, I have that listed there too. But you'll also see here on our Contact Us page, we do have the phone number listed and we do have the live chat hours listed. So all that information is listed for you right there. Phones are only open from Monday through Wednesday, 7 a.m. to 12 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. So chat's usually the thing that's going to be available to you and it's on pretty much every single webpage of www.techsoup.org. You're going to see a help bubble at the bottom right corner here and that's what you're going to click to access the live chat. Next slide, please. Oh, it looks like I'm missing that there's a slide missing here.  It's blank. The previous one's blank. Oh, it should have a slide. Okay. Well, basically the slide I was trying to show you was a when you click on the help bubble, a window will pop up and it will have a thing that it has on the top suggestions listed to connect you to TechSoup support. See if you have an answer right there. Nice and easy. Otherwise, in the bottom right corner of that pop-up window, it says live chat and you click on that to enter the chat queue and you'll wait someone to join the chat from our team and then they'll start assisting you. Again, we are experiencing pretty long delays right now. Sometimes it's been in one to two hours to get through to someone on the phones or the chats. It's something we're diligently working on to reduce those wait times and we are very sorry for the wait times, but we're doing the best we can and we hope to be sped up sooner than later. But for right now, just anticipate if you got to contact us. It's going to take a little bit of time. On here, again, mentioning the chat support is 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. That's where you click the help button in the live chats. 7 a.m. to 12 p.m. Pacific time Monday through Wednesday for phone support. The phone number is listed there and also on our Contact Us page. Chat is going to be a little bit faster than phone support, so I do recommend going there instead of phones, but either option is available to you during these times and these days. Last thing I'd like to touch on is when contacting TechSoups, something to keep in mind is that client services is basic customer support. We can help you with your account management. We can answer questions about eligibility since no one organization is going to be eligible for every nonprofit program on our website. There is an eligibility quiz you can take to double check what you're eligible for. Navigating the resources on our website, we can assist with as well. We have too many partners to be product support trained fully. We can answer some basic common questions. We can point you in the right direction for resources, but a lot of times we're going to probably point you in the direction of the partner that created the product, so you need support figuring out how to upload reports in your QuickBooks online. That's going to be intuit support that assists you. Same thing with IT support, we're not trained for that. That's why we have the wonderful TechSoup services that have a lot of different types of IT support available to you. We have Microsoft specific support, Google ad specific support, the website specific support, so I highly recommend going and checking out TechSoup services underneath in the product catalog. If you go down to the T section for donors, you'll see TechSoup services and you can click on that and that will list all of the services that we currently have available that should cover any IT support needs that your organization has. Same with in-depth product functionality questions. A lot of times we're going to be sending you back to the partner to double check. Our products and services offered are not new products that aren't offered anywhere else. It's the same product available on the retail market. They've just either donated or discounted it for TechSoup members. The product functionality, product support, all that stuff, the partners support team is going to be able to answer those questions and provide that support better than TechSoup client services. Just something to keep in mind if you need any support at any point is what am I looking for and which team to go to. And I did see one last question in the chat that was asking about tokens and discount codes. Highly recommend that if you're getting something with a discount code, a coupon code, make sure that you're requesting the product around when you want to start that subscription. For example, Zoom, you're going to renew your eligibility every year with TechSoup. And that's one renewal date. If you wait three months to start your Zoom account, your coupon code could be expired. And also you then have a weird three-month gap between when you're renewing with TechSoup to get a new coupon code to renew your discount versus Zoom subscription renewal where you're just renewing the discounted subscription with them. So always recommend, place the request, get the request, and start the subscription as close together as you can. Validation tokens, which is used to validate your eligibility on different partners' websites such as Google for Nonprofits. Google for Nonprofits, there's like HubSpot, Slack, a couple other things. You can regenerate as many validation tokens as you need. They're good for 60 days, but once they expire, you can just go in and regenerate it. And validation tokens can be accessed in your My Account. It is up in, it's on the right-hand side of your My Account page says Validation Tokens. You click on that and it will take you to the FAQ, which has links to the different partners that require validation tokens where you can create it yourself. It's not something we send to you. You create it on our website. And that's all I've got for today. Great. Thank you so much, Kelly. And thank you, Kevin. And thank you, Aretha. And again, thank you, everybody who attended today's webinar. I just want to go back to what I opened with, which is, each of you has made a choice to be part of the nonprofit sector to do work that uplifts our communities and helps everybody. And I really appreciate that you've made that choice. And the folks who work at TechSoup have made the same choice. We want to help you do your work and accomplish your mission. So I know we went deep into a lot of elements today. And maybe not all of it stuck. And you know what? That's okay. I hope that the highlights that really mattered to you most do stick out for you. And as I said, we'll be sharing this presentation with you in email within a day or two here. There are lots of live links in it that you can use to reach specific TechSoup properties that you're interested in. And thank you again for attending today or attending today's webinar. I'm obviously a little tongue tied having talked too much for the past hour. And have a great rest of your day. And thank you so much. Bye bye.


