Transcript

 

Trent Stamp:

Welcome to How We Run, a podcast where we examine how nonprofits become successful. I’m Trent Stamp, CEO of the Eisner foundation

Julie Lacouture:

And I’m Julie Lacouture, founder of Good Ways Inc. In this episode, we’re joined by Johng Ho Song, the Executive Director of the Koreatown Youth and Community Center. He joins us to talk about his decades in leadership at the organization and how he’s kept them responsive to the community’s needs. Even if it meant changing the organization’s name.

Hey Trent, how are you?

Trent Stamp:

I’m doing great, Julie, how are you?

Julie Lacouture:

Good. There was a part in the episode where you were talking to Marc Freedman, maybe it was last week, where he said he needed to learn how to move from “can do it,” to “conduit.” Do you remember that moment?

Trent Stamp:

I do. And I pretended like I knew what he was talking about.

Julie Lacouture:

I can’t get it out of my head. I keep thinking about that though, of how to move from a person who is hands-on and doing everything in an organization, to someone that is the conduit for all the stuff that’s going on around.

Trent Stamp:

Yeah, I think we’ve heard that a lot this season. We heard it from Tony Brown, who talked about how he had to let go. We talked about with Marc, we talked about how he had to let others do a lot of the work and empower them. And today I heard it from Johng Ho Song from KYCC, who talked about one of the things he had to do was to empower his organization to make the changes. And he had to figure out ways to not have them be in silos, but to come together and work as one large team.

Julie Lacouture:

Yeah. Tell our listeners about Johng Ho Song.

Trent Stamp:

We’ve been funding KYCC, Koreatown Youth Community Center, for several years. They have some very high quality intergenerational programs and they are really ingrained in their community Koreatown, which for those who are not in Los Angeles, is a really complicated place that has vacillated between being primarily Asian-American and then being more Latino and then moving back towards being more Asian-American. There’s a lot of gentrification taking place there now. It’s just a really complicated community, but yet somehow or another, Johng Ho has found a way to make himself continue to be the unofficial mayor of the community and be known to the schools and the businesses and all of the politicians in the area. And then just the families. Going out with him is going out with Mickey Mouse walking through Disneyland or something. Everybody just flocks and wants to be in his presence. But he walks down the street and people just come and want to be close to him and thank him for the literally decades of good work he’s done in the community.

Julie Lacouture:

Yeah that’s tremendous. The thing that I think about that relates it back to what Marc Freedman said – Johng Ho has really figured out a way to let his community beat the conduit, right? He’s following their lead and it’s not like they’re just laying stuff on the community. They’re being so responsive to whatever the neighborhood needs and wants.

Trent Stamp:

100%. As the community has evolved, KYCC has evolved. Even to the point where they’ve changed their name several times to be more representative of who they serve and how they serve them. It really is one of those in the community organizations that the people who want to build similar type things really should try to emulate and learn.

Julie Lacouture:

Yeah. There’s a moment in your conversation with him I believe where you’re asking about that name change and I feel like he says, “It’s no big deal,” which speaks to how responsive they are to the community. Yes, of course this is the decision to make.

Trent Stamp:

Which is abnormal in the non-profit community. We have way too many organizations, many of them nationally known and relatively prompt, that are going down with the ship with names that are outdated and no longer represent who they serve or how they serve them but they feel that it violates their branding efforts or their marketing efforts or something if they were to change their organization. Meanwhile, Johng Ho pretty much just changed the name of the organization a couple of different times because he felt that it didn’t necessarily reflect that community or the folks that they were serving at any one particular time. I think there’s a lesson to be learned there.

Julie Lacouture:

Yeah, it’s great. Let’s take a listen to your conversation with Johng Ho Song.

 

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Johng Ho Song:

My name is Johng Ho Song, executive director of Koreatown Youth and Community Center, in short KYCC, and our mission is to improve quality of life for Koreatown residents.

Trent Stamp:

Fabulous. Thank you for being here. Johng Ho. So one of the reasons that I wanted to talk to you is that your organization has continuously evolved and responded to the changing needs of the neighborhood since it was founded in 1975. Can you describe how the neighborhood has changed and how your organization has changed in the ensuing years?

Johng Ho Song:

I started early, as you know, back in 1985 as a counselor. And at that time, our agency was called Korean Youth Center. We primarily served only Korean American youth doing after-school programs and crime prevention programs. We had about five, six employees at that time. Over the years, we have added family services and some community economic development programs early on, and this is still in 1980s but still very small. But I think everything changed after the riot, 1992, where we really felt as a community-based organization to embrace the community and really acknowledge the neighborhood changes. So we wanted to build the capacity to serve Koreatown as a whole. And that’s when our work began in changing our organizational culture. It’s not just about being multi-ethnic, but really changing the culture so that we have the capacity to serve the residents as a whole.

Trent Stamp:

Tell our listeners a little bit about Koreatown. What’s Koreatown like in Los Angeles in 2021?

Johng Ho Song:

It’s changing still. Just about 10 years ago, Koreatown was comprised of probably about 60% Latino and about 20% Asian-Americans, mostly Korean American. But now we can look here at the census, we realize that it was in the last 10 years or so it changed dramatically. We have about 42% Latinos now, which is a drop about 15 to 18%, and close to 15% increase in Asian-Americans, mostly Korean Americans share, again, up to 40%.

Trent Stamp:

Do you have a reason for that change to have taken place?

Johng Ho Song:

Our thinking is really had to do with some gentrification involved, not enough housing in Koreatown. And when you have quite a few new developments of market-rate apartments, that’s attracting a lot of younger generations, that can invest in a higher bracket of income. I think that was one of the main pieces.

Trent Stamp:

So you changed your organization’s name in 2004. What prompted that change and did you have any pushback in the community from that?

Johng Ho Song:

Trent, you did your homework about 2004. That was the second change. The first change actually occurred back in 1992, right after the riot, from Korean Youth Center to Korean Youth and American Center. That was the first change back in 1992. In 2004, we changed again, but this was to embrace the community as a whole. Koreatown, Youth and Community Center.

Trent Stamp:

Did you get any pushback from the community when you changed the name?

Johng Ho Song:

No I think this community did a real good job for about 10 years or so to make sure that everyone understands how important it is for us to be multi-ethnic. We had some push back, not necessarily real push back, but I think some of the original members of Korean Youth Center here, original board members, felt that we need to as long as we have Korean American component. So it wasn’t a real pushback, but they wanted to sustain that identity.

Trent Stamp:

So one of the great joys of my job is to go out with you in Koreatown. To just be with you in the community and because you are clearly the unofficial mayor of Koreatown. And when I’ve been out within the neighborhood with you, people are so happy to see you and they are so eager to support your organization. I have seen people walk up and give you envelopes to support your work, which I know you dutifully report to your accountant and put in the ledger appropriately. I know that because you’re a man of honor and you’re a man of fiscal transparency, but I’ve never seen that with any other executive director anywhere else. Where the people are so happy to see you in the community and to support your work. How did you build that connection? How did you build that trust, where people recognize you and want to support your activities?

Johng Ho Song:

I think it took a long time and I was really afraid that you’d actually bring this up.

Trent Stamp:

Of course I was going to bring up.

Johng Ho Song:

Because it happened twice, two out of two, right?

Trent Stamp:

Both times I’ve been with you in the community, you have had people come up and give you envelopes and say, thank you, sir.

Johng Ho Song:

One of the main thing that has to do with that is part of our culture, Korean American culture or Korean culture, but it is about relationships. It is about building that network and it is about trust. That really doesn’t happen quite that often, Trent. It just happened that you and Tim Carpenter were there. That particular incident both times was a delayed payment of our clients or sponsorship, but they didn’t want to come to the office. When they saw me at the restaurant with you, they thought it was a good opportunity to get the envelope, write the check and give it to me at that time. But that does happen once in a while and it really has to do with trust. And I’ve been part of this organization for the past 36 years or so and I know many small business owners. I know the community leaders here. I’ve been working with them for the past 30 years or so. So, I think it does have to do with that network and trust. They know that we do good work here, or at least we try hard.

Trent Stamp:

Absolutely. And the 36 years obviously is relevant. You have been there on that corner for a long time. And I know that you pride yourself on your ability to be responsive to your community. What other ways do you think you’ll be responsive to the community?

Johng Ho Song:

We have quite a few themes and I think the success that KYCC had over the years is because every other year we have an organizational plan, a two-year organizational plan and that gives us a direction. And that also gives us a sense of priorities. We’ve developed very realistic goals that could be achieved and from those goals, we had three or four different themes. One is measuring our program effectiveness. Are we providing the outcome that we want to achieve? One is community relations and community engagement. Another one had to do with intergenerational that you know of, that’s been added. And one other we could think that had to do with is always to fund development. And those are four things that play a big role. And all of our managers and the leadership group here at KYCC are trying to achieve the most from those themes and we have developed a lot of specific goals and objectives around them.

Trent Stamp:

So when you talk about fund development, Johng Ho, what exactly does that mean to you?

Johng Ho Song:

To me, it’s about creating resources so that you could do the work. And they are very interconnected programs and fund development is very much interconnected. Back in the nineties or late nineties when I first became the executive director here, I really felt that KYCC was in a good situation. We were close to about $2 million raises at that time which was pretty big, not a small agency at that time. But one thing when I looked at it, and I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it, until one of the consultants, came in and saw our books and said, “You have to do a much better job in terms of fund development or diversifying your fund.” Because at that time, it was close to about 95% government funding as a whole organization. So we didn’t have any room to do anything special, anything new, or anything creative. So fund development was a real challenge for me at that time. Today, our funds are fairly diverse, about 65% government funding. The rest are foundation funding “fee for service,” fund development, and fundraising through special events. So we’re looking pretty decent right now, but it was a very difficult time.

Trent Stamp:

And how much do you raise now a year? What’s your annual budget?

Johng Ho Song:

Our annual budget is close to about 15 million right now.

Trent Stamp:

So obviously you had to diversify because there wasn’t going to be enough government funding.

Johng Ho Song:

The government funding actually increased every year, but we were able to increase funding sources. And I thought there was going to be very important because when you have a large amount of government funding, your government funding is good for program or foundation for program implementation. But when you want to develop and do more of organizational development work related to facility technology marketing, you’re going to need a lot more.

