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OCTOBER 4, 2020

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>> Tim: As you are used to we are going to start with some questions that came in overnight before we get into today’s final content. So, I’m going to start with some questions that I received by email.

First was a comment from Denise, who said that in regards to that hazard pay issue for personal attendants working during COVID, that she talked to her insurance carrier about workers’ comp coverage for COVID. And he said -- his opinion, anyway -- was that there would not be workers’ comp coverage offered because it would be impossible to say exactly when and where it was contracted. This might put the center at greater risk. just something to consider.

And John, Paula -- Sally was worrying about CDBG funds. So community development block grant funds. Sally says, “I’m wondering about these funds and how they would be treated with regard to a single cost objective.” Sally says they get those funds to do housing modifications. Most of the money passes through to the consumer, but a small portion pays a bit of salaries -- a bit that is indirect, but most, it’s direct.

Would that factor into a single cost objective for federal funds as our SO grants are written? What do you think, Paula?

>> Paula: Yeah, no, it’s for a different group of people. So your Title 7 independent living services provide the core services, of which, housing modification is not one. It’s allowable, but not required. And also, it’s one person at a time receiving it, a unique service compared to what the rest of the funds pay for. So it cannot be included in a single cost objective with the title sum.
>> Okay. All right. Thanks. And then moving to the questions that have come in on the web platform this morning -- let’s see. Joe is wondering, “This may have been covered, but if we have subcontractors, can we expect auditors to review those contracts we have with subcontractors? If so, what would they be looking for?”

≫Yeah, yesterday, I emphasized that IRS is very focused on looking at the difference between subcontractors or independent contractors and employees. It certainly isn’t a red flag to use independent contractors. Probably, all of you do for certain things -- some medical services, some accounting and audit services. So, it’s not something that would generate an audit fairly automatically. Still, a very, very low chance of it.

What we are saying, though, is if IRS is looking at your organization, the distinction between independent contractors and employees is something they are going to focus on every time, virtually every time.

>> Okay. Great. Thanks. All right. Tammy is wondering if funds received from the provider relief fund are considered to be grant funds as well.

>> Paula: Say that again. I didn’t quite catch the meaning for sure.

>> Tim: Are funds received from the provider relief fund considered grant funds as well?

>> Paula: What is the provider relief fund? John, do you know?

>> John: I don’t.

[CROSSTALK]

>> Tim: I was hoping you all would know.

>> Paula: Yeah. It might be specific to that state.

>> Tim: Sure.

>> Paula: Yeah, but it’s not something I’m familiar with, so I can’t really say where it comes from and how it would be classified.

>> Yeah. Tammy, let us know if you want to offer more information on that provider relief fund.

Tammy’s next question, though, I know we’ll know about. So Tammy says, “Are paycheck protection funds, the PPP program, also considered grant funds once forgiven, and does the amount received from the paycheck protection program count towards the 750,000 that requires a single audit?”

>> I’m not positive. I think it would be, but I’m not certain of that. So maybe I will have a chance to just double check that before this session is over, but I’m not sure. Paula?

>> Paula: Yeah, I would think that it would be, but at the moment, it’s not. So, at the moment, this is kind of going to be one of those interesting things. At the moment, it’s a loan, and it won’t be until next fiscal year that it turns into a grant. So for this fiscal year, I don’t believe it would be treated as a grant because the forgiveness piece hasn’t kicked in and you’ll have to apply for that at some future point.

>> And I just did a quick look for the provider relief fund, and these are HHS funds to support American families, workers, and heroic healthcare providers in the battle against the COVID 19 outbreak. So, presumably, intended for front-line workers, but they are HHS funds. My assumption would be they would be included in the $750,000.

>> Paula: I have not talked to centers that are utilizing those funds. So that’s very interesting.

>> Tim: Okay. I think those are the only questions we have gotten so far. Paul said that he just he looked up the provider relief fund, and it looks like it’s something from the CARES Act for healthcare providers. So I hadn’t -- I wasn’t --we obviously weren’t aware of that.

>> Paula: We typically aren’t qualified as healthcare providers but some of the personal assistants may be, depending on your state and how that is set up.

Okay.

>> Tim: Okay. The only other thing I wanted to mention before we start today is I want to ask you all to visit the training webpage. You might already have that open. And just notice on the materials page that the surveys at the top of the materials page have changed. So now that we’re on the last day of the training, we have replaced the pre-course survey and those poll questions with the post-course survey and the satisfaction survey. So not being on location, and being able to shame you because I’m in the same room as you and making you feel bad, I have got to just ask a favor. Please do take a few minutes before we end today, and I’m certainly going to remind you at the end, and we will even save some time for it.

But please do fill out those surveys. Again, that post course is really important for us to know if this training is effective, if you all are learning the high points and some of the priority points that we hope you are learning. The satisfaction survey, of course, is important for knowing if you enjoyed the training, if you liked it, and if you believed that it was useful to you. So please do take a few extra minutes.

We’ve made them as short as we can to get the information we need. But we hope that you will offer your feedback. If you do need to leave before the end of the session, please do complete that before you go. And if you truly don’t have time, I think you know it’s going to be hard to remember to come back. But if you could at least flag it to come back and complete it in the next day or so, we would really appreciate it.

With that, John Paul, I’ll turn it over to you.

>> John: Okay. A couple follow up items before we get into the regular program. I did say that I would provide references for a couple of the regulations we talked about yesterday. One is the use of program income. And we did discuss it. I don’t think there are any questions about it. But it will be found at section 75.307. So these are all 45 CFR part 75. Or if you -- and then, this particular one is at 75.307. That’s program income.

The other one we talked about was prompt payment, payment of advances, your entitlement to advances if you are complying with the regulations, and that’s found at 75.305. So those are important to make a note of.

Also, somebody reached out, asking about QuickBooks’ add-ons to allocate costs. And I tried to do a little bit of looking but wasn’t able to get into the background of these. But I did find that there are several partner programs and actually, some QuickBooks programs that facilitate cost allocation. You know, you gather that at the same time as you are gathering payroll.

And these, you know, the typical ones would be manufacturing or construction. You know, so if you were to get QuickBooks for the construction industry rather than the nonprofit, that’s already built in. There is also a product called QuickBooks Premier, which has that brought in. But, if you just Google “QuickBooks partners payroll cost allocation”, you’re going to see some of the partner programs that will do payroll cost allocation at the same time as you are doing payroll. That’s your par, basically. That’s building your par right into your accounting system. And you know, we discussed that a par is the best evidence for allocating payroll. But it’s tedious. This makes it rather automatic. So consider those.