Hello, students! It's Shayna from espressoenglish.net. And if you're watching me today, then I'd love to see you write hello or hi in the comments. Today I want to talk about a very common situation for English learners. And that is when someone says something to you in English and you don't know the right way to respond. You know you have to say something, but you're not sure what the natural phrase is, or you don't know how a native English speaker would say it. So you kind of pause and just say yes or oh. It's very uncomfortable, right, when you don't know the right thing to say. So there are some times in English when you know the right thing to say automatically. Like when someone says thank you, you automatically say you're welcome. Or when someone says have a nice day, it's easy to just reply you too, or thanks you too. But there are some situations when you don't know the correct phrase, or you don't know a natural sounding phrase, and this is really frustrating. So in today's lesson I want to answer a student question that I got some time ago, which is what's an appropriate response for when you invite somebody else to go to an event or a party or go out and the other person says they can't go. What do you say in reply? Do you say thank you? Do you say sorry? I don't know. Well today I'm going to teach you some different phrases you can use in this situation. So when you invite someone to some event and they can't attend, then they'll probably say one of these phrases. They might say I can't go to the party or to the concert. Or here's another really common one. They might say I won't be able to make it. Now you might look at this phrase and think make what? I invited them to go somewhere, not make something. But this is just an informal way to say I won't be able to attend or I won't be able to go to this event or this party, this meeting, whatever the invitation was. So I can't go or I won't be able to make it. These are ways for a person to say that they cannot attend the event you invited them to. So what can you say in response? Well here are a few possibilities. You can say that's too bad or that's a shame. This expresses just a little bit of sadness that the other person can't attend the event or party. That's too bad or that's a shame. And we usually say this with a little bit of a sad tone in our voice. So don't say it very happily. So don't say that's too bad. That's not appropriate for the situation. You want to show that you are a little bit sad that the other person can't come to the event. So you would say it like this. Oh that's too bad or oh that's a shame. Do you see how my voice kind of goes down and sounds a little bit sad? So that would be a good response. When you invite someone to a party they say I won't be able to make it. You can say oh that's too bad. Another possibility is to use these phrases that start with I'm sorry. So you can say I'm sorry to hear that or I'm sorry that you won't be joining us. You might wonder well why am I apologizing because it's not my fault that the other person can't go. But in these phrases you're not actually apologizing. You're just expressing sadness that the other person won't be able to join you at the event or party or meeting. And these are a little more formal. These are good for professional situations. So if you invite a colleague to a conference and they say something like I can't go. Then you can say oh I'm sorry to hear that or I'm sorry you won't be joining us for drinks after work or something like that. And then finally two more possibilities. One is to say we'll miss you. Now this has a little more affection in it. So we would normally use we'll miss you with friends, not so much with colleagues. So if you invite a good friend or a relative to go to an amusement park with a group of friends and they say oh I can't go because I have a dentist appointment that weekend. Then you could say oh we'll miss you. This expresses the fact that you will feel sad because that other person is not present. Because you like that person and you want to spend time with him or her. You can also use some of these phrases in combination. So if your friend says I won't be able to go to the amusement park then you could say oh that's too bad. We'll miss you. It's a way to make them feel loved and included and you can also add this phrase maybe next time. If it's something that possibly there will be a future opportunity. So for example maybe every Friday night you like to go bowling with your friends and you invite a new friend and they can't go this Friday. Then you could say oh that's a shame. Maybe next time. So do you see how you can use these different phrases to reply to this situation? Now you have some possibilities so instead of not knowing what to say you have a lot of phrases that you can use to respond when someone else tells you that they can't go or they won't be able to make it to an event that you've invited them to. Alright? Now if you want to learn more of the phrases that native English speakers use in lots of different situations in everyday life. I have courses about everyday English speaking. You can click on the link with this video in order to see more details about these courses. But inside the lessons I teach you situations just like this. Things that you will encounter in everyday life in living in an English speaking country or traveling or interacting with native English speakers. And I'll teach you several possibilities for phrases that you can say so that you can be confident that you know what to say and not just stay quiet or say nothing or be afraid of saying the wrong thing. Alright? So I hope to see you inside one of my courses. I hope you learned a lot from this video and if you enjoyed it please make sure to like the video and share it with your friends. See you guys in the next lesson.