Trent Stamp:

And you’re going to need private money for that.

Johng Ho Song:

Yes. So in order for us to balance, our criteria is to get about 10% more. So let’s say you have $10 million of government funding. Raising 10% of this $1 million is, on an annual basis, is going to be very important for us. And currently, if you’re asking me how much we raised from our fund development side, we’re raising that 10% and we are meeting on an annual basis.

Trent Stamp:

Terrific. So the name of this podcast is How We Run and we’re interested in how nonprofits run. What allows KYCC to run well?

Johng Ho Song:

When Julie asked me that question in the beginning that this is How We Run well and we want you to be a part of our podcast I said, “I run funny, so I don’t have to be on the podcast.” I think one thing has to do with our history of the organization. We’ve been providing needed services here in Koreatown for a long time, so we have that trust from the community. Two, I think has to do with our leadership development. Our leaders here at KYCC are very passionate people, but they come from different sectors from government, from corporate, from a nonprofit, from here within the community. So it’s not just diverse, but we have a diverse background and they have that passion as well. So we have that thing going for us. As I mentioned before, we develop an organizational plan every two years that gives us clearer direction and priority. So that’s been working really well. Our staff is very dedicated. They work hard. They’re very clear about the roles and responsibilities. We have very dedicated board members and an increasing number of volunteers. And as I mentioned before, our fundraising has been very successful and we get a lot of support from the community.

Trent Stamp:

And you have a decent CEO.

Johng Ho Song:

Well, I’ve been doing this for about 23 years. Not good enough, but I think our staff is making me look good.

Trent Stamp:

I think another 26 years you’ll have it down. So obviously, the world has changed dramatically in the last two years with the two big drivers being, in my opinion, obviously COVID but also the racial unrest. You’re obviously well-versed given your role after the riots in ’92. I’m curious what you’ve done this time around to adapt to this changing environment.

Johng Ho Song:

When everything stopped, our little group got together and we were thinking, what can we do right now for us to support the community? And I think we had a general consensus that we wanted to help the seniors because they’re the one who was suffering the most at that time. They couldn’t go out, they didn’t have transportation. And we didn’t have the capacity to serve the whole Koreatown, but we thought that it was a good opportunity for us to serve the seniors from our low-income housing programs that we have. We have close to over 200 families that we’re serving right now, eight are low-income senior housing. So we wanted to target our senior housing families and who could deliver essential items and meals. So that program started in April and it ended close to last September or so. But that was about close to 12,000 meals and essential items. And we really had an opportunity to get even closer to our clients during that time.

Trent Stamp:

Obviously, so much of your programming is centrally located and it’s based on face-to-face interaction. How did you guys pivot with COVID to not be able to be in the same room with so many of your constituents?

Johng Ho Song:

Our staff was wonderful. They had many conversations and we had Zoom after-school services. We had Zoom meetings, we were able to provide some computers, software, and hardware so that they could get involved with our programs. A lot of community outreach at that time. But I think our staff and leadership group really stepped it up at that time and saw what the community was needing and we’ve fulfilled that as much as we can. We didn’t possibly serve all the clients here, but we did a lot of work-related to even EDD applications, thousands of EDD applications. Unemployment applications for monolingual clients.

Trent Stamp:

One of the things I like to do here is to invite successful CEOs of nonprofits on, and then ask them about a mistake they’ve made.

Johng Ho Song:

Well, you got two hours?

Trent Stamp:

I got all day. But I think it’s illustrative for the young people who listen to this program. Can you tell us about a mistake you’ve made and what you learned from it?

Johng Ho Song:

I’m still learning from it, by the way. Not doing it early enough itself could be a mistake. For example, I didn’t quite understand the importance of social media. Six, seven years ago, people talked about it. We didn’t even do a very good job of website development. So when folks came to my office and said, I think this is something that we really need to look at, it took me about a couple years later for us to really react to that. One of the mistakes is that we started development, not as a whole, we had just special events, folks doing their special events. Work and writing separately, website developments, they’re all separate communications. And I think that was one of the mistakes that I’ve made, was not bringing that group together and calling it development. So currently our development team is comprised of our grant writing special events, external fairs, website development, and social media as well.

Johng Ho Song:

But what if KYCC was able to do that two years before that? It would have made a huge difference for us. That was one. And I think another one had to do with the social enterprise. And you may be familiar with this because I talked about social enterprise quite often to our foundation of friends for many years, to do one or be involved with one. So we came out with long-time plan and we developed a social enterprise model, which was Vintage Soul is the name of our business. It’s a boutique of used items at the higher end. And we really depended on getting donations, used donations. And when we were doing the planning, we got a lot of good responses back from the community that they were willing to donate a lot of goods. So we did planning, long planning.

Johng Ho Song:

It was approved by the board. We did the work, talked to many foundation friends for their support. But when we started back in 2019, it was not generating enough revenue. We created a social enterprise not just to create jobs, but to generate revenue. And the revenue from that particular source was supposed to go support our youth services. It wasn’t happening. We lost money two years in a row and it was somewhat substantial. It was close to about $150,000. It was getting a little bit better at the end, right before the COVID, but we didn’t think that it was going to sustain itself. So we closed the Vintage Soul store and I would call that one of the very painful experiences.

Trent Stamp:

That’s so interesting to me because the two examples that you cited, one, you were a little slow to adapt and one, you were probably a little too early.

Johng Ho Song:

I told you I run-

Trent Stamp:

You run funny. But for those young executive directors out there trying to figure out, there is no magic elixir here, you have to try things. You have to be open to ideas. You have to try and see what you can do, but it doesn’t benefit you to always be the first one and it doesn’t benefit you to always wait and see what happens. You’re going to get some right, you’re going to get some wrong.

Johng Ho Song:

So one of the, actually a few other lessons learned is one, could we have done better by closing the store a little earlier? I think we could have closed it a little bit earlier, like six months early. So when you looked at the financials at that time, yes, we were getting better, but it wasn’t going to get better to a point where we were going to make $10,000 a month. If you are going to open a business if you’re making a thousand dollars a month, is it worth it? I don’t know. That depends on the organization. One of the lessons learned also you said, we didn’t have a champion for that social enterprise. Organizational itself can not be the champion. We had to have a person who knew that business who wanted to be the champion. We were a little too dependent on consultants and volunteers.

Trent Stamp:

That’s interesting. So you’ve been doing this a long time, but I know that you’re not planning on riding off into the sunset anytime soon, I hope. What’s your-

Johng Ho Song:

Don’t ask me about succession planning.

Trent Stamp:

They’re going to have to carry you out of the office. What’s your big idea for moving forward and how do you plan on getting there?

Johng Ho Song:

I think we need to continue to work on program effectiveness. We need to ask ourselves on a monthly basis, on a weekly basis, are we making a positive impact? Can we do better? What is it that we can do better? So we invested three employees or three staff, and they’re measuring all of our programs right now. So that’s going to take about a year or so, but we have made that investment.

Trent Stamp:

And that’s the magic question, right? How do we know it works? The problem is, it’s hard to measure and no one wants to pay for it. But every funder wants to know, how do we know you’re effective? Prove it to us with high-level data, that’s expensive and hard to gather, and we’re not actually going to fund your efforts to measure that.

Johng Ho Song:

We’ve been doing this for the past two years, but I think we made another investment of trying to measure, not just certain government contracts that are paying for the evaluation, but all of our programs as well as our administrative outcomes as well.

Trent Stamp:

Terrific.

Johng Ho Song:

That’s one. I like to say that from our lessons learned, we need to continue to move with our technical data system so that we can better track not only our services but our programs and clients and the community as a whole.

Trent Stamp:

So you mentioned succession planning earlier, but let’s just play the hypothetical. If someone replaced you tomorrow, what would be your number one tip for that person to ensure success for KYCC long-term?

Johng Ho Song:

Continue to sustain and build the network that we have. Respect the community, be closer, and make sure that we have a very passionate staff that’s doing the work that we’re supposed to be doing.

Trent Stamp:

All the things that you spend your day doing, right?

Johng Ho Song:

Yeah. And the main thing that we discussed at the director’s meeting is, how can we do more? Let’s try to build the capacity. But also gain the wisdom so that we could do it better.

Trent Stamp:

I love it. Still hungry. $15 million serving thousands of people, how can we do more? Constantly learning, constantly evaluating, right? Johng Ho, thank you so much for being here today. I really enjoyed our conversation and I enjoy seeing the great work that you do in the community.

Johng Ho Song:

Thank you so much, Trent. Take care.

Trent Stamp:

Let’s go have lunch soon.

___

 

Julie Lacouture:

We have a request for you, dear listeners.

Trent Stamp:

I’m hoping that if you enjoy How We Run, that you will go and leave a review for us. Your review allows others to find us and that’s a good thing because it’s the more people that listen, the more impact we can have on the sector and that we can bring about positive change for other nonprofits that are out there. So, if you like what you’re listening to, please leave us a review.

Julie Lacouture:

If you want to be a guest on the show, if you think you have a good story and you want to share, you can email us at info@nullgoodwaysinc.com.

 

 

Transcript

Trent Stamp:

Welcome to How We Run, a podcast where we examine how nonprofits become successful. I’m Trent Stamp, CEO of The Eisner Foundation.

Julie Lacouture:

And I’m Julie Lacouture, founder of Good Ways Inc. In this episode, the CEO and founder of Encore.org shares what it was like to get a grant from MacKenzie Scott, and about leadership in the sector. Today we’re joined by Marc Freedman. Someone I know you’ve known for a long time, Trent.

Trent Stamp:

I’ve known Marc for several years and Encore.org has been a grantee of ours in the past and is still a grantee of ours at The Eisner Foundation. We also gave our Eisner Prize for Intergenerational Excellence to Marc Freedman and Encore.org for their efforts to bring about intergenerational solutions, not only in Los Angeles, but around the world.

Julie Lacouture:

I think of encore.org as thought leaders, but they do so many things. How would you sum up Encore?