You know, we are not in the business of endorsing products here. And quite honestly, I don’t have the expertise to do that, even if we did. But that’s how to find these products.

And I would say work with a local QuickBooks consultant on implementing that, and it will really help to you find somebody who is very knowledgeable.

>> Paula: Hopefully, the customer support will now carry you through what you need to do there.

≫ Yep.

>> Paula: Before we start with the slides, I had one follow up, and that is that we have mentioned the payroll protection funds a couple of times. And I just want to tell you that there’s that’s still emerging information as exactly how it’s going to work, and what kinds of things we ought to do, and how to classify the forgiveness.

So, one of the places that you will see, besides on our website, one of the places that you will see some of that information is in our blog. So John and I have a blog about different regulatory things. If you would just pop in there and subscribe, you will get an email to your box every time there is a new post, and you’ll see the topic and decide whether you want to go read it or not.

But we probably will also put that information in that blog. So, ILRU.org is the main website for most of our materials, but I have posted the link to the blog. It is ILNet TA.org. So, and It’s a Word Press. So the Word Press extension is on the address that I plugged into the chat for you. So we do --

[CROSSTALK]

≫ Yeah.

>> John: We have continuous updates on, this Paul. This morning, we got a new set of Q&A on this. It’s just rather continuous. Our journal of accountancy (our AICPA) puts out a lot of information on this, and some of that is restricted to members, but most of it is available to anybody. So consider looking at the -- you know, if you put in “AICPA Payroll Protection Program information”, you will get right to this site that provides this.

>> Tim: Paula, could you offer the blog link again? I don’t think it came through on the captioning.

>> Paula: Okay. Yeah. I’ll give it to you. It’s HTTP://ILNET TA.org.

>> Thanks.

≫ Mm-hmm.

≫ All right. Ready to talk about boards? Everybody’s favorite topic, right? You know, we have such an interesting, interesting situations with boards, because we do our searching for members a little differently than a lot of the, you know, general nonprofit sector does, in that we’re consumer controlled. So, that is a factor that we’ll talk about a little when we get over to recruitment in a few slides.

But the reality is that, otherwise, the board is a nonprofit board and follows the same rules and guidelines, and we have the same advice, so that our when we get to our resources, you will find there are quite a few resources for you in the nonprofit sector related to boards == some, you know, sample documents that might be helpful, some ways that you might provide training and technical assistance to your board so that they become the best board possible, which, of course, would be the goal that all of us would have.

We’re going to talk about some of the board responsibilities and how you, as either executive director or finance person, can assist the board in doing their job, because you need a board that’s active and responsible, and yet, you also know from the start that some of your board members are not very experienced in serving on a board, and some may want to have some guidance from you about their job. What does a board member do, anyway? What are those responsibilities?

So we’ve captured some of the main ones here and want to talk about them just a little bit for each of them. The first one has to do with policies -- policies and procedures. And a lot of times, you’ll even hear a board called a “policy board” or they’ll make a statement like that, where you have a board approves all policy and procedure. And it is true that they’re responsible for evaluating and approving policies for verifying if there are procedures in place related to those policies to make sure that compliance requirements are being followed, but they often do not know what the compliance requirements are.

And so, as a executive director or finance manager, you may need to give background before you present a policy to be approved. You may need to say, “This is required, and here’s the reference in the law.” You may need to say, you know, “Here is the other things that we considered. We are recommending this approach,” and the board would need to make the actual decision about what the policies should be, but they need to have the tools to make a good decision.

So don’t hesitate when you present something. This is true with anything you present to your board. But don’t hesitate to give them a little background first. Whether you put that background also in your policy or not is up to you. Some centers do. So they give a, you know, a little statement at the beginning about the purpose of the policy and, you know, what it refers to.

But the board may need that information, whether you put it into the agenda, or give them a separate sheet, or put it into the policy itself. Give them the tools to make a good decision. And if there is more than one way to accomplish something, tell them what the other options were,
and then say, “This is my recommendation.” Then they can still make a decision about which option they choose, if there are options within that, approaching that particular policy. So kind of keep that in mind.

Procedures are a little bit different, and each of your boards need to make a decision about how much involvement they have in procedures. But unless the policy has to do with the board itself -- typically the procedures are in the hands of the people who do the day to day operations of the program.

So typically, what you would have, as you are going through that process of policy and procedure, you would present the procedures, but remind the board that you may have to change those procedures, and you will do that as needed as part of the natural operations of the board, because, you know, titles change. Responsibilities change.

So, maybe sometime, somebody will come to you with a great idea for streamlining a procedure. That’s always good -- simplify and streamline. So, just -- you need to know. Your board needs to tell you which way they want it to be. But sometimes the procedure is left up to the executive director and the management staff, rather than being a board decision, just because you are in charge of the day to day stuff, and you know if it needs to shift and change based on people’s, you know, requirements for their own situation.

But the board is responsible for evaluating and approving policy -- all policy that has to do with the board, for sure. The bylaws, which is a policy document in many ways, would be part of that. And then they need to be aware of what requirements there are for compliance and that those are followed as well. So they need to look at that on a regular basis.

Sometimes, the board will say they don’t want to be involved in operational policies either. So they’ll say, “Oh no, we want the high-level stuff. We want the finance stuff. We want the big picture decision making. But we aren’t interested in having the, you know, the things that have to do with, you know, fire drills or, you know, whatever happens during the day that you decide you want to make happen at your center. That’s a day to day operational thing.”

So sometimes they will tell you that. I would still urge to you make sure that, if it’s related to compliance, that you note that for them, and you still inform them because that’s the only way they’ll really begin to understand some of the compliance requirements that you have.

The board isn’t responsible for that day to day. They hire you to do that, and you hire the rest of management staff. Speaking to the executive directors here. But you do need to make sure that’s in place.

The board also needs some way to regularly review your operation. Now, that’s one of their responsibilities, but you, as an executive director, are probably the one who is going to provide that information to them. Some of you on the call are program managers or associate directors.
But you’re probably going to work with them to decide what they want to see, and then provide that to them on some kind of a regular basis.

So, you may have reports that you do quarterly on the number of people that you serve.
The same information , sometimes, that you present in the program performance report could be information that you present to the board or at least some key components of that information.

So you can, you know, tell them the range in services that you are providing, tell them the number of people that you are serving, give them information, of course, about the financial operations of the organization and where you stand on that.

