564. Disrupt. Grow. Adapt. Repeat: Future-Proofing Strategies for Modern Orgs - Brooke Richie-Babbage, Erin Davison, Nelvin Johnson, and Amy Freitag

Meet Amy, Nelvin, Erin + Brooke. Are you looking for insights on future-proofing your organization against the ever-evolving landscape of challenges and opportunities in the sector? They’ve got you covered in this Responsive Nonprofit Summit Replay. From embracing failure to building resilient teams and fostering innovation, discover actionable approaches to ensure your nonprofit remains agile, sustainable, and impactful in the face of uncertainty.

💡Learn 

• Ways to Create a Culture that Embraces Failure + Innovation  
• How to Focus on Sustainability - Organizationally + as Individuals 
• The Importance of Leveraging the Power of Community

Today’s Guests

• Amy Freitag, President, The New York Community Trust 
• Nelvin Johnson, Director of Advancement, Feed the Children
• Erin Davison, President & CEO, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Southwest Louisiana
• Brooke Richie Babbage, Founder + CEO, Bending Arc Consulting

Episode Highlights

• Hallmarks of a future-proof organization (2:30)
• Personal and organizational sustainability (7:40)
• Limiting factors in the nonprofit sector (12:10)
• Fostering urgency to adapt and evolve (16:30)
• Embracing failure (20:40)
• How community foundations work together to tackle major issues (25:05)
• Building resilience and adaptability (29:00)
• Cultivating growth and impact through community engagement (36:15) 
• One Good Things from Amy, Brooke, Erin + Nelvin (38:35)

For more information + episode details visit: weareforgood.com/episode/564.

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Chapters

• 0:53 Future-Proofing Nonprofit Organizations
• 4:26 Building Sustainable Nonprofit Leadership
• 13:06 Embracing Urgency for Nonprofit Innovation
• 18:03 Fostering Innovation and Collaboration for Change
• 33:03 Navigating Nonprofit Challenges With Resilience
• 44:40 Gratitude to Nonprofit Sponsors

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:53

Hey, I'm John.

Speaker 2: 0:54

And I'm Becky.

Speaker 1: 0:55

And this is the we Are For Good podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:58

Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.

Speaker 1: 1:07

We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.

Speaker 2: 1:16

So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.

Speaker 1: 1:26

So let's get started.

Speaker 2: 1:29

Hey John.

Speaker 1: 1:30

Hey B. I mean, it's a day that we get to talk about and center one of our core values that we are for good, so it's definitely a good day around here, and that value we're talking about is disrupt, grow, adapt, repeat. Say it again with me, right, friends? I mean, this is really a plan for how do you future-proof our strategies for organizations, and this is a replay from a panel we had at the virtuous responsive nonprofit summit, but y'all it was so good we had to bring it to the podcast to give it the airwaves and really the time and attention that it deserves, because, look, if you're looking for insights of how to future-proof, what does that even mean, right? So this Rockstar Panels, we have got this topic covered. We're going to be talking everything from leveraging tech to building our resilient teams, fostering innovation what does that really look like and mean? To discovering actionable approaches to ensure our nonprofits remain agile and sustainable and impactful and heck places we actually want to work important to, too. So I'm so excited for this one.

Speaker 2: 2:19

John, I got to pull a quote, your favorite quote from Jurassic Park to tee up our panelists. Hold on to your butts, because this conversation and their counsel is so unbelievably good and helpful. It's a pleasure to introduce Amy Freitag. She's the president of the New York Community Trust. Nelvin Johnson, formerly the development officer at the Bowery Mission, now at Feed the Children. Erin Davison she's the president and CEO at Big Brothers, big Sisters of Southwest Louisiana and my dear friend Brooke Ritchie Babbage at Bending Art Consulting. If you are ready to future-proof your organization, this is the playbook to get it done. Enjoy, friends. Let's talk about the case for disruption. And, amy, I'm going to go to you first, because I think a lot of people think of these historic organizations as sort of being stuck in the past, and you have done the exact opposite, and I wanted you to talk a little bit about some of the hallmarks of becoming a future-proof organization, because you are stewarding this 100-plus-year-old organization and making it so relevant to the now. Talk to us about that.

Speaker 3: 3:21

I am so excited to be here, and you know I love talking about this more than anything, so thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, and I'm super excited to spend time with Nelvin, erin and Brooke, so grateful for this. Look, I'm just super honored to be the president of this extraordinary organization, one of the oldest community foundations in the country, one that was carefully constructed by my predecessors to be future-proof, and they did that, I think, by being innovative, and innovative over a hundred years. For example, I don't think we talked about this before Newsflash 1931, the first donor advised fund.