Trent Stamp:

At its essence, they are a thought leader, but they’re also an educator, an advocator. They do run some programs themselves. But it’s a great example of a really complicated organization that has a lot of different tentacles out there, but they’re all organized around one principle. Which is trying to figure out what to do with this resource that we have with aging Americans, of people who can be warehoused or can be put to work for the betterment of not only society, but children as a whole.

Trent Stamp:

So, everything they do seems to me to be aligned with their general mission, which is, what do we do with this asset of older Americans as they age in our society? They’ve recognized that doesn’t just take one shape. It isn’t just advocacy. It isn’t just education. It isn’t just direct service. It can be all those things as long as you have one consistent message that guides all of your work.

Julie Lacouture:

Why did you want to invite Marc to be a guest?

Trent Stamp:

I wanted to talk to Marc about what it’s like to run a big complicated organization like that and to try to stay focused despite the fact that sometimes the work is a little hard to wrap your hands around. And how do you motivate a younger workforce to carry out the vision when it’s not as obvious as it is when you’re providing meals for people or providing counseling or any of those types of things. Encore’s complicated and I wanted to hear how Marc describes it and how he advocates for it and what his elevator speech is for getting others excited into their work.

Julie Lacouture:

I think before listening to this episode, people should go check out Encore.org to see a really good example of an organization that’s acting like an advocate, but then has a lot of activities and actions that all roll up into that idea and that advocacy. They’re walking the walk. They’re talking the talk. It’s not just articles. They do a lot of different things.

Trent Stamp:

Marc’s also one of those people that has received significant acclaim and accolades in the nonprofit world and yet, he’s one of the most modest and humble people that I’ve ever met. I think that’s illustrated best when we talk about how he was able to secure a grant from MacKenzie Scott. But Marc doesn’t try to convince anybody that it was because he’s a genius who found the secret way to get to the pot of gold.

Julie Lacouture:

I can’t wait to take a listen to this one.

Trent Stamp:

It’s a fun talk.

 

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Marc Freedman:

I’m Marc Freedman. I’m the founder and CEO of Encore.org.

Trent Stamp:

Thank you very much for joining us, Marc. It is a legitimate pleasure. Can you tell us a little bit about Encore.org?

Marc Freedman:

We’re a 20-year-old organization and our focus is on bringing the generations together, older and younger people, to solve problems, to bridge divides and together to create a better future for all generations.

Trent Stamp:

So what’s that look like specifically? What types of programs do you have?

Marc Freedman:

We started with a national service program, Experience Corps, which was designed to be a City Year for seniors. A way of including older people in the momentum for national service. As Experience Corps and Eisner prize winner, now run by AARP, it’s in about 25 cities around the country and mobilizes older people to help kids read by the third grade. That’s very much in the DNA of the organization. It led to a decade-long chapter in which we took one aspect of the Experience Corps experience, which is that older people never left. Unlike people in Teach For America, I know you’re a TFA alum or City Year, who our young people are passing through for a year or two. Experience Corps members stayed a decade or longer and essentially formed a second career. What we ended up calling an Encore career focused on personal meaning, but even more on service to younger generations.

Marc Freedman:

So we decided we were going to run with this Encore career idea. We spent a decade focusing on the idea of second acts for the greater good and elevate the idea through the Purpose Prize, a 10 year prize, now also run by AARP for social entrepreneurs over the age of 60 and through a program called Encore Fellows, essentially an internship for grownups who wanted to have an Encore career. But all throughout that interest in intergenerational connect was persistent. A few years ago we decided that the next chapter of our organization is going to focus entirely on bringing older and younger people together. Not only in ways that are mutually beneficial where older people are helping younger people, vice versa, but also where they can come together to help other people to bring the unique assets of the generations together in ways that created this idea of a better future.

Trent Stamp:

I should divulge at this point in the interest of transparency that Encore.org is, of course, an Eisner Foundation grantee and somebody that we have partnered with and commended and celebrated as a true intergenerational organization. One of the great leaders in the field and an organization that we bestowed our Eisner Prize on relatively recently.

Trent Stamp:

Marc, you and I have been doing this for a long time and we’ve seen the trends come and go in the sector. And you can remember that 20 years ago every board member told every staff member to have a golf tournament, because golf tournaments were going to be the way that we were all going to make money. Then maybe, five, 10 years ago, every board member told every executive director that they needed a social media person, because once we built a robust social media presence all the money would come flying in the door.

Trent Stamp:

I know today that manifest itself through everybody on every board tells every CEO, “Why don’t you go get one of those MacKenzie Scott grants?” But, you know, “Just go down there and knock on her door and get your MacKenzie Scott money and then everything will be great.” You and I both know that’s ridiculous, but Encore.org did get a MacKenzie Scott grant. Tell us how that came about.

Marc Freedman:

The true answer is, I have no idea. I got a call one day from folks at Bridgespan asking if we’d be willing to have a conversation with them because they had a donor who was looking into various organizations and, of course, I was happy to have that conversation. I had no idea whether it would lead to anything and truth be told, we periodically, maybe every few months, every six months, get requests for these kinds of conversations and they never lead to anything or maybe you get $500. So I had thought no further about it and then three weeks later I got an email from someone who said that they were following up on that initial inquiry. We talked the next day and she told us that MacKenzie Bezos, she was still MacKenzie Bezos at that point, had a long interest in the organization and had decided to give us a gift. I was in shock. She told us the amount of the gift, and I was in further shock.

Marc Freedman:

I have to admit, and I haven’t actually said this publicly before, this happened on Friday. I spent all weekend not feeling joy so much as anxiety, because it did seem too good to be true. Now we’ve heard reports that there have been people out there who’ve been impersonating MacKenzie Scott. But this turned out to be true and it’s been one of the greatest things that’s happened to the organization. But again, in the spirit of being fully forthcoming, in some ways it changed nothing for us because we had just lost a grant of exactly the same size from a family foundation where there was a divorce and their grant making ended. So, in that way, if you just looked at the numbers, it didn’t make a transformational difference.

Marc Freedman:

Yet, at the same time it changed everything. I have a hard time putting my finger on what it is, but I think partly it’s a vote of confidence. We both know that in philanthropy, it’s been an uphill battle to get donors to see the importance of the work that The Eisner Foundation is so committed to and we are as well. I think we decided it was a time to really go for it, not knowing whether there’d ever be another grant along these lines. I think it injected a sense of, that we didn’t want to think of this as a way to have security so much as impetus for moving into our next chapter as an organization and really taking more risk.

Marc Freedman:

So it’s funny, because if the auditors came in and they just looked at the balance sheet it didn’t change the size of our budget at all. But it had a cultural and motivational impact on the organization and I think for those of us on the team, it really felt like a shot in the arm.

Trent Stamp:

Yeah. I’ve heard about those MacKenzie Scott impersonators. There’s a special level in hell for people who like to create false hope for people toiling in the sector. That’s just reprehensible. I’m glad that yours was real. I’m glad that it was able to fill some of the gaps in your funding and to liberate you as an organization moving forward. But it does seem that the lesson for the young executive director out there from your story is, there’s not a whole lot you can do to get such a grant other than cross your fingers, but you didn’t actively seek it out in any way.

Marc Freedman:

I’ll tell you a story. I mentioned earlier the Purpose Prize, which was probably the biggest project in terms of size in the history of the organization. We were trying to do a very small prize along the same lines to try to celebrate this growing cadre of older social entrepreneurs and we went to one foundation for a grant of about $250,000 to do that prize and they turned us down. They told us, very nicely and respectfully, but they didn’t think there was a there there, that there weren’t older people who were creative in this way.

Marc Freedman:

I got that email while changing planes at Washington Dulles Airport and before I got onto my plane, I got a call from one of my colleagues at the Templeton Foundation who told us that Atlantic and Templeton had decided to give us $10 million to do the exact same thing that we just got turned down to do for $250,000. I think it’s a kind of good news, bad news story. Throughout the history of the organization there’ve been a whole series of these idiosyncratic investments, for which we’re enormously grateful. But it doesn’t give you confidence it’s going to ever happen again because there’s really no market for the work that we’re doing. So, one of the things that we’ve been really keen on doing is to try to build up that market so it’s not an idiosyncratic call out of the blue. Because I got to say, that’s no way to live as a nonprofit organization.

Trent Stamp:

No, that’s a great point and we really appreciate that. As a funder in the intergenerational world, I feel like some of the work that you have done have opened up doors for smaller organizations who want to do similar work and they can go tell the tale that’s already been told by you and they don’t have to reinvent the wheel. So, there is strength in numbers and that’s a testament to your leadership here and we appreciate it. So the name of this podcast is, How We Run. So let’s talk a little bit about how Encore.org runs. What do you think makes it run well?

Marc Freedman:

I think the key ingredient is that I never wanted to be a CEO. It’s led to a shared leadership model in the organization and over time, fitfully, I don’t want to make it sound like there was some grand perfectly executed plan, we developed a cadre of essentially partners in the organization who have complimentary skills. There’re some things that I do well and a lot that I don’t. This group, and I never really reflected much on this, this has happened in almost kind of an intuitive way. There are really strong relationships among us and relationships of trust and people have a lot of latitude to maneuver and use their creativity.

Marc Freedman:

For example, one of my colleagues, Eunice Nichols, won the Irvine Foundation’s Leadership Award a few years ago, which is almost entirely something that’s gone to CEOs of organizations. We’ve just really tried to give people the chance to flourish. A lot of it also is that there’s a strong group of people in the organization who came out of Experience or who were forged in working at the direct service level in their program. I think the insights that came out of it had such an effect on all of us. It was a way we were on the same page.

Marc Freedman:

I really feel like we’re well-positioned for the pandemic in that way. We didn’t have a command and control leadership model, but I also think I see other organizations going in this direction too. We started out talking about Bridgespan because of the MacKenzie Scott donation, but I just saw that Bridgespan has decided to rotate managing directors every four years and the managing directors go back to being leaders in the organization. I see that as an evolving direction for the nonprofit sector. That’s basically how we run.

Trent Stamp:

So having an empowered staff like that with great leadership and the ability to do good things, it seems to me it requires some humility and some willingness to let go among the CEO. Have you always been that way or is this something that has come with age and wisdom? Could you have let the leadership go, let the empowerment begin when you were 30-years-old?