We mentioned dashboards yesterday, and a lot of times, the organization’s operations can also be condensed to a dashboard. And you can see a lot of samples on the internet. Google, or whatever search engine that you use, will lead you to dashboard nonprofit, dashboard measurements that you can take a look at to get some ideas. But they need to review regularly, but you want to make it digestible for your board. And they’re coming together for an hour, hour and a half, or two hours, once a month. They don’t have time to be students of everything you do. So you need to assist them by providing them with information that they can use, and that they can absorb, and that they can move on with, so --

>> John: I would just like to emphasize a point that you made. At the beginning of each policy, if you have purpose and objectives of the policy, not only will that help the board member who is going to review it, but I think it would be very helpful if a funder or another auditor was to come in, because it shows that you not only have these procedures, but you have objectives for these procedures, and you understand why they’re being put in place. That’s a great recommendation.

>> Paula: Yeah. You understand why they are being put in place. That’s part of what we talked about at the very beginning, isn’t it, John, where you want to show your competence if you’re being reviewed. You want to show that you know what you are talking about. And so having that already incapsulized [sic] in your policies is going to be a very positive thing during a review or an audit.

The board is also responsible for the relationship to the community that it serves. Often, you will select board members, in fact, because they have influence in the community. There are people that will help you to access certain, you know, demographics. There are people who might help you to connect with potential funders or partners. So you often choose board members for that reason.

Now, I had an executive director check in with me after a review and ask how is the board selection help you with ethnic diversity? And what I usually say is you are required to identify the under-served or unserved areas in the folks in your service area. Who is it that is unserved or under-served? Is it people who live in a certain county because it’s so remote? Is it people of a certain ethnicity because they don’t tend to, you know, come and find you? What is it that you are looking for?

And my feeling is that that’s the board member, then, that you’re looking for. So if you’ve identified -- you know, here in Fresno, identify that the Hmong community does not access our services very frequently, not to the same proportion as other ethnic groups, then we seek out someone from the Hmong community who would make a good board member, because they’re gonna help us do that outreach. So they’re gonna help us be able to do that. If you have a county that’s very remote, especially now that we do all our meetings by Zoom anyway [Laughing] so that people don’t have to travel to board meetings, it’s a great idea to have somebody from that county. They’re gonna help you connect to the community. They’re going to call you up and say, “Hey, did you know we are having a veteran stand down on Tuesday? Can you send somebody up here to talk about the center, because I think that the veterans in our county would really benefit from that?” You know, there is a connection that that board member helps you with when it to the community.
But you need to be thoughtful about board recruitment, because you need to maximize those connections and use them where you most need them. So be sure that you’re looking at all of those things.

It’s also true with types of disability. I mean, that’s another area where you may say, “Well, we really are under-serving the deaf community.” Then you might ask yourself, “Well, then, do we need a deaf board member to assist us with that outreach?” And I think that the answer is anytime you’re wanting to serve a group that’s unserved or under-served, you want to think about is there a board member who could work with you on that access to the community?

Board members must understand the need for services and advocacy in the community, and the nature of services and advocacy offered, including priority of services to be delivered and advocacy to be undertaken.

So if you’ve already got a plan, or if a board is working with you on your strategic plan, then you are going to have a situation where excuse me, I’m gonna close the door. That lawn noise, sorry.

Hopefully that’s better.

Hopefully, you have already identified, in a strategic plan, the areas that you are going to do outreach, the additional services that need to be provided. And then, that’s an opportunity for you to communicate with your board about their role in accomplishing that. So if they understand the needs for services or some specific advocacy needs, then they will know some things that they would say during a conversation with somebody that has influence around that area or somebody who is interested in that area.

So the board members need to understand your strategic plan, which often includes where there are service needs and where there are advocacy needs in the community, so that they can respond to those.

Now, some of you may be thinking, “Not my board. They just aren’t willing to do anything. They just want to come to the meeting, and then they want to go back.” Well, I would this may be true. And you may need to rotate through and get some new board members as you go along. But I would also suggest that some of what you do can change that. If you make sure that they’re fully informed and then tell them what you expect of them, it will be very helpful because they can use the moment to remember what you said and influence that conversation that they’re having in the community with someone that they know. So do think about your role In helping your board to be active as you go through this.

And the board certainly -- oh, yeah. John.

>> John: Oh, I was going to say I know some organizations take a small piece of each board meeting and use it for training, for education about the services or about the operations. Doesn’t have to be a lot, maybe 15 minutes. But it really helps board members have a better grasp of the organization.

>> Paula: Yeah, we do that at our board meetings, and I think it’s very helpful, and it’s never more than 15 minutes. Well, maybe 20 when we use a video clip or something, but 15 or 20 minutes. So you plan an hour and a half meeting, and you know that 15 to 20 minutes of it, it’s gonna be board training. You’re continually providing the board with the tools they need to be good board members. Yeah, absolutely.

Anyway, we were on Slide 162. We were just finishing that slide and mentioned that the board
should be aware of policies regarding payment for services through grants, contract fees, et cetera, and the collection policies that you have as well. This partly relates to the community. If you’re going to be pushing for payment that you haven’t gotten, they need to know in case they’re contracted about that. And also, they need to know how your cash flow is working. We talked about those aging reports being an element of that, related to how well you’re being paid by some of your grants and contracts. So as they do their fiduciary responsibilities, they need to kind of know what’s going on there.

On 163, we talked a little bit about some more of those roles and responsibilities, and one of them is the responsibility from a strategic direction of the organization. We mentioned that you are all required to have a three-year work plan as part of what you report to our funder about, related to the Title 7 funds. So Part B or Part C, which you receive.

You’re expected to have that plan. You comment on that plan in your written report every year. The expectation is that that’s a plan the board was involved in. Well, they may have only done the strategic direction in broad strokes, and the staff has done the rest, which is fine. You still need to have a situation where you know that the board is aware of what you’re doing strategically and you’re reporting on something the board is aware of as well.

In a couple of situations, I’ve heard from executive directors that they don’t do strategic planning, and what they put in that report is what they feel is happening and in a work plan, and that’s really not acceptable. We really expect -- you are really expecting to involve your board and have your board be involved in setting the direction for your center.