Speaker 4: 4:02

Yay.

Speaker 3: 4:12

Wow held by public charities, including 800 community foundations. So you know, that's why, actually this past week, I've been in Washington sort of trying to defend the donor advised fund as a great democratizer of philanthropy. Because, let's face it, many of those 2 million funds are held by people that could never afford to have a private family philanthropy or private foundation, right. So these are donors, many of whom make really pretty modest contributions. I will say that our average staff donor grant is only $1,500 and maybe the balance is only $50,000, but you know what they're paying out at 20%, 15 to 30% relative to private foundation. So these are people. This idea that people are sitting on resources. We don't see that in our donors. We see school teachers, firefighters, cab drivers making funds to put their dollars to work in New York City. So look, that's just one piece and what we do. And here's my thing, and you guys know this I am a big believer that nobody knows what the heck a community foundation is. So whenever I have an audience like this, people, I'm going to go for it. But, right, so we've been holding these donor advised funds, but we've also been holding what we call permanent funds for 100 years. And what's a permanent fund. Those are things that are left to us in a will Right. What's a permanent fund? Those are things that are left to us in a will right, and what we do is we stitch those various funds in this case 2,300 funds in New York and it's eight counties we serve Westchester to the east end of Long Island and we stitch those together to create this kind of crazy quilt of generosity that wraps around 12.4 million New Yorkers across the eight counties. So and that's what I think makes us future-proof right, it's particularly those permanent funds.

Speaker 3: 6:00

And I may have shared this anecdote with you, but I'm going to do it real quickly. So if you loved theater a hundred years ago in New York City and you loved entertainment, there was one entertainer you knew and his name was David Warfield, and he was the wealthiest entertainer in the world in 1920. Fast forward, last decade of his life he becomes blind and he is so struck by the loss of vision that he leaves a fund at the New York Community Trust millions of dollars in 1951, to help people with vision loss and blindness. Fast forward, today we've made tens of millions of dollars of grants in David Warfield's name. We are the largest funder of disability in the region. 90% of our dollars we put on the street every year are because of David Warfield.

Speaker 3: 6:46

So if you love your community, you want to leave a permanent fund at the New York Community Trust or whatever your community foundation is, because that makes your nonprofit vision for your city future-proof. And then you won't be surprised to know that no one died 15 years ago to say you know what you should do, you should fight climate change. Or you know what you should do you should close the Rikers Island. And so that's why we need living donors, donor advice funds, working with those permanent funds, to come together to solve the issues we're trying to combat today, and that has real power.

Speaker 3: 7:21

If I look at Nelvin, we have made something like 117 donor advised fund grants to the Bowery Mission in the last 25 years, which comes to like hundreds of thousands of dollars, right. So it's the power of collective action, and that's what I think makes us so powerful. But, man, do we need to do a lot of work technology, engaging new donors, putting a fresh face on our organization. You'll see all that happening this year, and you know it's work that needs to be done. So people know who the heck we are. So that's my pitch for Future Proof Invest in your local community foundation and make it as permanent as you can.

Speaker 1: 7:59

I mean, I'm from Oklahoma.

Speaker 2: 8:01

I want to like put a fund in New York.

Speaker 1: 8:04

Let's do this, but I love, I love that you talk about this patchwork quilt, like I really, I really do believe in this mosaic that y'all have created that is really surrounding with such care and love for the city. So OK, brooke, I gotta kick it to you because we're talking about sustainability. I feel like this is one of the things we love to jam about with you, because it's not just about sustainability of our mission, like we always go back to, like sustaining ourselves as leaders. I mean, if we're gonna be future-proof, we gotta take care of ourselves. What does this stir up in you? I mean you into this combo.

Speaker 5: 8:33

Absolutely. First, I love the question because, as we've talked about, if you don't, if we don't prioritize sustainability, we're going to burn out. I don't think it's an accident that we are seeing incredible leaders across our sector tap out just say I can't do this anymore. I loved it when I started, I love the mission and I am, I am done, and I think that is tragic. I think when we have strong nonprofits and social impact organizations that are on the front line of fixing what's broken in our society, our society gets better, and when those leaders can't sustain themselves, our society loses. So this is, as you know, deeply personal for me and the coaching that I do. I was talking to a leader the other day who started crying as she was describing that she'd lost this sense of connection to her mission and why she had started, and she was afraid. She wasn't even crying because she'd lost it. She was crying because she was afraid she'd never get that back. And so a lot of what I do with the leaders that I work with is around this question of sustainability, and I think the answer is twofold. I think it's both personal and structural. I think it's about making sure that we have the personal resources, that we are honest about the personal resources we need and that we have them to keep moving forward without feeling like we're grinding. And I think it's about making sure that we invest in the infrastructure around us to support us in doing that.