Marc Freedman:

I think I could have. Again, because I felt like I was a reluctant CEO to begin with and also I’ve ended up, like you, being labeled a social entrepreneur. I felt like I was a reluctant social entrepreneur as well. But I think the key ingredient, and I’ve only really felt this so deeply in the last maybe five, six, seven years, is just how much I trust the people around me and just recognize that they do a lot of things better. There are a few things that I do well and I try to focus on those areas. So it is like a consulting firm or a law firm where there are a lot of senior partners and you have somebody who has to make the final decision. But I do think it’s more about trust than maturity. That said, our friend Chip Conley, who started the Modern Elder Academy, says that, “One of the hallmarks of becoming a modern elder is going from can do it to conduit.”

Marc Freedman:

Just prompted by your question. I think that this shift, the can do it to conduit shift, is not only playing out in the leadership of our organization, but in the work we’re doing as well. We started out creating Experience Corps with other partners, but now we’re much more interested in being a catalyst for other innovators and a platform for other innovators to do that kind of work out of the recognition that we come up with good ideas too infrequently to bring about the big changes that are needed. But if we could build up a portfolio of talented leaders of all ages that that might be a more sustainable way of getting the work done. So, I think we’re going all in on the conduit model.

Trent Stamp:

Love it. Obviously, the world has changed dramatically in the last two years. In many ways in which we don’t need to enumerate. But I’m just curious, what’s something that you’ve done internally at Encore.org, or externally, but what is something you’ve done to adapt to the changing environment?

Marc Freedman:

There’s been so many changes and they’ve been overlapping. I think at the most organizational level we fully became a virtual organization. We were already going in that direction and it relates to your previous question. I think we decided it was more important to get the right talent in the organization over the last number of years than it was to have those people in one place. So we had already started to move in a virtual direction. We had people in a bunch of different parts of the country. The pandemic forced us to do that. It had a deep impact on that approach to work. We’ve always been an organization that’s focused on face-to-face connection between older and younger people. Going again, back to Experience Corps, there we learned to try and take advantage of a combination, a hybrid model, of face-to-face and virtual connection in the programming.

Marc Freedman:

I would say the biggest impact, most enduring one of the past year has really been to increase focus on bridging differences. It’s become so clear that that’s one of the most profound challenges facing society. We’re interested not only bridging the differences between older and younger people and building bonds there, but doing it in ways that also cross race and culture. A major new initiative that came out of the past year is around national service. One of the things that struck me, and this is something that’s come out of our conversations, is that the radical age segregation in society isn’t just in housing. It’s not just in education. It even as deeply ingrained in service. So we’ve got the AmeriCorps program, which is 95% young people and we’ve got AmeriCorps Seniors, formerly the Senior Corps, 100% older people. They’re not only coming out the same agency, they’re serving in the same community, frequently in the same buildings without ever meeting.

Marc Freedman:

I remember back in the early days of Experience Corps that we had young AmeriCorps VISTAs who became involved in the program and the bonds that formed between the older Experience Corps member and these VISTAs. One of whom was Mary O’Donnell, who’s the CEO of the RRF Foundation for Aging. We thought that there was an opportunity for systems change in national service in ways that bridge age and also oftentimes race. So, we’re launching a major initiative to bring those streams of service together in ways to bring complimentary talents of older and younger people in alignment, but also create the opportunity for deep relationships to form.

Trent Stamp:

I love it. One of the reasons that I like working with Encore.org and with you is that you and I, despite what people think, are still optimists. We still think that we can figure this sucker out and bring people together. Let’s keep it going. So I’m just curious, from your relatively successful career in the sector, can you tell us about a mistake that you or your organization made at some point and what you learned from it?

Marc Freedman:

Yeah. I would say it’s a mistake that I made at just every juncture and maybe it’s part of the optimistic inclination that you described. I think I have radically underestimated the power of inertia and of ingrained systems. Again, I’m sorry for all the going back to Experience Corps, but it did have a deep impact on me in some negative ways as well. So, the idea for Experience Corps originally was to put national service for older people on the same plane City Year and Teach For America had done for young people. We did the first five pilots in existing Senior Corps programs and they were highly successful. The research came out great. And instead of the rest of those systems embracing the Experience Corps approach, they banded together and killed all future funding. Somebody told me, “The great enemy of reform is the last generation of reform.”

Marc Freedman:

At another juncture, we started a project to try to get colleges and universities to create opportunities for older people to come back and transition from what’s less to what’s next. We felt one of the great opportunities were reunions, college reunions, people go back 30, 40 years. They’re in a reflective posture. They’re with peers. They remember when they had big dreams. What a great place to do this. So, we started a project with a bunch of alumni associations. It turns out alumni associations are really only interested in one thing, which is raising money. That project went nowhere as well.

Marc Freedman:

So, if this is a two hour podcast, I could regale you with additional cases of optimism gone awry. But I haven’t given up on either of those particular models and so maybe there’s something to be said for persistence as well.

Trent Stamp:

I love that. That’s great. I’ve asked that question of people before, and they sort of told me, “I would never change a thing.” My response, “What are you insane?” I would change 25 things I did this morning if I could, but that’s not the way we live our lives. But the idea that you would live an unexamined life where you wouldn’t change anything, I wish the best to those people because that’s just not the way the world works. So one of the questions we ask of everybody on this show is, what’s your big idea for moving forward? And how do you get there?

Marc Freedman:

As we’ve talked about many times, as anybody who’s picked up a newspaper knows, we’re in the middle of the demographic revolution which tends to get talked about in terms of people living longer. But just as powerful is that we’re moving into a much more multi-generational society. Four or five generations living, working together at the same time. Already more people over 60 than under 18. We’re spectacularly ill-prepared, not only to blunt the problems that come with that, but to take advantage of the massive opportunity that it represents. At Encore, I’m really keen on avoiding the sort of de-generation that a lot of people see. The zero-sum conflict. Okay, boomer. Okay, millennial. My obsession is this idea of co-generation. Which I know is not the most elegant word, but the idea of the generations co-creating the future, I think, is the future.

Marc Freedman:

I think there are huge opportunities for people to find a real sense of meaning and connection and generativity through that. In a way, it goes right back to the beginning of our history as an organization. I started the organization while I was in my late 20s, early 30s. I did it with an 80-year-old by the name of John Gardner, who was at the tail end of a storied career. It was through working together with John that we were able to pull this off. I would’ve never been able to do it myself. I think John was at a point in his life, he’d already implemented Medicare. He created the White House Fellows Program. Founded Common Cause. Run the Carnegie Corporation. Won the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Been Lyndon Johnson’s Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. Created Independent Sector. He wasn’t going to start something new, but by coming together, we were able to create this work. So, I’m a believer from personal experience. That’s a promising way forward.

Marc Freedman:

The two problems that are standing in the way of realizing this future is a failure of imagination. Walt Disney famously said, “If you can’t dream it, you can’t do it.” So we’ve got to be able to think in different ways and then we also need to make it possible for those people who want to move in this direction to go from aspiration to action. We have a crisis of innovation in this area too. We’ve been much more creative in keeping people of different ages apart than bringing them together. I see our work going forward is to help make this idea credible and doable and that all in service of shifting the norm in society from one that’s around generations apart to generations together.

Trent Stamp:

For the younger leader’s out there, go look up John Gardner’s resume and accomplishments because it sounds like it’s a joke, right? It sounds like you just lumped in about seven different people’s career achievements into one human being. I know he would be so proud of your work as a mentee for him and I know that you pay it forward by mentoring so many other people. Touching off of that, what’s your number one tip for a young or younger CEO of a nonprofit organization?

Marc Freedman:

I’m going to go right back to John Gardner, because it’s the one piece of advice from all the years we worked together that’s stayed in my mind almost on a daily basis. He told me at one point that it’s much more important to be interested than to be interesting, and that he had spent the whole first half of his career, storied in the way you were describing, being real interesting, and he was. But he learned how to listen. I remember talking to Doc Howe, who was the Commissioner of Education, led the desegregation efforts when John was HEW Secretary and he remembered going into John’s office and John would say, “What’s on your mind?” And he really meant it. I think this practice of listening is such an incredible base for growth, for being a good mentor, and for being a good leader.

Trent Stamp:

That sounds remarkably similar to today’s best role model, Ted Lasso, who has said, “Be curious, not judgemental.” I think it’s basically the same concept.

Marc Freedman:

I’ve spent my whole life soaking up the wisdom and support of wonderful elders and now I’m realizing that the time to turn and play that elder role has come. So I’m working really hard to implement all those lessons that I learned from people like John Gardner in working with young leaders.

Trent Stamp:

Which I know is one of the great theses of your fabulous book, How to Live Forever. Which is not to actually chase living forever, but to create a legacy by passing it to the next group. I’m amazed by your optimism, by your ambition, by your relentless positivity. Thank you so much for being here.

Marc Freedman:

Thanks so much. It’s an honor. You’ve made my entire week.

Julie Lacouture:

We have a request for you, dear listeners.

Trent Stamp:

I’m hoping that if you enjoy How We Run, that you will go and leave a review for us. Your review allows others to find us. That’s a good thing, because the more people that listen, the more impact we can have on the sector and then we can bring about positive change for other nonprofits that are out there. So, if you like what you’re listening to, please leave us a review.

Julie Lacouture:

If you want to be a guest on the show, you think you have a good story and you want to share, you can email us at info@nullgoodwaysinc.com. And so we will see you in a week.

Trent Stamp:

Can’t wait.

 

 

 

Transcript

 

 

Trent:

Welcome to How We Run, a podcast where we examine how nonprofits become successful. I’m Trent Stamp, CEO of the Eisner Foundation.

Julie:

And I’m Julie Lacouture, Founder of Good Ways Inc. Our guest on this episode is Roger Castle, the Chief Development Officer at the LA Regional Food Bank. Roger shares his strategy and tactics for retaining pandemic donors.

Trent:

So one of the things that we’ve seen over and over again in philanthropy and in charity responses is that people give in times of trouble. Americans have big hearts. When something bad happens, they pick up their checkbooks or their credit card, and they make a gift to those that they see on TV, to that need, we saw it with Hurricane Katrina, we saw it with 911, and we saw it again, obviously, with this pandemic, which is people want to help those who are less fortunate. They make that gift based on the need that they see in front of them.