They will have some involvement with your annual budget, and long-term budget if you’re planning out several years, which usually, at least roughly, you are doing that. That typically is reviewing and approving them. We recommend that that happen before the beginning of your next fiscal year. So hopefully, y’all had meetings this week for the fiscal year that’s gonna happen next week. But anyway, make sure that they have that opportunity to see what it is you’re spending the money on and approve that as you go into that new fiscal year.

Hopefully, there’s a strong and complementary relationship between board members and staff, but you also have a responsibility to keep the relationship appropriate. And so, it’s a little bit of a balancing act sometimes, especially because of those multiple hats we mentioned the first day, where people who are on the board might also be recipients of services, or they might chair a program committee, or they might otherwise be involved in that way. And when you see that involvement, you have natural reactions between staff and board members. The board members, in that training that you’re gonna provide to them, board members should be clear on what the relationship is, and they are not acting on the board’s behalf when they’re acting alone.

And that’s a real important clarification to make with your board members. The board is only the board when it’s meeting as a board or when it has given authority to somebody to do something. So in a board meeting, they might authorize a certain board member to investigate XYZ. Then, that would be on the behalf of the board. But unless that’s happening, you should not have board members who are starting their own little side investigations ‘cause somebody whispered in their ear that something might be problematic. It should all be going through your processes and your policies.

So if there are complaints, staff need to be guided for how to have a complaint process that’s above board and free of reprisal. And then your board members need to redirect staff to that process, if they get complaints. And just keep saying, “I wanna hear your complaint, but you need to go through this process. Somebody will help you if you aren’t comfortable with doing it, but you need to follow the process.”

And it’s just real important because, otherwise, you have those situations where, sometimes, somebody goes behind the back of the executive director and hasn’t attempted to resolve the issue, just feels like it will be better resolved if she went straight or he went straight to a board member. You wanna make sure that there’s an opportunity to resolve the issue through normal activities, rather than leaping ahead to the board having to take care of that. So when you work out that relationship, that’s an important piece of that.

You wanna be able to help your board members be active, but you also wanna have different levels of skill with your board so that you have people that are interested in finance, somebody that knows something about the law, people who -- of course, our recipients, or have been recipients of services, but also people who are acting in the city government or are otherwise involved in your community in a way that’s gonna be helpful to your organization.

We do suggest a board rotation policy. There isn’t a requirement for that for centers. It is required for SILCs, but it is not required for centers. We still feel like it’s a very important thing to do.

Now, you could make your times kind of long. So you can have a board rotation policy that says that they can serve three three-year terms. That’s nine years total. You know, you don’t have to cut it off at four years or six years. But the board needs to, of course, decide this. But we do suggest some kind of board rotation policy, and if you’re instituting that at the beginning of, you know, a new fiscal year, or whatever, a new election year for your board, at the time that you institute it, you don’t have to do it that next year. You can say, “Okay, these three people are gonna expire in two years. These three people are gonna expire in three years. These three people are gonna expire in four years,” and then we’re gonna this, your rotation policy in place. So take time to initialize it in a way that works well for you now.

Most board members don’t mind having a board rotation policy if they don’t lose their seat right away. And so it’s a good planning tool to give it some time, as you institute it, so that -- I know sometimes, you wanna do it right away. Right? Because you have a board member that you really wish would leave. But you really ought to do it in a way that doesn’t make anybody panic and say, “Oh no, you’re gonna kick me off the board?” So kinda keep that in mind anyway.

The board is responsible for the board. Sometimes, they turn to the executive director and ask the executive director to be responsible for the board. I strongly suggest that the executive director go back to the board chair and say, “Hold everything. You need to be involved with me, because I’m not in charge of the board.” And it’s really, you know, it’s really a relationship, typically between the chair and the executive director, to communicate the things that need to be communicated, to offer the support that the staff can offer to the board in its operations, but to also make sure that the board itself is responsible for the board.

So the next one is just kind of planning again. The board needs appropriate skills and commitment to guide the organization, and that may mean recruitment of additional board members. You can look at your bylaws and see what your bylaws require. Some of you have bylaws that require a specific number of people instead of a range, and that can cause you problems if you lose a board member before you have a chance to replace them.

So if you have that kind of a statement in your bylaws, you may want to consider giving yourself a range of, let’s say, nine to 12 board members. You know, not less than five and not more than nine. Something like that will give you a little more flexibility. It also allows you to keep an open position in case that perfect board member happens to emerge. You want to recruit them quickly to be part of your board. That gives you an opportunity to do that, with more of a range. So we suggest that you look at that.

And the board should do some things to assess its own strengths. We suggest a board self evaluation on some regular basis so that the board is actually looking at its strengths and asking some questions, and then setting its own goals and measuring those goals to see what it is that they need to improve, whether it’s attendance or knowledge [INDISCERNIBLE] philosophy, understanding the financial statements. They should be at assessing where they are and what they want to resolve. And then, that may be the training areas for the next six months or a year, might come directly from that assessment of strengths.

>> John: There are some online tools for board self assessment, I think, particularly at BoardSource.org. So you’ll be able to find those just by searching the internet or searching BoardSource.org.

>> Paula: Yeah, and just look for nonprofit boards, and you’ll get a little bit closer to what it is that you’re seeking. So yeah, BoardSource is one. Blue Avocado is another one that -- they’re connected, actually -- that you’ll see. And then there are several nonprofit groups that provide that kind of support to board. So that’s useful.

Here is some areas that you might want to consider as you’re considering new board members. Do they have expertise in services? Do they know all about how services are supposed to be delivered? Then that might be -- somebody on the board might be very helpful to have in that area. How about marketing? You know, who knows about things like how your presence on Facebook is working [Laughing] or whatever?

Fundraising, of course, is a favorite one, and in fact, we suggest somewhere here that all of your board members are donors. That’s an important part of their influence in the community. There are some funders who will only give you money if all of your board members are also donors. It gets you points in that application to that foundation or whatever it is.

You want people to have at least a good understanding, a sound understanding of finance. It’s helpful to have somebody who understands the law, although sometimes, you know, you don’t wanna cross over and expect them to do that for free. So you wanna make sure that you’re hiring counsel when you need to hire counsel. Whether that’s the board member or not is a conflict-of-interest conversation. But you know, who knows something about personnel and human relations? What about technology? At least be technology savvy enough to know whether your plans seem right or not. And of course, in addition to their at least 51% life experiences as a person with a significant disability, they can have many other areas of expertise that come from their work, or from their family life, or from their education -- all three. So all of those are useful.