Speaker 5: 10:04

When I talk with the leaders that I coach and support about this sort of duality, this two parts of sustainability, we talk about things like, on the personal side, identifying and leading from your zone of genius, knowing what puts you in that state of flow. I've heard it Shonda Rhimes calls it being in the hum. Right when you're working hard. Right, we know this is hard work, but it doesn't feel like a grind. It feels like it's coming from some universal force that you're tapping into and when you're in that flow, you can sustain yourself right. So how do you find and lead from that? How do you build your crew right, your network of guidance and mentorship and accountability, the people that you can be vulnerable with and fall down in front of.

Speaker 5: 10:50

Usually, for me, this was other executive directors who understood what I meant when I called and shared a story that only maybe someone else in my role would get right. How do you build that crew to sustain yourself? At the same time we talk about with these leaders organizational resilience, and I don't necessarily mean mission resilience, I mean structural resilience that supports the leader in doing the work. Do you have the right people in the right roles? Do you have the right team? Do you have systems in place and I am a, you know, virgo INFJ, as Becky knows total, you know, trapper, keeper, post-it, note girl. So I think a lot about systems and processes, and they're not sexy, but they actually matter right when we think about sustaining people and doing their work. Have you arranged the building blocks of your organization in a way that will allow it to be stable? So for me, this question of personal sustainability is both about us as individuals in our roles and organizational. I think they're both really key.

Speaker 2: 11:53

I knew you were going to say that Now everyone knows why we love BRB and I mean you were the first person to bring in this concept to me of like sustainable sisterhood and getting your squad around you because no one needs to go into this work alone.

Speaker 2: 12:07

I am so overjoyed to say that BRB is in my sustainable sisterhood and welcome anyone in. You don't have to be a sister to come in. But I think one of the through lines we've heard flow several times already today and it's like how do we get back to that center of why we love this work, how do we embrace it differently without losing our humanity? And, nelvin, I just think you have such a unique purview to this because after 10 years on Wall Street doing finance, doing sales, you jump back in. You have this desire to really do something that is deeply meaningful in your work, and so I think it gives you a unique lens into what holds this sector back, what keeps us from future proofing? How are we limiting ourselves by not embracing risk, failure, innovation? What are some of the things you've seen as you've kind of come into the sector in the last couple of years?

Speaker 6: 13:03

Oh, so much, Becky, so much. I'm really grateful for this time and I'm really grateful for this conversation, because I don't think it's one that we can have enough. You know, I think we need to be having this conversation more. I think we need to be having it more consistently with more people, with our internal staff, with their donors, but for me, I think the biggest thing that holds our missions and sector back are threefold, at least that's what I see. I think it's fear of failure, like you said, a scarcity mindset and tempered vision.

Speaker 4: 13:36

And I'm going to touch on all three, but even before I start.

Speaker 6: 13:37

Here's the thing A lot of this is not our fault, and I'm going to touch on all three. But even before I start, like here's the thing, A lot of this is not our fault. So I need us to embrace that first. This is a. It's been this way for generations, you know. For so long the social sector has been held back and held captive almost by these oppressive rules that hold us back from explosive growth and keep us from fulfilling our the true scale of like, what our missions can and should be and if you haven't heard Dan Palazzo's Ted talk on it, or movie Uncharitable, I'll link it later.

Speaker 6: 14:12

But an absolute necessity Go back to fear of failure. We're so bogged down right With endless tasks that we don't leave any room to think outside the box and experiment. We're so scared of failure. What if this donor sees us fail? What if this board member doesn't like what we're doing? I wish we could just have big signs everywhere that just says failure is part of the process. It's a detour on the way to something greater. You know, it's a detour on the way to something greater. So I think the question we need to ask is how can we foster a culture where failing is OK if we're all learning from it.

Speaker 6: 14:47

And then to touch on scarcity mindset, I have a lot of resources on this, so if you want more, feel free to connect with me offline. But scarcity mindset is. It's one that's driven by a fear of that failure, criticism and loss. It believes that there's not enough to go around, not enough funding, not enough volunteers, not enough skills or opportunities right. But when you compare that to a growth mindset, the growth mindset really believes in the ability to learn, to adapt and to create new resources, Believes there's enough resources and opportunities to go around for everybody to succeed. It fosters partnership and sharing and embraces innovation and risk-taking.