Trent:

So I’m just obsessed with disaster giving. And unfortunately, I think COVID 19 falls into that disaster giving, and people making decisions to give to people causes issues that they had not historically given to. And so, I’m just curious as to what it means for an organization like the LA Food Bank, who obviously saw a rise in donations when COVID happened. And we saw so many people at risk and in danger. And what does it mean for not only their donors moving forward, but for people who historically had given to other organizations that were not impacted as much by COVID?

Julie:

Did you see in New York the lawyers group that suggested that since no one had to go buy coffee from Starbucks anymore, that they should all donate the price of their coffee every day? But this lawyers group raised something like a hundred thousand dollars through people donating the cost of coffees.

Trent:

I had not seen that. I’m sure that Starbucks would like them to donate it to them.

Julie:

What’s hard as an organization, how do you capture that lightning in a bottle and get them as excited again? How do you keep them as a donor when they gave because they were feeling so much emotion and I want to help, and I’ve got to do something. Can you recapture them?

Trent:

That’s the $64 million question for development people everywhere. I know that you talk to Roger Castle at the LA Regional Food Bank. And I’m just curious now that to some extent, the crisis has waned a little bit, at least in terms of the feeling that we have to give our money away right now, but yet Roger represents such a great cause moving forward. And there are so many food insecure people in this county and in its country, what kind of strategies will he utilize to maintain those givers and to get them to continue to support the food bank because tragically, we know that those that are food insecure, it’s not going to go away next week. What were Roger’s thoughts on how he was going to keep his donors?

Julie:

What’s really interesting in talking to Roger is that he actually has a pretty lean staff over there at the LA Regional Food Bank. He mentioned he has three people that work in marketing. And I think one of them is brand new. But in talking to him, it comes down to three things, content, technology, and timing. Content, I would say, is his biggest push, which is that he’s always going out and finding stories. The job in retention is thank the donors and then get that content in front of them.

Trent:

When you do something pressing and life-sustaining as feeding people who are vulnerable and hungry, and there’s nothing sadder in this country than when we have able-bodied people who don’t have food in front of them, it’s just an abdication of our responsibility as a society. But I would think that on the inside, looking out while you want to tell people constantly about how bad that need is and how you need, you take the chance with your donors of them getting turned off in some way, either because the ask is constant or because even though you gave X number of dollars, there are still people hungry again tomorrow. And I’m just wondering if he had thoughts on how to best sustain that giver, keep them fulfilled, keep them coming back without burning them out, and recognizing that there’s an inherent utility in this process.

Julie:

I think what’s important to understand is that the content they’re putting out are not all asks. So they’re telling stories, and a lot of them are success stories. And a lot of them are stories about innovation and different things the organization is doing. And some of their content is the Zoom meeting and hear from the CEO. So I think the key in not burning out donors is that all of that content, all of that messaging, not all of them are asks. It’s a small percentage that are. And what you see when you do it that way is that the donors feel part of the team and they feel part of the organization so that when there is an ask, they’re ready.

Julie:

What was really interesting that he mentioned is they decided not to use an outside agency for communications anymore. They pulled it all internal so that they could be very fast and ready for the sort circumstances. Yeah, it was a cool conversation. They’re doing a lot over there.

Trent:

That’s great. I wish more organizations would try to do as much inhouse as they could possibly do, especially when you’re an organization of the size and stature of something like the LA Regional Food Bank because they know what their needs are, and they should prior those people and get them inhouse.

Julie:

All right. Let’s hear from Roger.

Roger:

Hi, I’m Roger Castle. I’m the Chief Development Officer of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank.

Julie:

Why don’t you tell us a little bit about the LA Regional Food Bank?

Roger:

The Los Angeles Regional Food Bank is really the largest food resource for food-insecure people in Los Angeles County. Even before the pandemic, the need was great. One in five people in LA County was deemed food insecure, meaning at some point in the month, they don’t know where their next meal is coming from. And so, the Food Bank has been around for 48 years and distribute over 1.7 billion pounds of food since inception. And last year, we provided 145 million meals worth of food to the community.

Julie:

Can you describe your team?

Roger:

Yeah, I am the Chief Development Officer, so that means I’m in charge of the fundraising for the Food Bank, but also the marketing. Sometimes that role is a different person, but I chose the role of the Food Bank so I could be in charge of both fundraising and marketing so I can make sure both of those goals were aligned. Sometimes marketing and fundraising compete for resources. But the team at the LA Regional Food Bank is really a team, and they cooperate and have shared goals. And we found it to be really successful.

Roger:

We have 16 people in development and marketing. So some people will say, “Wow, the LA Regional Food Bank must have a huge marketing team.” But when we go to conferences and see other food banks, they’re like, “How can you get so many blog posts done?” I’m like, “Well, we only have three people in marketing and we just hired the third one last month.” So we definitely have a great team, very ambitious. We want to be a successful fundraising food bank in the country. And so, we’re really committed to the mission of feeding people. And the way to really increase that number is to increase your fundraising.

Julie:

For folks that might not be familiar with the nuances between fundraising and marketing, can you tell me how those exist separately?

Roger:

Fundraising is around the acquisition of dollars, and most times, marketing’s thought of as getting eyeballs on your cause. So at other nonprofits, I’ve been at people have done big awareness campaigns, and sometimes you can’t really see the benefit of those campaigns in marketing. Although we all know instinctually, they’re good. So our marketing is now really helping our annual giving team to acquire new people through digital strategies which we’ve invested heavily in, which is a lot cheaper than doing it in the mail, which those acquisition methods are actually waning over the years, we’ve seen them continue to decline. So we put a big investment in digital. So our annual giving director and our marketing director work very well together to actually acquire new people that we can go out and fundraise. And then he brings them into the Food Bank, our annual giving director. She stewards them and puts them in the pipeline.

Roger:

Then we have those structures, the prospect management tracking system to move people around the system, whether it be to a major donor, a mid major donor, a monthly donor. The way that we work so well as a team together is we know that if one person’s successful the whole team’s is.

Julie:

It sounds like maybe the way you are set up differently than other nonprofits is that you’re not segmenting by like annual fund and major donors. You’re treating it as a whole donor journey from marketing being awareness and acquisition to the team, kind of taking it from there.

Roger:

That’s fair. I mean, we do have our revenue streams segmented. We have people with goals for different departments, but being the leader of the department, I preach all the time that we’re there as a team, and we’re there to help people out. So at some other organizations that I’ve then had, people will fight for credit for a gift. “Oh no, it’s coming through an event. No, it’s a major- donor.”

Julie:

I’ve never heard of that happening. (laughter)

Roger:

Yes. And then, “Oh, can we take one third credit?” I’ve heard that before as well. And that makes the accounting people go nuts to keep track of that. But yeah, we have those different fundraising streams. We have people assigned to those, but the culture of our team is that if the one person’s successful, the whole team successful, I’ve seen other organizations that I’ve actually come in contact with – their event people hold their event donors so closely. Those people are your best prospects for major gifts. And so, if you don’t see the big picture in these things, you can really shoot yourself in a foot and hamstring your fundraising.

Julie:

So what you’re talking about is organizations that might treat event attendees just as event attendees?

Roger:

Correct.

Julie:

And assume that they only want to be invited to events?

Roger:

Correct. And you know that’s the best easiest way to get someone to be aware of your organization as an event. So events don’t typically raise a lot of money in net revenue. They’re very expensive to run other net revenues, 50, 60%. And that’s a great event that you spend all this time with all your staff stewarding the campaign committee or the dinner committee, but really the need to get more people attracted to your mission. I’ve been at events, and everybody wants everybody’s name at every table, but it’s not going to happen. People bring their friends. They don’t want to give up all their contact information. But if you can get a few of those people and put them in the pipeline and get them back to an individual fundraiser who can steward them properly, cultivate them for a big gift, maybe a $10,000 table donor is going to be a million-dollar donor down the line. Maybe they’ll be the honoree of the next event.

Julie:

I think you’re right. When people give, sometimes we don’t pay attention to people until they’ve given a donation, but you have to pay attention when people have given their time. And in a city like LA, it’s sometimes a little harder to give time than it is to give a donation.

Roger:

That’s true. The lucky thing about the Food Bank is it is one of the best volunteer ops in your community. So in LA County or any other county, you’re in America, it’s a really easy volunteer experience. A lot of the times, it’s someone that comes in once a year for three hours and sorts food. Some people come back every week. Some people go to the mobile food pantries and help distribute. Before the pandemic, we had over 30,000 volunteers each year. And it’s a great pipeline for us. I mean, we also have our volunteer board of directors and volunteer committees, but we put them in the pipeline, and a lot of them don’t give. People think, “Oh, you have 30,000 volunteers, or you have 30,000 donors.” No, it’s about the same as any acquisition method. About 2% of them give. The rest, “I gave you my time.”

Roger:

But it’s a long life. And with digital retargeting, we have their email addresses. We can continue to steward them through email, and then hopefully, down the road, they’ll become donors. And then into the pipeline, annual giving up to major gifts.

Julie:

You mentioned when you were talking about your team doing a ton of blog posts with maybe three marketing members. So it sounds like the name of the game for you is a lot of activity with not a lot of people. So what makes your team run well? What are you doing differently or better?

Roger:

I think we’ve done a lot of things and really paid off during the pandemic because, pre-pandemic, we put a lot of strategy in place. The first thing, when I got to the Food Bank, there was some turnover, and a couple other people left. My biggest thing was to hire the right people. So at the Food Bank, I made sure I hired the right people. The first two people I hired was a database manager and our annual giving director. And that really paid off. I started as a gift processor. So I really believe in really good clean data.

Roger:

The best litmus test of a good organization is how quickly they get their acknowledgment letter out. And so that really relies on a good database person. So I think I got the right human capital, and it’s not only quantity, it’s quality, and they are very productive. I might see another team of 16 that wouldn’t do half of what my team does. Of course, I’m very biased and very proud of them, but they have done an excellent job, really stepped up during the pandemic, but also thought about things strategically.