You do wanna make sure that your board -- [Mutters] -- you do wanna make sure that your board has the tools -- we said this earlier -- to actually do it. So we suggest an orientation for new board members. We have some self study, the rapid courses on our website. There is a section for board training that you can find on our website. If you ever have trouble searching something and finding it, just drop me an email, and I’ll give you the exact link for the items. And we do have in our resources -- some of those items are listed in our resources at the end of the presentation. But you do need to provide some kind of training, some kind of orientation, when they first come on, and then other training as the board meets as a whole and considers different decisions that they have to make.

Do you have anything in writing about what the board does, their responsibilities in writing? Some people call that a job description. I rather see it as a description of board roles, or something like that, ‘cause it’s not really the job. So you wanna keep that distinction. Top will look at that distinction sometimes.

But do you have a board operations and procedures in your own section in your policy manual? Is that made available to them at the time that they come on board? Do they have copies of the bylaws? Do they have copies of your most recent audit?

So those are some of the things that you wanna make in your most recent performance report. Those are the kinds of things that you wanna make available to members who come on board to have the tools in front of them so that they can actually be effective board members right out of the gate. So as soon as possible, you want them to do that.

Here’s one of the sources for strategic evaluation of it’s -- by the board on its own performance and the impact of the organization. So it’s a tool for collaboration among board members and staff and others to seek out how things are going.

>> John: Yeah, and Paula, that IndependentSector.org, this is one of those nonprofit leaderships groups that has a lot of value for many organizations. Among the things it does is it tracks legislation affecting nonprofits. So they have a sort of a continuous update on things like changes in the rules for charitable contributions. So it’s a worthwhile website to bookmark.

[CROSS TALK]

>> Paula: Another one that you might look at is Compass Point. Like I said, Blue Avocado has a lot of resources for boards, specifically. Blue Avocado is very, very centered on the board, and sometimes, the executive director’s role is downplayed because they work with some organizations that don’t pay an executive director. So they really emphasize the board’s role very strongly. But it has some really good kind of things to take a look at.

That’s the quick and -- quick and dirty? [Laughing] That’s the quick look at board responsibilities. This would be a good time for us to entertain any questions, if we have any board questions. Tim, anything come in so far, or anybody --

>> Tim: No.

>> Paula: -- leave us some?

>> Tim: Let’s take a look. We don’t have any about -- specifically about the board yet, although as more a comment that Jason “Villaji” [phonetic] did. “Just encourage all centers to commit themselves to seeking diverse board members and to improve our work on diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

>> Paula: Absolutely. Yeah.

>> Tim: And then while we’re waiting for questions on board members, and just a quick recap, since we haven’t done questions yet today, you can enter them in the Ask a Question on Media site, but if you can’t access that for any reason, you’re welcome to email them to me. If you’re only on the phone, you can press star nine to indicate you have a question.

Barbara’s asking, “Can you use subcontractors that you have a personal relationship with as long as there is no conflict of interest?” What’s the best way to handle that, John?

>> John: Well, so you start with a presumption of a conflict of interest, if you’re the individual who would hire that person. So you’ve got to do whatever you can to demonstrate that this is in the best interests of the organization. Typically, somebody you have a relationship with, you have higher expectations of, and they may have a greater commitment to you.

So we’re not gonna suggest that you shy away from people like that, but you should at least look at the competitive prices. Document why they are the best choice for the organization. If the relationship is between a board member, you know, who -- or a senior officer of the organization, it’s particularly important to disclose that relationship if there’s a vote on whether this person or this company is going to do something. Then the person with the potential conflict wouldn’t be involved in the vote. They could describe their relationship. They could speak in behalf of the organization and their organization’s willingness to do things, but they wouldn’t be involved in any debate or voting, if it got down to that. It doesn’t always, but if it got down to that.

>> Paula: Yeah, and you know, declaring that there is a potential conflict doesn’t mean that there even is a conflict. It’s just that you start, as you said, John, with the presumption that, if anyone might perceive it to be a conflict, it ought to be disclosed as the decision’s being made. And the decision maker who has the relationship should not be involved in that decision. So even if it’s a decision that the management makes, you know, step back. Let somebody else, you know, vet the people who they are considering and make the choice so that it’s still making sure there’s no conflict. Yeah.

>> Tim: Take a look. Okay. We’ve got a few other questions that have rolled in. Annette’s wondering, “What are your thoughts on background studies for new board members before their appointments begin?”

>> Paula: Hmm. Background checks like criminal background checks? I wonder if that’s --

>> Tim: I assume -- I assume that’s what she means. I’ve not heard it called a “background study”, but I imagine that’s what we’re talking about here.

>> Paula: So if we’re talking about a criminal background check, you know, you do at least wanna make sure that your board members are interviewed. We suggest an application process so that they can -- so that anybody can -- any board member or, you know, staff member can hand or give a leg to an application. And they will all be considered by the nominating committee or something. That gives you a little bit of control over the impulsive, you know, “My neighbor would be great. Here’s his name. Let’s vote for him today,” you know, which sometimes happens on small boards. So a nominating committee and an application process, which gives you time to check some things.

So at a minimum, you can search and see if they have a Facebook page and learn what you can learn about, you know, the kinds of wisdom they do or don’t show. You can take a look at some other, you know, community searches. You can certainly do a criminal background check. Typically, the board doesn’t have -- doesn’t have their hands on anything that would cause them to -- cause you to be worried about that, but you certainly don’t want a reputation issue. So you know, I wouldn’t be opposed to it. I just don’t see it happen very often. Usually, when you’re, hopefully, bringing in people that you already know some things about.

John, do you have any idea?

>> John: Yeah. I agree with that. If there isn’t any direct contact with the individuals you’re serving, then it’s not as much of a necessity to have those background checks.

>> Paula: Mm-hmm. And not as much contact with actually making financial transactions, either. You know? So those are your areas at risk, and both of those are usually not an area of risk for a board member.

>> Tim: Right. Cathy’s wondering if we have recommendations for a number of hours that should be expected from board members -- weekly, monthly, yearly, whatever time frame.

>> Paula: Yeah, that varies a lot from center to center. So you’ll wanna think about that. To start with, you wanna think about your meeting time. So that’s right out of the gate. You always wanna make sure you include that. Typically, you include one or two fundraising options that they would be involved in. So maybe you have an annual dinner. Maybe you have a, you know -- I don’t know -- pancake food or whatever it is you’re doing to raise money, and you would expect board involvement in that, as well. And then, some of their community influencing on your behalf. So you know, lay that out in that document that describes the board responsibilities, because the time frame is important to most of these folks. They wanna know, “Okay, what am I committing to?”