we're going to Denmark for some women's handball watch this goal it's absolutely nasty jumping no the English she faked the power and then went with the spin beautiful off the post and in that is something that you missed that you never planned on watching and this is everything you missed that you never planned on watching it's brought to you by draft kings let's do it bump butter oh boat boat boat but about two ranked teams battling it out in college volleyball you got Texas and BYU they're tied one set apiece and look at this rally we're going to keep it up okay we're going to go over nice and easy there nice and easy there the slam oh no problem we're going to set it up again for BYU and then look at this one hand one hand push it over regroup get oh yeah again and again and oh wow we're still going and no Madison Skinner with the block Texas wins it look at the all-out effort from both sides volleyball is awesome to watch this kids and join it look at them oh yeah big old fan that was the 24th point Texas needs 25 to win go up two to one and they get it just smacked down the crowds go and nuts dudes wearing an apron and this woman is just clapping in everyone's face you guys did not watch that but now you are informed moving down under for our favorite game of hot potato we had the AFL grand final Collingwood magpies I think I've become a magpies fan versus the Brisbane Lions and watch this play right here all about creating open space so you can get a kick up spin move from number seven sends it down Lions need to score to take the lead we got five minutes left in the fourth fighting fighting fighting that dudes they're a star player I watch this game in full actually when it happened and it was very fun to watch and he's just going nuts and crazy because now they have the lead and this fan I don't know what he's doing looks like he's doing like fly eagles fly but it doesn't make sense anyway Collingwood's down by two punches it out this guy grabs it immediately gets it behind him will drop pass great vision and then the long kick through the middle uprights watch the vision there just grabs it knows that dude's going to be sweeping around him he puts it up they take the lead 84 to 80 and that would be enough to hang on and the pies do it and everybody is celebrating semifinals of the pba league came down to overtime in the first overtime you repeat the ninth and tenth frames this dude the candy man needs three strikes to get the win for his team oh he doesn't get the strike there cracking his knuckles feeling good little massage don't worry we got this candy man says nah I can pick up those pins I can pick oh Duke loves it high five and spin the ball feel the ball spin the ball feel the ball spin the ball feel the ball needs to get a strike to push it to a second OT he does it he's in that's my bad he says that's my bad should have won the game now they go to a second overtime where they do two frames again but no second ball so just one dude rolls a ball how many pins you get next dude's got to match it or beat it so on and so on they say hey candy man you want to start it's off sure I got it yeah I got it I got you don't worry I'll throw a strike oh bam got him sets the tone now they need a strike let's go Simone this has name is Simonelli so I think she's calling him Simone I don't know what's going on he's a lefty strike needed gets it we're going again another frame this dude on the strikers comes up and leaves an opening for the hall of famer hall of fame hall of fame Parker bone the third to win it another lefty and easy peasy they've done it the Waco wonders move on to the final feeling good let's go how about oh my god another semi-final here German moto ball black and red is msc typhon morsch and the other team is msc comet durmanschein and the red team and the black and red team is just just having their way look at that top right corner easy peasy ball control they've got it in spades another shot keeper what are you doing run out a little bit make a play how about it watch this one oh the lead pass to number two he scoops it up he's got it another goal white team's getting pissed 18 just wants to put one in for fun oh no blocked gets a little shove from the elbow gets oh you're in my oh you're gonna ride into me oh I don't like that you're down on the ground and number seven on white and the other guy just looking just watching on what's going on down there you guys rolling around fighting a little bit says yeah boom punch to the head knee to the head he's mad about it German moto ball semi-finals a little bit of a fight you know finally red team comes and get back up I had to look at the history of this sport how long has this been going on look at that that cracked me up the goalies used to sit the goalies used to sit on their bike and then they'd have to hop off their bike come on just oh hops off the bike immediate headshot look at