Roger:

During this time, we brought our direct mail and digital advertising in-house. So we went away from an agency. We pulled it in-house. So our appeals look like us. We have fully integrated campaigns. Our emails look like our direct mail pieces. And our annual giving director did an excellent job of bringing that in-house at a huge cost savings. And we’ve seen great dividends. One of the anecdotes is that during the pandemic, we heard some other people with agencies. It took them three months to get out COVID-specific appeal. It took us two weeks. And so it was in home within two weeks with an accompanying email blast.

Julie:

Awesome. So let’s talk about that because I think content is really important in fundraising, but timing might be a little bit more important. Is that what you found?

Roger:

So, I believe in both. They say good luck is when preparation meets opportunity. And that’s really what happened with the pandemic. We already had increased our fundraising over the past four years, about 35%. During the pandemic, of course, with all the awareness from the emergency drive-through distributions, we acquired more donors than we acquired in the last eight years. So, our strategy is content. So we try to capitalize on great stories, impact stories, and then also getting that free media, which we did well before the pandemic. People think about food banks during the end of the year. So we were on local news. There’s a couple local grocery stores that have campaigns, and we’re in LA. So we got some good celebrities to come in and volunteer, but then we can repurpose this content. We repurpose it in our annual giving appeals. We repurpose it in our emails. We have e-newsletters, social media. Content is also a way to show your impact and really steward the donors that you do have.

Julie:

I’m hearing three things from you about what makes your team run really well, which is that you produce a lot of content. You are fast to get it out because you have stuff in-house, but you also repurpose it. So let’s talk about how you get those things done. How do you get so much content?

Roger:

Well, we do lots of content gathering, and other people will say, “Well, how do you get stories about people getting food?” Well, we go to distributions. It’s not easy. You have to walk up to people and ask them to tell their story about being food insecure, which a lot of people don’t. You get a lot of interviews to don’t work out. So it’s really rolling up your sleeves and going to these distributions and getting stories.

Roger:

But we also do donor stories. We also do volunteer spotlights. We also do nutrition stories. So we have lots of things, and we just are very nimble about getting these things out. One of the things one of my teammates said the other day was the team was a little spoiled because we got approval through so quickly. And so, I don’t want to be a block in the process for the content. And so, I respond pretty quickly to whatever they want to approve.

Roger:

I’ve seen other organizations where one direct mail letter at the end of the year takes four months because you have nine people that have to weigh in on it. And so being nimble and responsive, and I’ve killed stories before. They come to me, and I’d like, “This is not in the food bank vein.” But I get to them the no quickly so they can move on to something else. And so, I think that’s really one of the great ways that we keep the process moving.

Roger:

The other thing I’ll say is things are cheaper nowadays. We have lots of videos. We probably do five or six a month, but we have a camera that’s maybe $5,000, and we use premiere editing software, but you can do these on your phone. And even the other day, our marketing managers, she was like, “I don’t need the camera. I got my phone.” And nowadays, that’s good enough for, especially if you’re just doing social media videos or YouTube videos and not doing it for broadcast.

Julie:

What I’m hearing is your team is proactive about getting the story. You’re not waiting for stories to be told to the development and marketing team. You’re going out and getting those stories. You’re walking up to people and asking questions.

Roger:

That is correct. And story’s not going to fall in your lap. That’s the biggest thing for people that ask us, “How do you get that?” “Well, you go out, you knock on windows of cars at the emergency drive-through distribution, and you get a knock on 50 of them. You can’t just knock on one and get the story you want.”

Julie:

In 2020 and in 2021, we’ve seen the national news, and everything united us all. And it feels like everybody’s pointed in one direction where it’s very clear how important safety net programs are like food banks. We know that your services are needed more than ever. Did the donors step up for you in 2020?

Roger:

Yes. The biggest silver lining to the pandemic was to see all the community that had the means step up, and they stepped up greatly. We went from about 16,000 donors to over 80,000 donors in 2021. And so people did care. They saw us feeding people, people that had never needed food assistance before. And they stepped up. And I tell the story that when I first got to the Food Bank, there was an executive. And he said, “I was food insecure as a kid, and I wondered out there. When I went to bed at night, did anybody else care that I was going to bed hungry?” And I can tell him, “Yes, they do care.” And they really stepped up during the pandemic to help those that just didn’t have anything.

Julie:

With 16,000 donors previously and then 80,000 at the end of the year, a lot of those people are new to you. How many are you expecting to come back to you and to give again?

Roger:

So I’ve read retention rates over 50% year over year are pretty good. Last year before the pandemic from 2019 to 2020, we retained 60% of our donors. And so that was pretty good. Part of it is we went away from that turn and burn direct mail strategy of acquiring lots of small donors offline. But the other thing that we did really well is start to really steward our donors, send them impact reports, send them these stories that we produce. A story that you put on social media, it can be put into an impact report and mailed to a donor. So that’s another example of repurposing.

Roger:

So we’re being conservative. I hope we retain about 50% of the donors. We’re thinking about strategies right now. I saw our annual giving manager was running lists of people who had given in April and May of last year but not given again this year. So we’re targeting them with digital. We’re targeting them with email, and we’re going to do a special appeal to them and say, “Hey, food insecurity just didn’t go away. Can you please come back?” But we’ll have some attrition. So we’re just trying to be smart about it. And hopefully, by the end of the year, they’ll have heard of the impact of the Food Bank and what their donation did, and how many people they helped. And so they’ll give again.

Julie:

I know a lot of the people that listen to this podcast might have gotten an influx of new donors last year. And it might be their first time getting an influx of new donors. What are some of the things that you all do tactically to steward donors? How do you make them feel like their gift mattered, they’re needed again, and they’re part of your team?

Roger:

First thing, as I mentioned before, I get them a thank you immediately as soon as you can get it to them. Secondly, we send stewardship reports. Obviously, you can’t mail everybody, but we segment our donors. The higher-end donors get an impact report at the very beginning of the year. And then the annual reports going out soon. And then, with the other donors, we tell really good stories in our e-newsletter that everybody gets. And then throughout the year, we do send appeals.

Roger:

For our major donors, I always say it’s about the organic touches. Someone wants to tell me, “Oh, you have to program every quarter to send them something.” I’m like, “No, it’s got to be organic.” So recently, we had an LA Times Article, they came and did an interview, and it was… The food insecurity is not over just because the pandemic is.

Roger:

It was a great third-party article from the LA Times that we put out in e-newsletter. But we also repurpose that content to send us some major donors and say, “Hey, did you see this article? I thought you might find it of interest. Would you like to come out for a tour?”

Roger:

The other thing we did and we still do is communicate, communicate, communicate. We send lots of email updates. We provide our CEO for virtual updates and tours. Every month we do a virtual update, and I walk around with an iPad and show people the facility that used to be an in-person lunch and tour. But now, I mean, we’ve seen such success to these that we’re going to continue to do them. We do a webinar. So, we can accommodate lots of people, but then for major donors, we’ll do Zoom calls that they can actually interact with the CEO face-to-face. I give credit to my CEO, and if their CEO’s out there, make yourself available. He made himself available for all these donor updates, all donor calls, and all these media requests. And it really paid off for us.

Julie:

You said, reaching out organically. So the example of that LA Times Article, it did not come out when you had a scheduled quarterly newsletter. And I think that’s a really important point of using stuff as it comes in and when it’s timely.

Roger:

Yes. And then the amount being before.

Julie:

Yeah. Not being held to a calendar you made 16 months ago.

Roger:

Exactly. And that’s nimbleness, and that’s what you were saying before timing. I like to learn from things that I make mistakes on, and I like to fail at something. It’s not scary. I have this joke in the office, and now that they’re not in the office, they tell me that I don’t walk in with my bad idea of the day. So I come in with a crazy idea now and then, and I’ve had some that have gone well, and I’ve some… I did this shelf life guide that I thought would be a great acquisition tool for lead generation. So people would call in and get a shelf life guide. And it is not resulted in any revenue.

Julie:

Oh, I love of that idea. Wait, so this was you. What was the idea as you pitched those that had that-

Roger:

A shelf life guide. So a can of beans isn’t bad once as the expiration goes. So for our volunteers, we have this guide that shows them they can put it in the bin if it’s still good. And so I thought, “Well, let’s repurpose this for donors. They want to stop food waste. And so let’s put it our website, have a shelf life guide. We produce this nice brochure.” And I thought, “We’ll get all these people searching for shelf life guide, they’ll sign up for it. We’ll get their email. We’ll retarget them. We’ll convert them to donors. It’s a no brainer.”

Julie:

And it was like, “Enter your email and you can download this guide and you had a bunch of people do it.” And then?

Roger:

No one gave.

Julie:

They were purely interested in the shelf life guide.

Roger:

Yes. (laughter) The biggest example that I learned from, and it was… So during the federal shutdown of a couple years ago, there’s all this messaging government workers were going without paychecks. And so, the need for them to get food was greater. And I came up with this with my marketing director. We came up with the strategy. We’re going to add a little bit of advertising to the digital marketing budget for messaging around the federal shutdown. It was a February. It’s not a great fundraising month in normal times. We raised like $125,000 more year over year. And I was like, “Whoa, I am so smart.” I just patted myself on the back. I was like, “Oh,” telling my philanthropy committee, how great and smart I was. So I go to a conference, and I see the CEO of one of the other food banks, and I’m telling him about this. And he’s like, “Oh yeah, well, we went all in and we raised an extra 3 million. We actually even put a food pantry in the airport.”

Roger:

So I thought to myself, “Okay, well, he went all in.” And so, when the pandemic hit, we immediately started spending our year-end budget for digital advertising. And, of course, it paid off. Our ROI was 22:1 at one point. And we could have waited and said, “Oh, well, the pandemic might be over in a couple weeks and we won’t want to capitalize on it.” But that was something I learned from a previous mistake. And that’s why I say you always learn from things in the past. You don’t have to do them the same way.

Julie:

It sounds like what you did, I mean, you got to a question I was about to ask, which is what did you do to adapt to the changing environment? But I think what you did there, and correct me if I’m wrong, is you identified the changing environment was an opportunity to connect with people, invested in it, and yielded great results for your organization. Is that fair?