The length of your board meetings is gonna be part of this, in that the length of your board meetings that may very well change every time you change chair, because how one person runs a meeting is different from how the next person runs the meeting, and how efficient people are in moving through it. I may be -- I’m a chair right now. I may be too efficient, ‘cause sometimes, I’m ready to say, “Okay, we’re done with our agenda. Meeting adjourned,” and they still have something to say, and I’m embarrassed to say I have to sometimes say, “Oh, I’m sorry. I should have asked if there was anything else.” [Laughing]

But other people wanna, you know, stop and have a, you know, almost a social conversation about some of the decisions that they’re making, and so, you know, if that’s the board’s current way of operating, their meeting’s gonna be longer. Some of you have meetings that are maybe too short. I’m not sure you can usually do business adequately in an hour, although I like to think an hour and a half might be enough. But that’s gonna vary so much from one to the next.

Do estimate the time. Can’t tell you what, exactly, that estimate would look like in your particular area.

>> John: And then, in larger organizations that have committees, we really encour -- or you should encourage members, board members, to be on one of the committees in their area of interest. So it could be, you know, executive committee, personnel committee, development, whatever committee is appropriate. And so, consider that time as well.

>> Paula: Sometimes a finance committee, not a committee.

>> John: Right.

>> Paula: Sometimes services committee. Some of the centers have a services committee of staff and board, and they explore different service delivery models as part of their tasks. So yeah, whatever their area of interest is, there may be something there for them.

One thing, one word about committees, I suggest that, if you’re doing your bylaws anyway, don’t put a whole bunch of committees in your bylaws and require yourself to do all of them. Put in what you really know you must have, and then have the option for the chair to appoint additional committees as needed. That way, as you, you know, fluctuate in size or as other things come up, you won’t be caught in the situation where you cannot sustain all the committees that you’re required to do in your own bylaws. So do try to keep that simple.

I’ve seen organizations that have -- this is true of the church that I go to -- they have -- we’re not big enough for this. [Laughing] But they have committees outlined in the bylaws, and so you’re required. And a charities committee is on the church council, and then, you know, this kind of structure is very difficult to do with a small group of people. People end up on multiple committees. Then why don’t we just do it all together at the council instead of having committees do it and then repeat it, and then, you know, half the people had already done it, and so on. So do think about whether or not you really need all the committees that you have, and only put the necessary ones in the bylaws.

For example, if you have the executive committee making decisions on behalf of the board in between board meetings, if you all empower them in that way, that would need to be in your bylaws. But other things may not. So consider that.

>> Tim: Okay. Great. So Tammy’s wondering if it would be acceptable to give board members a small gift in recognition of their service, say, once a year? Any issues they’re gonna run afoul of there, John?

>> John: Yeah, probably not if you really mean a small gift. It’s not uncommon to have some sort of a token of appreciation. You know, usually, these aren’t very, we’ll call them, fungible things. Maybe a plaque, or a picture, or something like that, that just recognizes their service. So something like that wouldn’t be a problem. A pool of money could be a problem.

>> Paula: Well, I -- yeah, I had a question about this, and I addressed it on my blog just a few posts ago. So I’ll put that in the chat, but usually, you wanna keep it, like John said, very simple. Or sometimes, it’s a -- it becomes a tradition, whatever it is. If it’s something desirable, like a picture that represents something about your center that you think people might like to hang on their wall, or whatever, then you have a, you know, as people go off the board, they get this award. Those kinds of things make sense.

But the question on the blog was about paying them a stipend. You can certainly reimburse them for mileage. You can certainly reimburse them for other expenses if they come from some distance. You can assist them with accessing the meetings. And so, if they don’t have other access to Zoom, for example, you can work with them on making sure that they have access to their responsibilities as a board through a hotspot or some other kind of help that’s practical in nature. But you really can’t -- you can’t pay them. [Laughing] You know? I don’t feel like we shouldn’t, but there’s a link there in the chat, if you’re interested and want to know more about that.

>> Tim: Okay, great. Those are all the questions we have for now.

>> Paula: All righty. Well, we have a fun one now, and John loves to talk about this, so I’m gonna let him go now.

>> John: [Laughing] All right. Yeah, where to get free stuff. I mean, this is nice. It’s a good way, as we get on the glide path, getting ready to throw our graduate caps into the air here after this several-day program.

But there have been a couple organizations that provide free things for nonprofits, but TechSoup.org, which is a nonprofit itself, has stepped up more than any other. They’ve had a technology focus all along and continue to. So they offer a variety of products -- software, even hardware in some cases. But one of the key things is Microsoft Office 365, and this is a tool for collaboration. It’s something that’s really valuable for remote workers, which is today’s reality. But it’s complicated, and it has several aspects to it, and you really need to be knowledgeable about how to implement this.

So what TechSoup has done is they also now have training. I think there’s some fee for it, but very, very reasonable. And it will help you implement this complicated, very, very intensive program to allow you to, you know, to share files, to collaborate in some ways like we do on Zoom, through their Teams product. So that’s a good one.

QuickBooks, which we’ve said many of you use, should be updated every three years. After three years, Intuit stops supporting the product, so it’s subject to risk. There can be vulnerabilities in it after that that aren’t fixed. It’s not a terribly expensive program as it is, but you can get it for just an administrative fee once you register with TechSoup.org and just provide documentation that you are a charitable nonprofit.

And there’s also online training for QuickBooks and other accounting programs. If you’re using something other than QuickBooks and you need updates, just check with them. But there are also donor tracking programs, things of that nature.

One that’s a favorite for some individuals -- and I noticed that it was available here -- Mileage IQ. This is a neat little device that easily tracks your business and personal mileage. So if somebody’s using a vehicle for both and doing that fairly extensively, that’s a nice program. And it’s outside of TechSoup. It’s quite expensive, but a lot of realtors and people like that will buy it just because it does a great job of tracking your business versus your personal mileage.

And you can actually now get laptops, desktops. They’re generally refurbished but under $400. Seems like, right now, there isn’t that great a need because we’ve got, you know, we’ve got some other funding for brand new equipment. But the refurbished equipment usually comes with a warranty. It’s usually in very good condition. And to get computers, even laptops, for under $400 is a good deal.

>> Paula: Sometimes, you’ll wanna do that in the computer lab at your center for more access for consumers, once we reopen, assuming we do soon. [Laughing] So that’s a place where a lot of center have been able to pull in some resources for their labs.