this one he's got his bike is like a prop to make saves the goalie makes the first save can't get the follow up this is back in like the 40s and eventually I think they got rid of that because watch this goal it gets off his bike gets run over gets injured gets hurt gurneyed off I think maybe that's why they changed the rules and there you have it that's everything you missed that you never planned on watching thank you very much for tuning in subscribe to the channel if you enjoy these I appreciate that I appreciate draft kings for sponsoring it this week you can download the draft king sportsbook app now and new customers use promo code missed m-i-s-s-e-d bet just five dollars on any wager and you get 200 and bonus bets instantly you find the moto ball and you bet on the red and black team because they looked unstoppable so that's promo code missed only at draft king sportsbook thank you very much for tuning in and now I need you to tell me who is the fan of the week volleyball mom bear bowler kid in the volleyball crowd or the guy in the AFL doing the birds thing but I don't even think it's the bird thing appreciate you guys thank you very much for tuning in and allowing me to cover these sports you've never heard of it's very fun for me


We have an interesting problem here. What we have to do is to draw the pie chart from the given information The problem in front of us is that if out of 100 toffees 25% are given to Ajay 60 were given to Megha and rest were given to Ali Show this distribution using pie chart Now we want to show this information using the pie chart So basically all the toffees are distributed among three different people Ajay Megha and Ali So we will use three different sectors in a pie to show how many toffees each of them have got But we don't know how big is each sector So I have drawn a circle like this But I have not created any Sectors until now we will divide this pie in sectors after we do some calculations and we have good enough space here Where we can compute few things and here is what we will want to compute We need the fraction of the pie which corresponds to the fraction of toffees Each one has received and we can find this fraction of toffees that each person has got because we know the number of total toffees And we know how much Everybody has got so let's first look at how many toffees Ajay has got Ajay has got 25 percent of the toffees 25 percent is itself a fraction because it's shown as a percentage 25 percent is Equivalent to 25 divided by 100 Or rather one over four So one fourth should be the area or the region in this circle That should correspond to the number of toffees Ajay has got now Let's consider how many toffees Megha has got Megha has got 60 toffees And these 60 toffees are out of 100 toffees Note that it's not a percentage. So we are not naturally keeping 100 in the denominator But because the number of total toffees is 100 our denominator still comes out to be 100 and this is equal to three over five And so three by five is a fraction That we will assign in the circle Which corresponds to the number of toffees that Megha has got now. Let us think about how many toffees Ali has received Ali has received rest of the toffees so Because 25 toffees were given to Ajay 60 toffees were given to Megha already 85 toffees have been consumed So out of 100 you already have 85 consumed. So Ali would get 15 toffees So Ali would get 15 toffees out of 100 because we need to know the fraction of toffees that Ali has received And this is equivalent to three by 20. Now, let's just write this information again Concisely, so we have written the fraction of toffees. Everybody has received before showing that on the pie chart We will want to know what is the central angle for that sector for each person We will show the Ajay sector with blue Megha sector with pink and Ali sector with orange Now what we need to compute is the central angle For each of the toffee fractions At the top, let me write A central angle. So what we are trying to do is to find central angle For each fraction for Ajay. This central angle is going to be one fourth divided by 360 degrees Why 360 degrees is because the whole circle corresponds to 360 degrees And out of the whole circle, we are only interested in one fourth part of it. So the central angle For the sector that will corresponds to Ajay's toffees would be one fourth track times 360 Which is 90 degrees Similarly for Megha, this central angle will be three by five times 360 degrees, which is 216 degrees And for Ali this central angle will be three by 20 Times 360 degrees, which will be 54 degrees And now because we have all the central angles we can Finally draw the sectors As per the given angles. So let's draw the Sector for the number of toffees that Ajay has got and we will draw it in light blue Let's fill this sector up in light blue and let's mark the angle as 90 degrees here And this is