Roger:

That is fair. And part of that was also just communicating. Some of our informational e-blast about the coronavirus were open rates of 40%, which is unheard of. And people wanted to know what was happening. And we put up an emergency page standard crisis management is to put up web page LAfoodbank.org/coronavirus. And that was one of the biggest lead generations to our website. And so, I think we did go all-in immediately and took advantage of the timing of the pandemic.

Julie:

I see it less as taking advantage of it than making yourself relevant, where you clearly were, and tapping into the thing that people really wanted to do. And that always gives me great hope because, in times of great need, people really do want to do something. And it’s our job at nonprofits to make sure that they know that that something is right there for them. And well done.

Roger:

Yeah, that’s a great point. But the other thing that I always talk about in staff meetings, when I present my fundraising update to the whole staff, even the all staff, even the warehouse guys, and the truck drivers, is everybody’s a part of fundraising. And so whatever their impression is on someone taking a tour, whatever, we can do to make sure a celebrity gets their photo op. So it adds to our own marketing, our own earn media. So they’re all part of it. And they all part of the mission. But the biggest thing is they went out, and they fed people. They went to parking lots and set up food distributions, and the media covered it. And if it wasn’t for their work, the fundraising wouldn’t have happened.

Roger:

So they’re all a part of fundraising. They’re part of the success. I don’t want to glaze over their efforts, and the front lines of the fight against hunger really, really paid off and showed everybody what food banks were all about. And reminded them in a disaster, we didn’t think it would be a pandemic. We always thought it would be an earthquake in LA. And then we would be feeding people that just got disrupted supply chain, but we were there when people are needed. And don’t forget about your local food bank, because they’re going to be there when you have a hurricane or an earthquake, or a pandemic.

Julie:

How is your messaging going to change for year end this year? I’ve heard from some people. They think there’s some COVID fatigue. I heard from other people, they think there’s some giving fatigue. What are you seeing? And how does this change things for you this year?

Roger:

We’re seeing a little bit of a lull like everybody else is seeing. There is some nervousness. It always happens in the summertime if you’re in development. I remember years ago, I was the VP of Development at the Prostate Cancer Foundation. And I was worried about some big gifts coming in at the end of the year. And my brother was like, “Well, maybe you should get out of this line of work because you’re always going to be waiting for those gifts to come in at the end of the year.”

Julie:

I was just going to say fundraisers can always find something to worry about. That sounds totally right to me.

Roger:

But I always tell my team, “Do the work now, all the work we’re doing now is really going to pave the way for year end success.” So yes, we are worried that some of the people will go on to a different charity, but there lots of great nonprofits, people have different changing tastes. And the other thing, it’s a long life. You’ve acquired them. They know about you. You never know when someone has some money to give away. We had a… I actually had a corporation call. They said, “I need to give money out by July 31st.” And so we have one day to get a proposal to them and then get back to us. So we definitely-

Julie:

Love the end of the fiscal year.

Roger:

I know! You got to love it. And that’s the other thing that I’ll say as a little bit of advice is be responsive. I think one of the things we did great during the pandemic is the entire team responded to donors calling in. Media requests we responded too. That’s another secret of media. If you get the story they want, they’ll come back. And we you’ve seen that time and time again is that they get a great story from us. And then, oh, three months later, they need another story. They call us and see what we want to pitch to them. And so same thing with donors being responsive. I mean, even as getting them our status update and our wiring instructions immediately responding to that phone call, answering the phone call.

Julie:

I would love your advice for somebody that might be listen in this and saying, “Yeah, that’s great if you get phone calls from people,” or, “If people know who you are,” or, “If people know your organization.” What’s a tip for someone that might not be in the place where they’re receiving calls?

Roger:

Yeah. So one of the things that I hear at conferences a lot is, “We have no prospects. We have no prospects.” But you do. You have your current donor base as your prospects. And so steward them and show them their impact, and you will retain them. And you’ll get people that will start giving you more. I can tell countless stories of an annual giving donor giving a thousand, and I just kept stewarding them and stewarding them. And four years later, it’s a hundred thousand dollar gift. And you never know when someone’s going to come into some money, a woman me last year or two years ago and said, “Hey, I’ve got a significant gift to give you. I’ve been giving for years, but I have to give this money out. And it was $600,000.” I will say if I was new to nonprofits or at a smaller nonprofit, investing in digital is great.

Roger:

The direct marketing companies will always talk about lifetime value of a donor. You’re going to get your money back after five or six years. With digital marketing, you can put ads on Google at Facebook. And I was doing them before. We had a full team in a place. So if I could do it, everybody can do it. Set up these simple ads, and you can acquire new donors, and you can pay for how much you want. So if you have $500, you can try to acquire 30 donors. And so consistently building that slowly over time and build your donor base, but make sure you do both. You retain, and you acquire the old model was just acquire a bunch of people through direct mail, and then let half of them go, or three-quarters of them go next year.

Roger:

Really focus on stewarding your current donors. Because the trend before the pandemic was, you’re going to get larger donations from a smaller number of people. They give you 100 different charities. They get $50 to each of them. But now younger philanthropists are starting to say, “Okay, these are my top three. I’m going to give a more significant gift to make a bigger impact.” And the more that you can show your nonprofits impact, the better you’re going to be.”

Julie:

When you’re talking about digital lead generation, what kind of ask are you making, or what kind of messaging are you putting out in the digital ad to get someone to come in as a donor?

Roger:

So the beauty of digital is you can test a lot. And so we create different ad sets. And so, during the pandemic, it has been coronavirus response, pandemic response. We’re feeding people. We’ve transitioned to back to school. We’re going to start soon back to school, summer hunger, things like that. But it seems like the coronavirus already is winning that.

Roger:

But we test ads. Is it a kid versus a senior? A girl versus a boy? Is it a happy girl versus a sad girl? And so they’re is a lot of good testing. And the best thing about its data. If you get a report from Google or Facebook, you can see which ad is winning. And we even tried this. We tried to do a segment targeting of our coronavirus. We call it our coronavirus one-time donors, and the ROI dipped under one. So we turned them off, and we went back to the normal ads that we’re doing for everybody and putting our funding into that.

Julie:

Last question for you, Roger. What is the big idea for moving forward, and how will we get there?

Roger:

So, I mean, the big idea is to continue to fund fundraising. And that was one of my things. At the CEO and board level, I would implore you, please don’t ignore fundraising. I know a lot of people come out of the mission. They come from the operation side or the program side, and they want to put every dollar to that. But fundraising is the engine that moves your organization forward. Because we raised 77 million last year, we were able to reach 900,000 people each month. While before the pandemic, we were only reaching 300,000 people.

Roger:

So if you think about it, that is a significant increase because of the fundraising. And I’ve even heard anecdotes from other people, this one other food bank. They got a 3 million estate gift. This is several years ago, she said, and they spent all of it on programs. And at the end, they’re like, “Well, how can we sustain this program? We don’t have money left.” I mean, it’s an estate gift, right? So you’re not going to get a repeat gift. And so, I would say implore the board and the CEOs out there and incrementally improve.

Roger:

I didn’t come in overnight and change all the structure of the fundraising of the Food Bank. We didn’t go out like a big university and hire 20 fundraisers. We hired a couple people a year. It may not be a major gift officer. It may be a database person. I know one of our small nonprofits that we give food to – the Executive Director enters the gifts. Think about how much more she could do if you hired a lower-level person out of school to enter the gifts. And so that would free her up to do more individual fundraising and fund more fundraising.

Roger:

So I would say fundraising, we’re in the middle of 165 million campaign to acquire a new food bank and renovate it. We actually acquired it last year, but we started in 2019. Quietly, did a lot of work around it. We’re pretty successful before the pandemic and the pandemic as just forward. So that’s the big idea. But what’s really going to make it successful is the team that’s in place. And I just can’t reiterate human capital is the most important thing. You have to give them the tools to succeed. We’ve invested in technology, we’ve invested in training, but it’s really their output that moves the organization forward.

Julie:

That’s great. I will note: I think that the technology you’ve invested in is nothing super, super fancy, though. Even the stories you’re telling me, you’re not using something that’s outside of the grasp of most organizations. It sounds like email and ads and then stories.

Roger:

Yeah. All of that stuff is fairly inexpensive. The basic thing that I would tell smaller nonprofits or newer nonprofits is invest in a CRM. You can buy really expensive ones, but you can also get some that are just web-based, but you need a place to keep track of your donors for your pipeline, for your emails, for your email list, for your digital ad list. And so, investing in those simple technologies, it’s not that expensive, and most nonprofits can afford them.

Julie:

Get it out of the spreadsheet, right?

Roger:

Yes. Get it out as shadow database. That’s a bad word.

Julie:

Excellent. Well, thank you so much. I learned so much from you. So thank you so much for the conversation and for being here.

 

Transcript

 

Trent Stamp:

Welcome to How We Run, a podcast where we examine how nonprofits become successful. I’m Trent Stamp, CEO of the Eisner Foundation,

Julie Lacouture:

And I’m Julie Lacouture, founder of Good Ways, Inc. Today we’re talking to Tony Brown from Heart of Los Angeles. Trent, why did you want to talk to Tony?

Trent Stamp:

I just think Tony’s a really smart guy and he’s been doing this for a really long time. There’s nothing that’s come about in the last 18 months that was new to Tony. He’s been toiling in this field for a long time, has a lot of equity in what he’s doing. He’s just truly authentic and it’s exciting to speak with him. Plus, he’s gone through a lot at Heart of LA in the last couple of years with a massive expansion campaign and a massive campaign to raise a lot of money, which is not easy to do any time, especially during a global pandemic. He’s just a really smart guy who’s been doing this for a really long time, and I think he’s very thoughtful and I think that he had a lot to share with our audience.

Julie Lacouture:

To me, what’s interesting about Heart of Los Angeles is that it started in a very grassroots place, I want to say in 1989, I think, and it was a neighborhood program. The founder just saw the kids in his neighborhood needed some options in terms of activities, so they organized basketball games at a local church.

Trent Stamp:

Yeah. To see where they’ve come from there is truly stunning. For those of you who are running small neighborhood programs, if you have the vision and the appetite, you can grow it into something like Heart of LA, which is serving literally thousands of kids and a budget in the millions. It’s refreshing to talk to somebody who’s still as excited as Tony Brown is to get up every morning and do his job in a very difficult city doing very difficult work.