Speaker 6: 15:31

I know I said that before. It wasn't our fault. Things are the way they are. But when we start thinking about tempered vision, right now we have the resources. So now I feel like it is on us. Now we know better so we can do better.

Speaker 6: 15:46

You know, yes, we're strapped down by a million things on our to-do list, but what if we dedicated like 30 minutes a week to just start thinking about and dreaming about what innovation and dreaming boldly actually looks like for you and for your organization? One of the biggest questions I always ask is like what if we? What if, instead of giving our program teams a bare bones budget to work with and telling them that they can only do what fits inside X, what if we asked them what they really needed to do, the work they really want to do, to not only grow in scale and depth? Because I think the real vision, the one that we want to communicate, the one that's really going to propel our missions forward, starts there. It's the one that's supposed to get communicated to our staff, our boards and our donors. There's a famous Chinese proverb that says the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step right, and I feel like, if you care deeply about growing your mission and your impact, you've likely thought about how to make things better.

Speaker 6: 16:52

So I think we just need to ask ourselves like what is it? What is that holding us back from taking those steps forward?

Speaker 1: 16:59

Y'all. I just feel like it's like we've got the old mindsets, the old things and y'all are like one, two punch. I'm ready for an uppercut. You know, Erin, as you jump into this conversation, I think you do this really well that you show up with just this sense of urgency, and I know your mission just calls for that, and you've had some experiences that have pushed that too. But how can we all embrace this mindset that we have, this urgency to adapt and evolve? We can't just keep talking. Right, we got to get out the door.

Speaker 4: 17:24

Yeah, I mean you think about our world that we live in is consistently moving at warp speed. And if we don't again, I mean, I don't think we can all move at warp speed, but if we don't acknowledge that the world is going to evolve and it's going to keep moving and we have to try to reach those benchmarks and goals in real time with, of course, the assets and the resources we have, type person, which is probably not healthy, but that's how I lead my organization and my team that I have. We all sort of have that sense of urgency because, one, we mentor youth and if we're lagging behind in our vision and mission of delivery with our youth, then somebody else is mentoring them and that's not probably the best situation, depending on if it's positive or negative.

Speaker 4: 18:21

So, whenever we have to adapt and overcome, we also have to improvise and you know that's we hear that a lot Adapt, improvise, overcome, and for us it's just a matter of staying in tune to what we need to do but also, like Nelvin said, always have in the back of our mind that projection of that future, of how are we going to get there. Yes, we're doing A right now, b's tomorrow, but where can I get to E? And how can I connect those dots and just with technology and social media and all the platforms? And then economic strife and struggles in our world. We have to consistently evolve in real time and always understand we don't know everything. We're making decisions as we receive the information. So of course, like we're going to struggle, we're going to stumble in the direction of amazingness, you know.

Speaker 4: 19:15

And so for us, with me, with the urgency that I have every day, it's just knowing that I have to step in first in providing the positive resources and relationships that my kids need before somebody else jumps in there and doesn't necessarily do it in the best way. For us, you know what I'm saying. So with an organization is we all have urgency because we're all trying to raise the dollar and everybody is fighting for the same dollar, so to speak. But it's also making sure that your community knows you are an asset and what you do is vital to the wellbeing and the culture of your community and that sets you apart from those organizations that may feel like I don't know how to navigate this. Maybe I'm not essential. We're all essential and thousands more being worked on right now and launching. So we have to consider and stay in that mindset that we've got to be urgent in our message.

Speaker 2: 20:28

I got to give Erin a little plug here because and Julie, thank you for dropping her episode because you live in the urgent I mean we had a conversation with Erin. It's a beautiful case study of what happened to big brothers, big sisters of Southwest Louisiana after they had four natural disasters hit them. You have to lead with urgency when your building is gone. You have to lead with urgency when you don't have a sense of place and that your kids are all over the place, and so I think future proofing is such the great antidote to that, and I want to sort of move into this. How do we move to talk about how leaders can really start to foster this innovation? How do we switch those mindsets? How do we start reclaiming our power just a little bit more and infusing that into the culture and the people who work within our mission?