about Ajay's toffees. Now, what about Megha? Megha has got the most toffees because it sent because the central angle For the fraction of toffees that Megha has got is 216 degrees And this is an obtuse angle and this is how we can draw the sector for the number of toffees. Megha has got Which is in pink And let's draw the central angle to be equal to 216 degrees and let's write Megha over here Which shows that Megha has received all the toffees corresponding to this pink area Rest of the toffees were received by Ali and we can mark this central angle to be equal to 54 degrees And this corresponds to toffees received by Ali And this is how we have drawn the pie chart distribution for the number of toffees that Ajay, Megha and Ali received


I'm talking about, are you guys hungry? It's administration. I am source of our summer youth employment program. This summer, right, what are you choosing? And you all were choosing food industry, right? In our DOE schools, who was here work at DOE schools? It's the city. And you, along with your colleagues in summer youth employment this summer, also got financial literacy training. You were able to explore other things like the UN and get real exposure, mentors and other. I've gotten hundreds of emails from employers saying how lucky they were to have such brilliant, dedicated, creative, fun, young people for the summer. So give yourselves another round of applause. So what are we doing today? Today you have a very unique experience that your other summer youth employees, youth colleagues won't have. You get to experience the mayor of the city of New York.  Did you guys know that? Yes, some of you did, some of you didn't. So he's got rock stage. I said, do you really see? And also participate in this experience. Afterwards, you're gonna have to sample a delicious salad made by the amazing executive chef at Gracie Mansion, Andrea. Give a clap for Andrea. She keeps our mayor fed and healthy. She's very important and she's gonna be assisting him with this demonstration. And then lastly, you'll also hear from a group of renowned chefs because what you appreciated, I'm sure, about your summer experience is that this is a major industry. It is a big business and an important business and it's important for so many diverse leaders to be leaders in that industry. So you will hear from these chefs who will tell you about the business and all the other interests that you might have. You all should be extremely proud of the work that you did this summer. We are extremely proud of you and without further ado, I want to introduce celebrity chef, cookbook author and the mayor of the city of New York, Eric Adams. How are you? How's everyone? Can you hear me in the back? Tell me something. How many of you have a family member who is experiencing diabetes? How many of you who have a family member or friend that's dealing with some type of chronic disease, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol? Wow, wow. So I just want to come down before I start cooking. So a couple of years ago, I woke up in the morning and I couldn't see the alarm clock. I'm gonna get my nose pierced soon. Yes sir, yes sir. I couldn't see the alarm clock and I thought it was sleep in my eyes and I started to blink my eyes. You know how you wake up in the morning, you can't see right away? I started to blink my eyes and it didn't go away. And at the same time, I felt this pain in my stomach. It wasn't gas, it was sitting still and it was just uncomfortable. And so you know, men, you gotta drag us to the doctor. We don't want to go to the doctor. But I decided that you know what? Let me go to the doctor because this didn't feel right. So I went to the doctor and when I got to the doctor, he did, he checked my colon, he checked my stomach. And when I came from under sedation, he says, Eric, that vision you feel in your left eye and your right eye is that you're losing your sight. You're gonna be blind in a year. And he said to tingling, I was feeling tingling in my hands and feet.  He said the reason you have this loss is you're diabetic. I had no idea. He says your diabetes level is so high that I'm surprised that you're not in a coma right now. And the pain I was feeling in my stomach, it was an ulcer. He says that you have an ulcer. So I went in the doctor's office that day with no medicine. I walked out with medicine for my ulcer, three medicines for my diabetes included insulin. That's where you have to inject yourself. Medicine for my high blood pressure, medicine for everything. I went in with none. I walked out, I felt like I was Dwayne Reed. I had so many pills. And I said to myself, I'm not trying to go out like this because my mother was diabetic for 15 years at the time. Seven years taking insulin. I used to see mommy injecting herself all the time and she would grimace every time she had to inject herself with insulin in her stomach. And so I was