There is nothing more timely than the issue of saving Medicaid. We are in a moment of both extreme threat but also extreme opportunity. I know it would be very easy to think that there’s nothing we can do. That massive cuts to Medicaid are a done deal.

The fact is nothing could be further from the truth. And the role that nonprofit leaders can play in turning the tide and saving Medicaid for the people we serve, and for everyone who depends on it, is tremendous right now.

But here's the thing. Our standard advocacy strategies and messaging probably aren't going to work for this particular project. We have to become aware of what's needed, and then be committed to taking action and doing the things that will actually work.

In this episode, we share:

• The key elements we need to understand about the Republican strategy to pass their big, ugly bill
• The two big flaws in that strategy that show us how to focus our advocacy
• The biggest mistake we’re likely to make, and what to do instead
• Why arguing the facts and merits of the issue with Members of Congress won’t work
• The essential tactics that will have the greatest chance of success in this fight
• The three most effective ways to engage your clients, volunteers and supporters and help them make their voices heard on saving Medicaid
• How to time your advocacy action for greatest impact

Links:

Here are two great resources for clear and helpful information on Medicaid, work reporting requirements, and other background to help you explain the issue to others:

KFF.org

Families USA

If you found value in this episode, please let others know! I’d be grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Your reviews help other nonprofit leaders find the podcast. Thanks!!

How do we all be okay when so much is not okay in the world?

There's so much bad, scary, overwhelming stuff going on constantly that it’s really hard sometimes to just get out of bed in the morning. Nevermind show up as our best selves, as our best empowered nonprofit leaders fighting for what's right, fighting for the people we serve, and to protect our communities.

We can't do that without some help. So the conversation is increasingly turning to a search for information, a search for ideas, as we ask each other: What are you doing to cope? How are you managing? Have you figured something out? Can you share it with me?

I think it's incredibly important that we talk with one another about this on a regular basis, and that we keep our emotional and physical wellbeing at the forefront of our attention in this time. And I know that’s a lot easier said than done, which is why I want us to talk about it.

I don't have THE ANSWER. Nobody does. But I have some thoughts and observations about what I'm finding is working for me, and what I'm hearing from others is working for them. And some patterns, some consistencies I’m seeing that I think are worth calling out and sharing with you.

There are also a couple of cautionary notes for us as nonprofit leaders to flag and be super aware of with our teams, because they're looking to us for help.

In this episode, we share:

• How stress manifests itself in the body, and how to use that knowledge to reduce those damaging effects
• Three physical stress management techniques that work in under three minutes
• The two aspects of self-awareness that are key to all emotional/mental/spiritual self-care
• How to catch signs of martyrdom in yourself and your team, and how to counter that
• How we can both model behavior and create an environment of policy and practice that supports our team in their own self-care work

If you found value in this episode, please let others know! I’d be grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Your reviews help other nonprofit leaders find the podcast. Thanks!!

If you’ve got great messaging and it’s still not causing decisionmakers to engage with you, chances are you’re dealing with one of the most common advocacy pitfalls that happens to a lot of nonprofit leaders: We worry so much about what we're going to tell a decision maker, and we don't spend nearly enough time thinking about what we want to ask them.

Questions are incredibly powerful tools, and they can really work magic in a conversation with a decisionmaker. They can create engagement. They can create an opportunity to go deep, to get information that the decisionmaker wouldn't volunteer otherwise. You can get advice. You can get all kinds of valuable intel, and at the same time build a connection with that decision maker, and have them leaning in and engaging more with you.

The magic of questions is that they engage other people's brains. We can't help it. When we're asked a question we have to engage. We have to stop and think about that question. If someone's just telling us stuff, it’s easy to lose focus, and not really hear what’s being said. But as soon as a question shows up in the conversation, our subconscious makes us pay attention. We get engaged. Decisionmakers get engaged.

But here's the thing. Not all questions are created equal. The fact is, the smarter your questions, the better your results are going to be. The trick is to come up with really smart questions that are going to yield high-level results for you.

In this episode, we share:

• How low-value questions work against you, and how to avoid them
• The essential advance work that sets you up to ask higher-value questions of decisionmakers
• The two most important questions to ask yourself before you ever meet with a decisionmaker
• Key characteristics of high-value questions that trigger engagement
• How to turn a request for advice into an even higher-value question
• How to use AI to do advance research and craft higher-value questions
• An easy hack to boost your effectiveness as you develop this skill

Link: Episode 67 – Three Keys to Finding the Right Decisionmaker in Any System

I'm preparing to launch a group coaching program that will focus specifically on helping you craft messaging that will shift decisionmakers’ perspectives and get them on board with sustaining and even expanding your funding. This will be a coaching opportunity for a limited number of people to come in and be part of a group. There'll be some training, but most of it will be coaching and helping you to get your messaging dialed in so that you can address this pressing need.