Speaker 5: 21:32

So I again love the question and I'm going to piggyback off of a lot of what you said, nelvin. I just loved that you focused on sort of adopting this culture of failure. I think that there are two things that go hand in hand when we're talking about innovation and adaptation One is forward-looking and one is sort of catalytic and releasing right. So the forward-looking is we have to be students of our communities and students of our impact and continue to sit in a learning stance and a learning mindset. I, you know, having done this multiple times, I know how easy it is to craft a strategic plan. We have our priorities, we have our goals, we have our objectives and it becomes this sort of fixed container that we are, you know, head down, trudging towards. And the danger there is that we stop listening and observing, and that's where the adaptation comes from right. That is what fuels our understanding of what we're getting right, what's working and, most importantly, where the gaps are that we have not met right. We made assumptions going into our strategic vision or into our strategic priorities, and they, hopefully, were good, well-informed assumptions. And now we have to ask did we get this right? What did we miss? What are we missing? What are we missing? What are we hearing from the people on the ground? That surprises us, right that we didn't think of.

Speaker 5: 22:59

Every two, three, four years in an organization, the communities around us change, the people in our ecosystem change, so it's a new opportunity to learn right. Innovation doesn't come from sitting in an office and thinking our own thoughts. It comes from interacting with our donors and constituents, from getting messy and saying we know we got some things right and we believe we got some things wrong and missed some things. So how do we learn? So that's the first thing, is the learning and the observing. I think tied to that is the sort of catalytic release, and Nelvin talked really, really eloquently about this.

Speaker 5: 23:36

We have to embrace failure organizationally, and I like using the word failure and I don't, because I think what we actually need to do is talk about growth and innovation, adaptation in a way that makes failure one part of that natural process. It isn't a mistake, it is an outgrowth of growth, it is a part of the process. We can't grow and innovate and adapt if we don't fail, and I think that the organizations that I work with that are best at this, at adapting and innovating, are the ones that sit with and explore failure from the top down right. We invite the whole team to feel safe, bringing up ideas, observing things that aren't working, letting their managers and the board know that they tried something that didn't work. And when we do that, we can unemotionally observe and take lessons learned and move forward.

Speaker 5: 24:35

And the last thing that I'll actually say about this is I think this embracing of failure is particularly important for the leader, for the executive director. It's important organization-wide. But my observation and my experience both as a leader and a coach is that it's really hard for leaders to give themselves permission to be vulnerable with their funders and their board, to ask questions, to experiment. They want to look buttoned up and so they aren't as comfortable saying I'm going to try this thing, we're going to experiment, I don't know what's going to happen. Here's my educated guess, and I might come back to you in three months and tell you it didn't work. That's how we innovate and adapt, and when we really, organizationally and as a sector, create space for that, then we will continue to grow.

Speaker 1: 25:18

I mean, I got to quote Seth Godin because I feel like this is such an important piece here. We are uniquely designed as nonprofits to innovate because we are solving for solutions. We're solving for things that we don't have the answers to, so we have to have this posture of trying things and innovating. And so, amy, I got to kick it to you because I think this kind of leads to something that we saw, really a light from your organization, not just you know your collective internally, that's thinking about things differently, but how you're also galvanizing community foundations, which, on the surface, seems so localized. You're galvanizing across the country in really unique ways to partner and really drive change on bigger issues. What does that look like?

Speaker 3: 25:56

Well, look, I'm just loving this conversation and this idea that none of us have all the answers right and we're all going to fail and we can't be afraid, as donors either, to take risk and to experiment and also to be responding to the changing world, right. So, yes, our superpowers can be foundations, as we are hyper place-based. There is not an issue in the eight counties we have not focused on and made a grant about. That said, when we're called to the task of something like climate change, you can't actually solve that in the eight counties of lower, you know, of downstate New York. It really is the existential threat that calls us, as 800 community foundations across this country, to find alignment where we can be stronger together and our communities can therefore be stronger together.

Speaker 3: 26:50

So, yes, over this last year, there are about 50 community foundations who have joined cause around this issue of climate and saying to the federal government look, you've got all those resources up there. We know the folks on the ground. We've been making these grants for years. We can tell you exactly how this is going to roll in these eight counties. Trust us. And while we are all hustling to find those resources and get them to our communities, I just want to throw out an example to my excellent partners in Pittsburgh, buffalo, columbus and Indiana, who just landed about $150 million for solar expansion in the heartland of the good old Rust Belt is going to be flourishing with solar resources.

Speaker 3: 27:33

So that's some early evidence that I think we're on to something big. And if we can solve for climate in this way, how should we be thinking about affordability? How should we be thinking about housing? How should we be thinking about immigration? Which kind of brings me to my new passion, which Becky and John haven't really heard.