at my computer. They gave me these books that says living with diabetes. And I sat at the computer that day. I remember like it was yesterday. This was about five, six years ago. And I did something scientific. I googled reversing diabetes. One word. They said living with diabetes, but what did I put in? Reversing diabetes. And all of this information came up about diabetes and reversing diabetes. And there was one doctor, Dr. Esselton from Ohio Cleveland Clinic. He treated Bill Clinton for his heart disease. I cold called him. I was like, you know, doctor, they told me I'd be blind in a year. I'm gonna lose some fingers and toes of my diabetes numbers are high. My A1C is high. Is there anything I can do? He said fly down to see me. I flew down to Ohio one early morning and I saw him. And he says, listen, you can change your diabetes. You have to change the food you're eating. And I remember Santa myself looking at him. What's wrong with this nut? I'm going blind and he's telling me to stop eating fried chicken. What's that to do with anything? But I was so desperate that I went home. He gave me a list of things to do. I went home and I looked on the back of the cart and the food I had in my refrigerant in my pantry. And everything that he said was right. Everything was over-processed. Everything was, it wasn't even food anymore. It was like food like stuff. And so I made up my mind. I said, you know what, I'm gonna try this because I'm not trying to lose my sight. And so the first week I tried, I couldn't cook. My number one meal I made was cheese toast and I burned that half the time. But I said, you know what, I'm gonna try. So the first week when I finished, after that first week, I said, God, I gotta eat this. I'm not trying to eat this junk all this time.  Why are you looking at all the food you shouldn't be eating anymore when I looked and discovered a new food you could eat? And so I started to have a different mindset. And I said, I'm gonna learn how to cook. And I'm going to discover food. I started looking at spices and spices are more powerful than the food you eat. Nutmeg, turmeric, cinnamon. All I knew when somebody said spices to me, all I knew was salt and pepper. That was my spice list. So I said, you know what? I'm going to start discovering East Indian spices, Caribbean spices. I'm going to start discovering African spices, Italian spices, and then I'm gonna look and read up each spice what it does. Every week I took a new spice and I read up on it to say, what is the purpose of garlic? What is the purpose of turmeric? What is the purpose of cinnamon and nutmeg? And I started learning the benefits of spices. But then I did something else. Every Sunday became my cooking day where I would try new meals and try to learn how to discover how to cook them. And so three weeks after going to a whole food plant based diet, what happened? My vision came back. Three months, my nerve damage went away in my hands and feet. My ulcer went away. My blood pressure normalized. My mother, remember I said she was diabetic for 15 years, seven years on insulin? My mother went on a whole food plant based diet and within two months, mommy was off on insulin. Think about that. Think about that. Think about what your family members are going through right now. And do you know how powerful that was for me to go to my mother? My mother had six children. She loved all of us, but she adored me.  And to be able to do that, I mean, what more can you ask for? And so this moment here that I'm gonna share one of my meals is only one of the few. I had no meals in my repertoire. Now I have about 75 different meals, fast meals, quick meals. When I go to restaurants, I look at the menu and say, I want you to put together my own meal for me. How I make my frozen desserts. How when I feel like having something sweet. How if I have to go on the move because I'm always on the move. I'm always going somewhere, you know, food is powerful. Food is more than what you put in your mouth. Food is how we define ourselves. When my dad, when I used to have a bad day playing sports, my dad would give me a chocolate cake or a chocolate donut. And when someone came to me and criticized my donut, you're criticizing my father. Man, what's wrong with you? Those are fighting roads. And so when we sit down and eat, that is our way of communicating. And particularly those of us who have different cultures.  And then when I stop eating meat, you wanna get people mad at you? Tell them you're not gonna eat that hamburger. Now nobody wanna hang out with you. Everybody's like, man, okay, you too boring. And as an African-American, when I started saying I wanted to eat plant-based, you know what my friends used to say? Oh, you wanna be white now.  No, no, so food is slave food. Our ancestors did not want to eat chitlins. They didn't want to eat cow tongue.  