What I'm seeing right now is there's nothing more important than this. If that sounds like something you'd like to be a part of, message me through the podcast website or on LinkedIn.

There is a lot of fear in the air, and I think it's important that we as nonprofit leaders take a hard look at that and get clear about what we're going to do with it.

The first thing is we have to acknowledge it. I've been part of a number of conversations where the fear is in the air, but it's not being talked about directly. And I think that's a mistake, because we run the risk of letting that fear guide our decision making and our actions in ways that we may not even realize or intend. And that would be a loss for everyone.

I think it's important to call it out, to acknowledge it, to say, yep, it's here. It's legitimate, and while it's real and present in our lives, we don't have to let it run our actions and our decision making. We need to be able to feel the fear, without operating from fear.

In this episode, we share:

• Two keys to navigating our own very real fears
• The essential choice we must make as leaders in times of fear
• One powerful tool for managing fear in this uniquely scary time that you can also use with your team
• Powerful evidence that we have more influence than we realize
• Two keys to helping decisionmakers get out of fear so they can make decisions that serve you

I'm preparing to launch a group coaching program that will focus specifically on helping you craft messaging that will shift decisionmakers’ perspectives and get them on board with sustaining and even expanding your funding. This will be a coaching opportunity for a limited number of people to come in and be part of a group. There'll be some training, but most of it will be coaching and helping you to get your messaging dialed in so that you can address this pressing need.

What I'm seeing right now is there's nothing more important than this. If that sounds like something you'd like to be a part of, message me through the podcast website or on LinkedIn.

It's time to talk about one of the most frustrating things that can get in an advocate's way: when you've got a decisionmaker that, no matter what you do or say, no matter how hard you push them, it feels like they just will never commit to anything. They either can't or won't make a decision. It can leave an advocate just about tearing their hair out in frustration.

It can turn into a huge time suck. You're trying all these different angles to try to figure out, how do I get through to this person? How do I get them off the dime and make them take an action? To do something already! I've been there and I know what it's like.

When there's a decisionmaker who can't or won't make a decision, there's a reason behind that. But the stated reason and the real reason are often very different. We have to become detectives to figure out what's really going on. What is the actual reason?

Because here's the thing. How likely is it we're going to just luck into the right messaging or the right strategy if we don't really know what's causing them to fail to make a decision? If we want to figure out the right strategy to make them actually take an action, to move to a decision, the first thing we've got to do is understand why they're not doing that now.

I want to share with you a process you can use to uncover what’s really going on with that decisionmaker, and how to build a strategy to get them to take action.

In this episode, we share:

• The six most common reasons behind that indecision
• The surprising ways fear affects a decisionmaker’s thinking
• The two best strategies to get to the bottom of what’s causing your decsiionmaker’s indecision
• How to read behavioral cues that will tell you what’s driving the decisionmaker
• Key strategies you can use to address the causes of the indecision, and move the decisionmaker to action

I'm preparing to launch a group coaching program that will focus specifically on helping you craft messaging that will shift decisionmakers’ perspectives and get them on board with sustaining and even expanding your funding. This will be a coaching opportunity for a limited number of people to come in and be part of a group. There'll be some training, but most of it will be coaching and helping you to get your messaging dialed in so that you can address this pressing need.

What I'm seeing right now is there's nothing more important than this. If that sounds like something you'd like to be a part of, message me through the podcast website or on LinkedIn.

There has never been a time when the influence of nonprofit leaders was more needed. In particular, we need to have influence with the money and policy decision makers that hold the power to help or harm the people we serve.

At the same time, a lot of things are happening that could leave a nonprofit leader feeling pretty vulnerable and powerless. Our challenge is to find a way to move like water and create that influence no matter what else is going on.

One of the things I hear most frequently from nonprofit leaders I work with is some version of, we can't get XYZ critical decision maker to listen to us. We've tried everything and we can't get through to them. We either can't get them to listen, or we can't get access to them, or both. And then what happens is folks just kind of give up on those decision makers or resign themselves to not being able to have influence with them.