Speaker 3: 27:50

But I've been on this tear because we have certain peers, like, let's say, the state of Michigan, state of Indiana, that have really well-built infrastructure for the community foundations to work together. And what we want to do is do that in New York, especially in response to this extraordinary influx of the newest New Yorkers. We've had 180,000 migrants come through the city in the last two years. We are not going to be a welcoming city alone. We are a welcoming state, we are a welcoming country. So how can we leverage those relationships with our community foundations all across New York, many of whom are struggling for labor, for their social, basic, social services? We have 30,000 unfilled agricultural jobs in New York State alone. So how can we, as a network, help these folks get on to a great life in America? And then, finally, I'm going to bring it all the way down to our little donor event which we had two weeks ago here in New York City. You know, I think about the incredible diversity of New York City and we want our community foundation to be as reflective of that as possible.

Speaker 3: 28:53

And we had this incredible meeting of a group of Muslim donors who have been working on a donor advice fund at the New York Community Trust that we've been proud to host since 2016. And we've never had a chance to sit together and talk about common goals and common purposes, but if there's ever a moment of tension and need in our Jewish communities, in our Islamic communities, this is a moment and I'm going to tell you. Talk about John and Becky. You were talking about like filling your bucket, sitting in a room full of these folks who have been giving, not just through their donor advice fund at the New York Community Trust, but literally making millions of dollars of cash payments available to folks coming right off the buses, coming into Port Authority, helping people on their way. It was an inspiring night of generosity that I cannot even fully express, and so I just feel like we need to think about community at multiple scales to make sure that we really maximize the potential of what community philanthropy can really be in all of our communities across the United States.

Speaker 2: 29:55

Okay, applause all around for that, and I even want to pause enough to just compliment you. Thank you, tyler, producer is on it. But Amy, I do want to compliment you because that right, there is already shifting the power dynamic when an 100-year-old community foundation flips the script entirely. And I know you've been doing this with listening sessions, not just with your Muslim partners, but I mean even Gen Z. You ask questions. This is an active listening exercise where people can give you the feedback you need to create the programs and the funding that grow the community. We know this as non-profiteers, that the solutions to all of our issues are on the front line. And secondly, thank you for the exhale about what's going on with the refugee crisis in New York City. I've been really personally worried about that. Thank you for that.

Speaker 2: 30:45

And I want to go in to Aaron, because, aaron, I just think you had a season and I just I am thrown by this story of these four natural disasters. You were down to $200,000 in your budget, constantly adapting, and now you are thriving. You've had a McKenzie Scott gift, which is only reflective of brilliant organizations. Yes, get on, we all cried on that one. But I want to talk about the component of resilience, because failure is hard and adaptation is hard. Innovation is hard. How do you build that resilience within your teams, especially you who, your team, your org, was knocked down multiple times and you kept pivoting. You are a thriving organization. Now Teach us your ways.

Speaker 4: 31:31

Yeah, so for I mean, we were all very affected by the pandemic, which was our first natural disaster, and then two major hurricanes ice, storm, flood and some tornadoes within 18 months. I mean that's a doozy and it's I'm not laughing, I mean it's it's funny to say it because I'm like who, who experiences that, you know, but for us it was just a matter. For me, it was a matter of again putting people first, you know, and that was just my kids, my youth, my littles, my staff, my board, my parents, my mentors, and so it literally all of the preparations that we have as organizations disaster preparedness or you know what have you literally went out the window in March of 2020. Like, those were very archaic within 24 hours, I didn't even look at it. I was like this is not real, and so, basically, it was just mobilization, having conversations with my board, having conversations with my staff, I mean figuring it out Zoom, like you know, I never had Zoom before, so I had to figure that out. And then our mentoring mission is one-to-one and it's in-person. That is 120 years of a mentoring legacy.

Speaker 4: 32:45

How can you pivot within 24 hours to non-in-person mentoring? We had to figure that out as a federation as well as an affiliate, but also all the other things that were going on the building destruction and everything that went along with it. I literally was making those decisions minute to minute, based on what's the best decision I can make. How can I ensure my kids are healthy? My staff is healthy? I was worried about them.

Speaker 4: 33:17

We were displaced in two different offices. My littles were displaced and all over the country with disaster in their homes. Schools were shut down and I can't and I couldn't control all of that. It was way beyond my pay grade, couldn't control all of that. It was way beyond my pay grade. But what I could control was how I reacted as a leader, even though inside, in private, I was just panicking, the anxiety, everything as a leader.