No, the slave masters said you're going to eat the scraps of our tables. And then we have to find ways to make it tasty and palatable. And our ancestors said, so we have to survive. So now we're going to give you the food to survive. But literally they know that now that we no longer on this plantation, that we're gonna still be intellectually and emotionally attached to the plantation and the food that we eat. Now here's the deadly part of this. Think about this for a moment. Our ancestors ate bad food to survive that the slave master forced them to eat. And we are continuing the legacy of the slave master every time we cook the bad food that's given our family members diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, all of these chronic diseases. We're handing it down to our family members. So we sit around the table on Thanksgiving, saying to our family, let's pray for grandma that's in the hospital because she's diabetic and she's about to lose her legs or she's about to lose her sight. And then after we pray, what do we do? We dig into the food and eat the food that caused grandma to be in the hospital in the first place. And go to South and Central America. Some of the best food is grown there. Yet it's not served on your plates. They're shipping out your food out of your country, somewhere else, and they give me you fast food. It's unbelievable what they're doing to us. That's why we're having a conversation with you. You're the liberation generation. You have to free us from this madness. There's a reason around nature you have junk food, but you go to the upper East side, you have whole food. It's not in your DNA. You didn't inherit diabetes. It's not your DNA, it's your dinner. It's not your lineage, it's just your lunch. It's not where you're born, it's your breakfast. So either we can continue this madness or we can free ourselves. We've been played. We've been played. I can see you right now because I didn't follow the direction of those who told me to go on medicine.  It's not who I am. It's not who I am. That's not who I want you to be. So I'm gonna share with you one of my meals, one of my meals that you can take part of it and you can use it. Where's my book? Do we have my book? So this is the book after my experience that I wrote. Every dollar goes to helping our faith-based leaders to learn about healthy eating. I don't take any money from this. This is my experience of changing my life. In the first three weeks, I lost 35 pounds from going to a plant-based diet. Never felt better in my life, never felt better in my life.  My oldest brother is dealing with health issues. My brother under me is dealing with cancer. My sister just dealt with breast cancer. My other sister is dealing with diabetes and heart disease. Our entire family is dealing with crises that comes from food. And we're slowly turning it around. It's not easy because let me tell you something. Food is like a drug. That first week, when I stopped eating, I used to dream about hamburgers. I went through withdrawals like you'll never believe. You put someone hooked on drugs in one room and someone hooked on fast food in another. You take the drugs away and you take the fast food away. I ask you to say which one is hooked on what. That's what food does to you. And they know that. It plays on your psyche. It makes you believe that you need it over and over and over again. But we're gonna turn it around, we're gonna turn it around slowly. And so here is one of my mills. I have my shelf helper, the Vano White of cooking, you know? And so these are simple ingredients. Not only are they simple ingredients, they are cheap. Everyone says all the time, if you eat healthy, it's gonna cost a lot of money. That's all people say, it's gonna cost a lot of money. This costs $3.75, $3.75 per serving. And so a quick meal, a great summer meal, so you're not feeling, sometimes you eat and you feel tired and lethargic because that food, you're trying to process that food and it's just too much to consume and then it's not healthy and energetic food. So my hands are clean, I wash my hands, so you know that and I'm the only one to be eating. These are cucumbers. You mix your cucumbers in the bowl and then we have some other things, parsley, pepper, other spices. You put it in, I rarely cook with oil. I don't use a lot of oil when I cook. I try to use water, but if you wanna use oil and vinegar, balsamic vinegar is great also. Just put a little in. And if you want oil, you can put oil. I normally don't, but you can. And you know what's the best stirrer that you have? Your hands. You can mix it up with your hands.  And one good test, particularly for the guys, the prerequisite for dating me, you gotta know how to cook. So you gotta get them in the kitchen. So guys, you gotta know how to cook also, guys.  