I get how that happens, but what's that costing you? If these are money and policy decision makers that matter, can you afford not to have influence with them? Is that really an option?

In this episode, we share:

• The two biggest problems most nonprofit leaders have in getting access to the right decisionmakers, and how to solve them
• How past experience with decisionmakers can lead you to the wrong conclusions about influence building – and how that gets in your way
• How to train your subconscious brain to seek out and funnel influence-building opportunities to you
• How to craft messaging that will really land with a decisionmaker, and motivate them to work with you
• What it really means to speak the decisionmaker’s language, and why it makes such a huge difference
• How to know when it’s time to switch tactics and build influence another way

I'm preparing to launch a group coaching program that will focus specifically on helping you craft messaging that will shift decisionmakers’ perspectives and get them on board with sustaining and even expanding your funding. This will be a coaching opportunity for a limited number of people to come in and be part of a group. There'll be some training, but most of it will be coaching and helping you to get your messaging dialed in so that you can address this pressing need.

What I'm seeing right now is there's nothing more important than this. If that sounds like something you'd like to be a part of, message me through the podcast website or on LinkedIn.

Links:

Episode 67 -- Three Keys to FInding the Right Decisionmaker in any System

We need to talk about an emerging reality that virtually all of my clients are telling me is their number one challenge right now.

Everyone is already dealing with multiple threats to federal funding. But now there’s the additional reality that all the chaos and uncertainty at the federal level – from budget craziness to wildly fluctuating tariff policies – is destabilizing other funding sources. State and local government funding, foundation grants and corporate funding are all affected.

As nonprofit leaders we're fighting for our federal funding, and now we’re realizing that many of our other funding sources are facing headwinds as well. This has some very specific implications for our advocacy strategy. We need a way to get all of our funding decisionmakers to commit to continuing their full support for our work. And we have to deal with all of that at once.

In this episode, we share:

• The number one strategic imperative in the fight for your federal funding in particular
• What’s on all funding decisionmakers’ minds right now, and why we need to shift their perspective
• The two perspective shifts we must get decisionmakers to make
• Why your usual approach to messaging is unlikely to get the job done
• The three-part messaging equation that will help you succeed with every type of funder

I'm preparing to launch a group coaching program that will focus specifically on helping you craft messaging that will shift decisionmakers’ perspectives and get them on board with sustaining and even expanding your funding. This will be a coaching opportunity for a limited number of people to come in and be part of a group. There'll be some training, but most of it will be coaching and helping you to get your messaging dialed in so that you can address this pressing need.

What I'm seeing right now is there's nothing more important than this. If that sounds like something you'd like to be a part of, message me through the podcast website or on LinkedIn. I look forward to hearing from you!

We’re about to enter a period of opportunity to have a lot of influence over our Members of Congress. They'll be home in their districts/states twice in the next seven weeks for “district work periods” to connect with their constituents. You should expect to be seeing quite a bit of them in late April and then again in late May.

These district work periods represent a significant opportunity for nonprofit leaders to engage substantially with your Members of Congress, and to drive home the absolutely critical messages around the impact that the administration's actions are having right now, at home in the district, in the state, on their constituents’ lives.

It's also an opportunity to tell our Members of Congress what we expect to do about that! It's a great time to be communicating with them about both pieces at once. And there's no better place to do that than at home, on the ground, where there's an opportunity for them to see the actual impact for themselves. And we as nonprofit leaders have a key role to play in helping them make that connection.

In this episode, we share:

• Exact timing of the next two district work periods for Congress (House and Senate)
• The two most valuable strategies for engaging Members of Congress while they’re back home
• The three different types of town halls and how to make the best strategic use of each of them
• Specific messaging strategies that work best for town halls
• How to get on your Member of Congress’ schedule to visit your program while they’re home
• The key elements of a high-impact program visit
• How design a program visit that deeply engages your Member of Congress

As you participate in town halls and bring Members of Congress to your program for high-impact engagement, I would love to hear how that's worked out for you, and what kinds of key messages you were able to drive home using each of those two strategies.

And if you've got a story you're particularly proud of, I'd love to have you on the show so we can amplify that and help other nonprofit leaders see how leaders are leveraging these opportunities to really make a huge impact!

Reach out to me on the podcast website or on LinkedIn and share your wins!

Links:

Episode 31: How to Get Maximum Results from a Decisionmaker’s Visit to Your Program

Moveon.org

Indivisible.org