Speaker 4: 33:46

But I knew that I had to have an outlook of we can get through this. We got this. We're a team, we're a family, minute by minute, day by day. Because I knew if my staff and my board saw me panicking, then it's like the chicken little in the sky and as leaders we can't do that, we can't allow that, unless it's just a moment of a breakdown. And my staff and my board saw some of those moments because I am human and, like Nelvin said, you know, give ourselves grace and failure. With BRB it's like you know, we have to. We're human, we're not perfect, but the resiliency and John and Becky we talked about this on when we were visiting yeah, I don't know where that came from.

Speaker 5: 34:32

I'm going to be honest A real talk.

Speaker 4: 34:33

I'm going to be honest, a real talk. I'm going to talk with everybody and we're all on this because we're, all you know, visiting these last couple of days to gain knowledge and connection. And I don't know, it just came from somewhere deep inside my belly that came back from when I was a kid. That says that came back from when I was a kid. That says don't tell me no, and failure is not an option in my book. So I'm just going to have the little duck feet under the water, paddling everywhere and I'm going to look kind of calm while I'm freaking out under the water.

Speaker 4: 35:05

But that's what we do as nonprofits and everybody has their own disasters. You lose a major funder what if one of your only industries in your small region goes under and you just lost $500,000 a year in funding? And you think, oh my gosh, how can I recoup that? You can. It takes some innovation. It takes a lot of transparent conversations, but I immediately start working with my donors in March of 2020, having those conversations of y'all. This is real. This is what we need. We're going to continue to thrive. We're going to continue to mentor. We don't know how we're going to mentor our youth. We're figuring that in real time, but just trust that we're going to continue forward because, again, we are essential in the lives of our youth. And that was the consistent mantra with my team, my community, my funders. Everything that we did was ensuring that, front and center, our kids matter and we are going to have them thrive. And then I just figured it out as I went. So just know, you're okay. If you don't know what you're doing every day, it's okay, yeah.

Speaker 1: 36:26

I mean, aaron, thank you for that. I think it definitely stacks with. We're talking about sustainability. You got to have people around you and I hope, if you don't have people around you, I hope that this conference is introducing to people in the chat or come to the we Are For Good community, nelvin. I mean we're starting to wrap up and we got to save time for one good things. I want to hear how you're using the power of community around your work because I think, even if you feel like you're at the bottom of your bucket, you've got people, you have assets, you have opportunity and y'all at the Bowery mission are innovating. Still by tapping people in a unique way with this you know um associate board that you've brought into got to tap Julie Confer over here representing our producer, who's now joined the this board. How are you leaning into these new relationships to add community, to bring new vibrance to mission?

Speaker 6: 37:11

Yeah, First of all, we're so happy to have Julie on the associate board. So, Julie, thanks for being a part. Shout out to Julie. Yeah, John, like one big way of cultivating growth comes back to people, you know, and it's not just the people we serve, but the people running in and alongside your organization. I, you know, I love this sector so much, the social sector so much, but I think it's one of the most underutilized tools in nonprofits. You know, people want to do more. They need a way to do that.

Speaker 6: 37:41

The associate board is one of my favorite parts of working here. Barry Mission's associate board is a community of just passionate young professionals who are committed to making a change in the communities that they work in. Young professionals who are committed to making a change in the communities that they work in. You know, these are people in their 20s and 30s who already work 40, 50, 60, 80 hour weeks, you know, but they're so committed to change, they're so committed to the city that they still want to make giving back a part of their life, you know, and it's so important because there's such a focus on impact and such a focus on empowering the next generation, bringing them closer to us and letting them be a part of that change.

Speaker 6: 38:18

You know and I'll share real quick through our associate board's structure and culture of creating the biggest net impact. It goes deeper than just what one individual can contribute. We constantly see them engaging their corporate teams, their colleagues, their friends, their family. And just for put into perspective, a group of 50 people in the last few years have volunteered over multiple thousands of hours. Just by themselves and last year alone they've created an incredible net impact of close to $500,000 for our organization.

Speaker 2: 38:59

You call that impact uprising. Right there it starts one to one, human to human, community by community, one idea at a time. And which makes me want to lift Allison's question is like do we have some future proofing resources? That's not just a question for the panelists. They don't have all the answers, we don't have all the answers, but the collective, the community, can source these answers. So if you have any of these resources, any of these tips, please drop them in the chat because we are rounding out into our one good thing. We end all of our conversations with this and I want to start, amy, with you Tell us what is one good thing somebody could take away from this conversation today and what's vibing with you.

Speaker 3: 39:40

I wish I could just give a virtual hug to everybody in this room because I'm just loving these people and I'm going to make that my one good thing.