>> John: Yep. So I suggest you make a note. Go to their website. Really explore it a bit, you know, not just for the free stuff that we talked about, but they’ve got quite a list of products from HP, Dell, Norton, and Adobe. They have a help desk to provide help with software implementation. And they have a lot of educational articles about how to do certain things. So if you’re getting into, let’s say, donor tracking for the very first time, not only do they have free software for you for donor tracking, you know, free up to a certain volume, and then over that volume, they may charge, but the software vendor may charge, but they’ll help you with the implementation of that.

There were some others we used in the past, but TechSoup, I think, has stepped up more. They really seem to have a mission now to help nonprofits. I wonder, you know, if anybody has any suggestions about other sources for free stuff, please share that in the --

[CROSS TALK]

>> Paula: Yeah, drop it in the chat or put it in the question pane, if you know of other resources like this for free items, ‘cause you’re right, John. There used to be several. TechSoup has kind of emerged as the leader there, but there may be some others that we’re not aware of and not pointing out to.

>> John: Yeah, I think it’s N-A-I-E-R. They’re still around. I think they’re --

>> Paula: Oh yeah.

>> John: -- they’re a dot com. I don’t know whether they’re a commercial organization or a nonprofit. I mean, they still collect things from organizations, commercial organizations with surplus products, and will distribute them to registered nonprofits, but I just don’t have the same warm, fuzzy feeling from them that I do from TechSoup.

>> Paula: My experience with Naier, for what it’s worth, was that they have a lot of products that you don’t really -- they aren’t interesting to you, you know? So you get a box of obsolete greeting cards. You know? That may or may not be something that you really want. And they always give you more of what you don’t want than what you do want.

[LAUGHTER]

>> ‘Cause they’re trying to, you know, favor their -- the people who are donating those products, you know, in some ways. So it’s -- yeah. I like TechSoup better. I think it’s more practical.

>> John: Tim, has anyone popped in with any other suggestions?

>> Tim: No, I haven’t seen any others come in.

>> John: Okay.

>> Paula: How about other questions, Tim?

>> Tim: Oh, Barbara just offered the app, Stride. “Helps with mileage tracking.” She says she’s not sure about accessibility, but just another option to Mileage IQ.

And did you say questions, Paula?

>> Paula: Yes, if you have some more.

>> Tim: No, I haven’t gotten any other questions, but we’re getting to the end here, so if folks start addressing those questions that are still burning --

>> Paula: Any topic that has to do with [INDISCERNIBLE].

>> Tim: Anything we’ve talked about the last three and a half days, please let us know.

>> John: Or should have. [Laughing]

>> Paula: Yeah. Did we forget something that you want to talk about now?

>> Tim: And while we wait for those to come in, I’ll just plug those evaluations again, if you didn’t hear me when we started this morning. On the Training webpage, at the very top of the Materials page, look closely. The names of the surveys have changed. It’s not the same evaluations you’ve already completed. So at the top of the Materials page on the Training webpage, that will now say, “Post-course survey” and “Satisfaction Survey”. And we want to please ask for a few minutes of your time when we close today to fill that out so that we can see what you learned and so that we can see what you thought.

>> Paula: Absolutely. Well, we have a few resources for you. The Financial Management page has a lot of the different things on it for our ILR.org webpage. Of course, these resources will continue to be posted for you, and you’ll have access to them. Sample policies and procedures are also there on Slide 169. And then we identified quite a few other resources for you. So there are several slides of these kind of resources. But here are some of what they offer -- a sample [INDISCERNIBLE] policy, information from the Nonprofit Risk Center, codes of ethics from the Council of Nonprofits, corporate compliance. So these are just areas from organizations that might be useful for you to know about and bookmark. So Independent Sector, you see that, and Blue Avocado, Nonprofit Risk, Council of Nonprofits,

CARF.org, which is an accrediting body that has a little information about something that might be useful to you. CFR.gov, and then Uniform Administrative Requirements. We’ve got the actual link to those online where you can read them for yourself, copy, reference, or whatever you need to do. That’s true also of Uniform Guidance, which is the more generic of the financial things. Regulations are there. That’s found in 45-CFR-1329. But there’s the actual link. And then there’s a webpage for us on ACL.gov, if you haven’t found that yet, for independent living, and this link is directly to that review process that we’ve mentioned, where they do a compliance review.

And then there are also reports submitted by the IL network. You can find that there. That will be where your PPR, your program performance reports, will be posted, I assume this next year, as well as the state plans for living are posted there. And there are other documents that are -- reports that are provided by the department that are there as well. So you can just kind of look through and see what resources might be useful for you.

All right. Any last questions? Hi, Dory. [Laughing]

>> Tim: We do. So Barbara’s wondering, Paula, “Is there any situation where federal money could be used for lobbying, like for advocacy?”

>> Paula: Well, yeah. Lobbying -- advocacy is broader than lobbying. Let me start there. So you are required to advocate. You’re required to provide that as a core service, but it’s also part of the purpose of the program. And so you are required to advocate for the rights and equal access of people with disabilities, and you may do that in a number of ways. And that is always allowed.

There are some areas that might be called lobbying that will be allowed, which have to do with educating vote makers without telling them what they should do. So if you wanna provide them with the -- an impact statement of how, you know, how the people with disabilities are reacting to some proposed legislation, you can provide them with the impact statement. You know, “Among the 400 people that we talk to about this, here’s the number that said they were impacted by this issue,” and you don’t tell them to vote for or against, but you tell them, “Here’s material that tells you about how the community is viewing this particular legislation.” You can’t take that next step and say, “So support it,” or “So, you know, don’t support it,” unless you’re gonna pay for that time separately with discretionary balance.

I don’t know if that helps. So [Laughing] so lobbying, you know, lobbying with federal funds is what’s prohibited. You certainly can lobby. You just need to keep track and make sure you don’t do it with federal dollars.

So my answer would be no, you can’t lobby with federal dollars, but if you’re defining some of what happens in advocacy as lobbying, then that might be different. I don’t know. John, you look like you have something to add.

>> John: Well, I was just gonna say there is certain lobbying that actually is allowed. You know, we’re not gonna get into a lot of detail on this, but lobbying that would allow you to continue your programs or services, or even lets you continue as an organization certainly would be allowable. So, but there’s some great training on that, some great resources. We didn’t really talk too much about this. Paula, you said there’s not only online resources but I’ve listed some upcoming programs as well.