Don't be like me. And then sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes, they have a way of bringing a nice taste to it. Now before you do it, I use water, but you could also do a little bit of oil. Put it in your pan. I'm a big water guy. So you put it in your pan and let it simmer a little. I have here, I have, this is cabbage. You ever notice that there are different colors in food, such as cabbage. Sometimes the cabbage is that light color cabbage. Then you have the red cabbage. You also have onions. There's some onions that are light color. Some are the red, the red color, cabbage, onions and other items. Those red colors are, they're really significant cause the more color it is, the more nutrients it has. So when you go shopping, always look for those different colors. So these are sweet potatoes. I love sweet potatoes. They're very healthy. They're different than white potatoes.  Okay, so we're gonna mix this up. Not with this one here, oh you don't know this one.  I like to mix sweet potatoes or put a chopped up orange or chopped up apple in. These are chickpeas, extremely healthy for you. Throw that in there. I like to put a little water to sort of give it the moisteness that we're looking for. Onions, red onions, I chopped them up already. And I like to chop them up really fine when you do it.  When you chop your onion, you wanna take that off but you can do, you can really, they were chopped up already. I like my onions really, really fine when I do it. And I never, never liked onions before until I read up on the power of onions and what onions, how powerful they are and what they do for your body. Okay, and then you throw in cabbage. Cabbage is one of the most healthy things you can eat. Every morning when I do my green smoothies, I throw in cabbage and I throw in beets, another healthy item. Mix that up. Kidney beans, black beans, pinto beans. All of them are good in protein. They're extremely healthy for you. Then you throw in kale. Kale, I didn't even know what kale was. Only greens I knew was collard greens, you know? But now I know all of these different types of greens. I love kale. Kale goes into my smoothies every morning as well as spinach goes into my smoothies every morning as well. So you just really mix that up and you wanna get some good moistener in there. So you pour some water and you just get that really going.  These are some great spices. And remember what I said about spices. Spices are just as powerful as the food you eat.  Come here, I want you to smell this.  Smell that fragrance. You know that? See that? So you get that a little more, just a pinch more oil and the sweet potatoes. You can chop up plantains, sweet potatoes, bananas, whatever you want and you just, you will be surprised how filling this is. The key is fiber is so important for your body. This is a high fiber rich diet right here. Men and women are supposed to get a predetermined amount of fiber in their system every day. And this, then you take the salad that I made earlier, put it inside there and all this stuff. This is $3.75 for serving. So before I do that, I want to, is that plugged up? Can't, plug up. This is one of my favorite, favorite appliances. This is called a ninja. And when I want something sweet after my meal, I'll grab some walnuts. Walnuts are extremely healthy for you. Out of all the nuts, these are one of the best nuts. So you throw that in there. If you like ice cream, freeze ripe bananas. You freeze the ripe bananas. This is not a old banana. This is not one, but if you want to do, you could do this with ice cream. One of my favorite ice creams is with frozen bananas and some blueberries, all that blueberry, some strawberries, throw it in there. This is if you want a dessert after you finish eating. And like I said, sweet potatoes, I love sweet potatoes. And the peel of the sweet potato is extremely healthy. That's where you get a lot of your nutrients inside your peels. No, I don't need any water, just mix that up a little. And you would get some non-dairy whipped cream. Move that there, just need a spoon. You get some non-dairy whipped cream, throw. That's good. Throw some berries in. And this is my light snack for today. That's good. Who's my sampler? You know? Oh.  The stress you are under as young people is different from the stress that I was under. You have so much coming at you. You know, I didn't have Instagram, I didn't have Facebook, I didn't have Google, I didn't have Snapchat. Everything is coming at you. You have to find that equilibrium. And you do it by eating right, but you also wanna nourish your mental state as well. Cause we're never gonna be good to anyone if we're not good to ourselves. And so I wish you a prosperous life. I hope this experience in our summer youth employment program was more than just a job. We want you to leave this summer with financial literacy skills, communication skills, healthy skills, so you're ready to take on the world. You're not leaders of tomorrow, you're leaders of today. So let's leave. Thank you. Thank you.