Speaker 3: 39:48

I think ultimately we are a people business, right, and now this might seem a little ironic saying this in a virtual room where we've all come together, people. We couldn't have otherwise all gotten together without a huge carbon footprint and a lot of wasted money, blah, blah, blah. So this is awesome, but when we can be in person with one another I'm just coming off three days with my colleague Community Foundation leaders fighting for our daffs in Washington and the community was so powerful of being together and just being side by side and fighting the good fight together I just I'm loving the, I'm loving the people in person together. So when we can, let's reach out and touch one another in the most sort of appropriate way. But the idea that we can, we, we can because we are. We are a people business and philanthropy is this joyful thing and we should be engaged in that in a really human way with one another. That's my one good thing.

Speaker 2: 40:44

Ah, brilliant tone setting for there. Brooke, I want to go to you next.

Speaker 5: 40:48

My one good thing is energy. I think that you know there's just, even though we are virtual, this incredible energy like I'm feeling, that sort of buzz you get when you're just, like I could talk to you guys for another five hours. And you know, building on what you were saying, amy, we're energetic beings and when we can be in community, when we can vibe with one another and hear good ideas and celebrate what we're all doing, I think that energy fuels us. You know, and when we can vibe with one another and hear good ideas and celebrate what we're all doing, I think that energy fuels us. And when we talk about sustainability, that's what we need is positive energy.

Speaker 2: 41:22

You guys are 100% bringing that, and thank you, julie, for dropping the link to the. We Are For Good community. If you don't have community, if you are feeling alone, come into ours. It is such an incredible group of heartwired humans, just like these four individuals who want to be the change in the world. Drop your LinkedIn's. Let's all connect with each other. The interconnectivity of how the impact uprising grows is based on our ability to lean in and connect. So, erin, I want to bring it to you. What have you got?

Speaker 4: 41:50

One good thing oh, you know that's so hard Y'all put me on. This is the most stressful moment ever One good thing from today, is it the conversations that we had and hearing these three amazing panelists that I was totally fangirling reading everything about them before.

Speaker 4: 42:09

I got on here is just, it solidifies that sometimes I feel so alone and isolated in this role because I feel like, again, I have to. You know, as a leader like you are the leader you can't make the mistakes, you can't. You know, you have to.

Speaker 4: 42:24

The expectation and it really allowed me when I sit back and I'm in these conversations, whether I'm a panelist or I'm a viewer, is that, yeah, I'm not alone in that, you know like, and it just makes me feel better as a leader, because I am my worst critic as a leader and I'm always thinking about everybody else but myself, and of course that's what leadership is myself, and of course that's what leadership is. But I also need to understand when I give my staff grace or my board members grace, I need to always give myself the same grace, and that is so humbling. And so when I look at these people and I'm reading the chat and I've been all over the chat today and looking at what everybody's saying, it's like y'all, I, I'm okay, I'm actually doing good today, um, you know, and and I can bring that energy back to the people that need me to be the best version of myself but also needs me to be honest and say y'all, I'm just totally messing up right now, like, just help me yeah.

Speaker 2: 43:35

Bringing us back to self-love. Like Nelvin, bring us home what you got.

Speaker 6: 43:39

Oh, it's along the same lines of what everybody's been saying already, you know, but I bring I think back to the title of the session. One of the words is disrupt, and I love that word so much. You know, we're all part of ambitious organizations and that's what initially draws us to the organization that you're in. Right, but keep thinking about how do places actually disrupt? And it starts with an audacious mission, but it trickles down to the people that form the teams that tackle those missions. I think that if we want to future-proof our organizations, we need to start by future-proofing our people. You know, and it's not just a salary. I'm talking about tailoring professional development, tailoring work-life balance, figuring out what matters most to your people, proving that they matter the most to you. So just have conversations with your people. Your missions fall flat without them.

Speaker 2: 44:27

Hope is blooming. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1: 44:28

My one good thing is go, follow all these people and get in community and get served and uplifted by the way they share online and show up online. It's so authentic, y'all. My heart is full as we close this out. I got to thank the sponsors that powered this. Thank you for creating an open, inclusive platform for all of us to get together today Microsoft Feather, community Boost, one Cause, classy Windfall, amphil and CauseCamp. Really grateful for you powering these conversations and friends. This is the end of the conversation.

Speaker 2: 44:57

This is the end, but it's not the end. It's not the end. Yes, Please join us over on main stage. We're going to listen to Sonia Paraz-Loderbach. Bring us home. It is going to be a conversation of healing self-love. It's going to be an extension of what this conversation is.