>> Paula: Yeah, we have a lot on our website on this topic. And Tim, I know that you all or NCIL have also done quite a bit on this topic.

>> Tim: Yeah, we’ve -- in fact, we had one just last year that was part of our national organizing project with the CORE Foundation that is a great resource that I can share with people. What we defined exactly what SILs can do. I know it’s come up a lot in the modules for this training and some of the other trainings that we’ve done. I think it’s part of the core service training, where we talk about advocacy. So we have a lot of resources. So whether you wanna look up some of those trainings, or whether you wanna send us questions, we’d be happy to talk more with y’all about --

>> Paula: Either one. If you search our website with the term, “lobbying”, it’ll pop up quite a few resources that you’ll be able to look at. Regarding that, I will say this, that our -- as the training on technical assistance entity, our description of lobbying to you is based on the interpretation of our funder. And so that’s what we provide to you. What NCIL provides to you may give you some additional insights that we don’t address. Did that make sense?

So you might take a look at that, at what NCIL has on it, because it will be very much more nuts and bolts for you as a center.

>> Tim: Yeah, I just posted the link to that webpage, where you can find the recording and transcript, to the chat.

>> Paula: Great.

>> Tim: Jackie is wondering, “There was a lot of good board training that Bob Michaels had put together. I’ve lost the resource for this. Do you have it available?”

>> Paula: [Laughing] We have everything that he ever did, I think. [Laughing] It isn’t all on our website. Some of that’s been archived, but yeah, we do have that information available, if you wanna go back and look at it. Some of that has morphed into the training that we offer, you know, ‘cause we carry forward good ideas as much as we can. So you will find some of that there, as well.

>> Tim: Any last questions? We’re gonna stay on for a couple extra minutes, just because we lost some time earlier while we worked on the captioning. So any last questions that you all want to pose? And then I am going to walk through some of the -- just some of the follow-up items, like our videos and the training web page and all of that. But if you have any content questions, now’s the time.

Okay. Let me begin to roll through that, and then if you guys -- if any questions pop up, we’ll address them.

So, I have already plugged the evaluations. Let me do that again. So, please, do, like, in realtime as I’m talking. [Laughing] I’m going to ask for your favor. We didn’t charge for this training. So I’m going to ask that your investment be to take a few extra minutes, before you go off and have your lunch or whatever you might do, to fill out the post-course survey and the evaluation survey. And let us know what you thought of the training.

And we really do take your feedback very seriously. We care a lot about the quality of these trainings, and we can’t do that without your thoughts. So, I know it’s easy to go ahead and do the numerical scores, but please, please, please, if you give us a five, you know, if you loved it, tell us why. And if you give us low scores, I hope you won’t, but if you feel like there are things you feel we didn’t do well, please tell us why. There’s nothing more frustrating than getting an evaluation back with low scores and not knowing what that individual wanted from you.

And look at the numbers carefully, ‘cause sometimes, we’ll get one back that’s all ones, which are the lowest scores, and the only comment will say, “Loved it.”

[LAUGHTER]

>> Tim: So make sure, when you look at that Likert scale, that you are paying attention to the numbers that you’re circling.

The videos. Okay. So, we are, again, we’re fixing -- we’re -- are any minute now, we should have that corrected video back from Day One. And then, we’ll start to get these videos up on this same training page in short order. And our technician let us know they can host those for up to a year. At some point, we’ll probably migrate these over to ILRU.org. But in the meantime, I want you all to know that after today’s training, can you continue to revisit this site and access those videos.

Now, this will be password protected. So, for right now, it’s just for those of you that registered and attended the training. But, presumably, we will -- I would imagine ILRU will be migrating this to their site in the future so that everyone can access the content.

And speaking of ILRU, I just want to acknowledge everyone behind the scenes that made this training possible. You know, John, Paula, and I have been on camera, but we have a whole team of folks who have spent months working on this content, and I just want to acknowledge everyone at ILRU that helped with this. Richard Petty, of course, Carol Eubanks, Sharon Finney. Dione Rousseau, Burt Curtis. On the NCIL side, Eleanor and Denise put a ton of time into supporting our run up to this. So I want to thank all of them.

John and Paula, just an outstanding job. I can’t tell you, you know, Paula and I get to work together all the time on these trainings, but John and I only get to work with each other every few years. And it’s just -- it’s always such a great experience. And I was chatting on a team call this morning just about how much new content there has been, literally, that even in a financial management training, where so much stays the same because of accounting practices -- the regulations, and the impact of CARES Act and COVID, there really has been so much new content. And you guys have really made a very dense, often dry topic really engaging. And I really appreciate your work in doing that. You guys are really an excellent team, and we appreciate it.

And to our audience, thanks to all of you. I know that three and a half days, even in these shorter, virtual blocks, is a lot to set aside, and I was looking through our participant reports this morning, and our numbers have been outstanding and really consistent, too. So you guys really have come through every day and stayed engaged. And we really appreciate that. And even through the delay that we had today, while we fixed our access problems. So thanks so much to all of you.

And we’re not going anywhere. Right? The nice thing about the ILNet project is that we are providing training and technical assistance year around. So, just because the training is ending, of course you can access the videos, but you can contact Paula or me any time you’d like. And whether it’s something that we have discussed here today or anything else related to running your center that you need support with, I hope you will take advantage of that.

You know, NCIL, IRLU, and April -- we all participate in the project. And you can contact any of us for support on issues that you want to work through. So please do take advantage of that. Hopefully, those of you that have been involved in IL for a long time know that through and through but especially for those of you that are new to your position or new to your center, please know we are here to help.

So John and Paula, anything else that you’d like to add before we close?

>> John: No, just thank you for those kind words. We appreciate it.

>> Tim: Great.

>> Paula: It was fun. [Laughing]

>> John: It was.

>> Paula: Not as fun as in person, but it was fun.

>> Tim: Yeah, I certainly miss the one-on-one interaction and all of that. You know, we’re all learning together how to do these virtual events, and I hope, at some point, we’ll learn how to add some of that, you know, the social interaction. But, for right now, this is the best we can get out of a virtual format, and I hope that, at some point in the relatively near future, we can do some of these in person again.

But, thanks to all of you. I hope you have an excellent afternoon, and we hope to hear from you soon. Don’t forget about those evaluations, please. And we will see you on the other side. Thanks. Bye bye.

>> Paula: Bye bye.

[END OF TRANSCRIPT]