Julie Lacouture:

That’s a good point, because I think sometimes when you listen to interviews with people that have done something like a huge capital campaign or a big push for growth, you can think to yourself, look at the resources that they have, look at the staff that they have, but I think to listen to this interview that you did with Tony and really think about where they started and where they are right now is it comes in incremental steps. Really, any small all program can get there. What lessons do you think someone should listen for, or what do you think the takeaways are with your conversation with Tony?

Trent Stamp:

I think one of the things that that struck me was his humility, despite the fact that he has built a multimillion dollar organization, but he’s constantly learning, constantly listening, and he talks a lot about how he had to learn to let go. That he had to empower his people and not try to be all things to all people, but to find those that had talents and let them do their work while still coaching and pleading and educating, but getting out of their way and recognizing that there were other solutions to the problem other than the ones that he envisioned in his own mind.

Julie Lacouture:

That’s great. I can’t wait to hear it.

Trent Stamp:

Yeah, it’s a great time. Plus, Tony’s just a ton of fun. He’s a really smart guy and a really happy guy and he just brings a lot of energy to the table every day.

Julie Lacouture:

Oh, he’s a bright shining star of a human for sure, and let’s take a listen.

 

—-

 

Tony Brown:

My name is Tony Brown and I’m the Executive Director of Heart of Los Angeles.

Trent Stamp:

Thank you for being here, Tony. One of the reasons that we wanted to talk with you is that I am very familiar with the fact that your organization has taken on a massive capital campaign and expansion in the last couple of years. Tell me a little bit about where you are in that process.

Tony Brown:

Heart of LA really is all about giving kids a chance to be successful, and we try to do it through free afterschool, academic arts and athletic programs, health and wellness and family services, just to ensure that every child has what they need to ultimately grow up in this city and be their best self. We’ve been able to really rapidly grow, I’d say, over the last 10 years and most recently in the last two, three, four years to serve 74% more young people in our neighborhood, which is five minutes west of downtown LA.

Tony Brown:

Part of that growth meant we need to go from serving, gosh, I think 1200 youth many years ago to now over 2100. It also meant that having 30 staff way back when to now having 90 staff was going to have major impacts on the structures and the systems and the operational procedures we’d have to now put in place to be able to sustain an organization poised to deliver those types of services to that many people. Then now, as you mentioned, with the capital campaign, we’re ready to expand again, so we’re going to go from serving 2100 youth to 4,000 kids and families in this Rampart district to Westlake area of Los Angeles.

Trent Stamp:

What’s that mean in terms of dollars? How big is your annual budget and what were you trying to raise for this particular campaign?

Tony Brown:

Our operating budget before we began the campaign was right around, I want to say, just getting into the five million dollar a year range. Now we come out of the capital campaign with a budget that’s just a little over six million dollars, and we had to raise about 14 and a half to 15 million dollars in capital campaign funds to build a brand new 25,000 square foot arts and recreation center, which is now sort of the flagship building on a campus of four buildings.

Trent Stamp:

Is that project done?

Tony Brown:

The project is finally complete. We have started to deliver all sorts of services and programs to community as we had envisioned. Not knowing that there was a pandemic coming, it was still our hope to be able to offer clinics and eyeglasses and optometry exams and dental fluoride cleaning, but now we’ve really done not only those things but we’ve vaccinated nearly 2000 community members from the site and the center. We’ve distributed lots and lots of food every week, fresh produce to families to help put food on their table. We’ve distributed grocer ship cards. We’ve really just tried to meet the basic essential needs that our families and our youth would need to survive and navigate through this terrible crisis most recently.

Trent Stamp:

You’ve obviously had great successes with raising that kind of funds and expanding your program. What are some of the things that you wish you knew when you started that campaign?

Tony Brown:

What do I wish I knew? I guess I would say I wish I had an even larger executive leadership team through that time. I wish I would’ve had more of my staff capable and ready to direct and manage, as opposed to just be all-star practitioners and they’re given areas of expertise. I think it speaks to just the infrastructure needed to be able to both sustain a growing organization, but then also lead it through a capital campaign where we’re adding so much in terms of facility and also time required to develop new funders through that process.

Tony Brown:

I would say learning to delegate even more than I was before is something that I’ve learned coming out of the capital campaign. Building out my team really makes a huge difference, and I wish I would’ve done that at the beginning, but as it turned out, it took a sabbatical to get me to realize, wait a minute, I need to get my bench opportunities to grow and develop and come into their own so that I can maximize their potential too. It’s that old adage; we all do better when we all do better. Creating that space and that room for others to assume the various aspects or responsibilities of leadership would help us all get to the goal a little bit faster, a little bit more smoothly.

Trent Stamp:

That’s fascinating. You actually had to be away to realize what you needed back in the organization. And I know that you did your sabbatical thanks to the generous support of the Durfee Foundation, which has made those types of opportunities available for talented CEOs and executive directors here in Los Angeles, but I just want to follow up on that just a tad, which is did you allow your existing executive team to take on more responsibility or did you bring in others from outside the organization, or both?

Tony Brown:

It was actually a combination of both almost. We took folks who were within the organization who were maybe stuck at a director level, but not necessarily a senior director level of both management and leadership within the organization. We said okay, maybe it’s time to have our very first senior director of programs and maybe it’s time for me to have a deputy director, someone who could really focus on the internal operations of the organization while I focused on external partnerships and more of the fundraising. Also, maybe it was time to graduate our development director to a senior level role and also expand that department. Finally, maybe it was time to really make sure that we operationalize our HR functions within the organization. That one actually involved a new hire, so we added to the team there and then we elevated three other positions essentially into what is now an executive leadership team. Where there were two folks at the very top of our org chart right before I went away when I returned, we had added now what has become five folks, so much better and still not enough; yet not enough but much, much better.

Trent Stamp:

No, absolutely. This is one of the frustrations of the nonprofit world. We’re talking about a five, six million dollar a year organization that is supposed to have an org chart that is essentially one CEO and then a ton of soldiers. God forbid that you have some leadership levels and an org chart that allows you to manage this organization in the way that you would a for-profit company. We have to be as lean as humanly possible at all times and we don’t ever take into account what that means for operations and delivery of service.

Tony Brown:

That’s exactly right.

Trent Stamp:

Let’s talk about how Heart of LA runs. What do you think makes your team run well?

Tony Brown:

I think especially now having that team is everything. Even with COVID and the inability to meet in person maybe as frequently as we obviously work pre-COVID, with an executive management team like we have, it’s not really been a barrier. We’ve used virtual meetings to our benefit, and honestly, I feel like the crisis, if nothing else, brought our team closer and we’ve participated in self care activities together. Our various teams throughout the organization, leadership teams, meet regularly. We often begin those sessions with icebreakers. We have agenda setting at the front end of every one of those meetings where everyone can contribute agenda items when we decide okay, how many of these are we going to get to today? Do we need to have another meeting later in the week? How pressing are these other ones? You set the table that way and then we’ll contextualize those agenda items, and then we solve things together as a team.

Tony Brown:

I noticed as I’ve worked around the different teams and sat in on different team meetings, that’s how they’re all starting to function and it’s great. My executive leadership team, we meet once a week. Then outside of that, our team leaders are hosting open office hours, where directors and other employees are able to pop in and receive maybe some mentoring or be able to feel heard. My deputy director and I, we meet once a week outside of all of that, and I just try to be a good listener for that position and offer thoughts based on what I hear.

Tony Brown:

Really, for the past 18 plus months, the majority of these interactions, they have been virtual, but they’ve also allowed us to record the notes from those meetings and treat them… I feel like these meetings are treated a lot like a strategic plan in that there’s assignments given, there’s accountability that’s called for, and then there’s follow up and maybe some sort of dashboard. This is what we did last time. This is what we talked about. These are the people who were assigned to the task, and this is what was accomplished, or this is where they are with a task. I’m noticing that in order to have well-functioning teams in moments like these and just in general having really strong feedback loops is great. It’s always this situation to where we never think we’re perfect at it, but we’re always striving to get better. I think that’s really what happens when you have this type of communication and participation through your teams.

Trent Stamp:

Obviously the world has changed dramatically in the last 18 months. For most of us that starts with COVID, but there have been a lot of other ways that the world has changed. Tell me a little bit about something you’ve done either personally or at Heart of LA to adapt to the changing environment.

Tony Brown:

I think personally what I’ve done is I’d come to the realization that I might have a vision or an idea that I think will solve for a problem that I’m seeing or we’re seeing, and in the past I might have tried to make that solution come to life in a very perfect way. I truly believe that perfect can be the enemy of the good number one. Number two, I also think that it’s really important in those moments to delegate the responsibility for bringing those solutions to life or the vision to life. I’ve become less reliant on it being my vision and I’m the holder of that, but rather sharing the responsibility across my team and then also making investments in my team. I need to put effort into training that next level of employee to be able to be a problem solver as well and come up with a solution. It may not be the best solution, but they need to be able to train to come up with solutions and also delegate within their own teams and manage those processes.

Tony Brown:

I’d rather spend on training and development to help my teammates become really equipped to be able to handle some vision holding as we try to get there, because otherwise, if I try to hold onto it myself, lots of things were falling through the cracks and maybe I was doing a great job and coming up with great, awesome ideas, but my staff behind me was stretched too thin, burnt out, not feeling like they were having the tools and the resources they needed to help their teams be successful. It was very problematic. You can’t stay under-resourced for too long. I think those are the big lessons I’ve learned.

Tony Brown:

How did it get put into practice when the pandemic first presented itself and schools closed right away, but we went directly to our leaders at the program level and we said hey, listen, guess what? From this day going forward, we’re all going to be meeting weekly. We’re going to solve for this together. We’re going to do listening together and we’re going to share ideas and we’re going to comfort each other. We’re going to extend grace and we’re going to come up with the best ideas to help our community navigate through this incredibly crushing time. In the case of Heart of Los Angeles, that meant that we weren’t just going to be an afterschool program. We were now going to have to adapt to become an afterschool program, a program that helps stabilize families in areas of crises.

Tony Brown:

That meant that the classroom teacher might spend some time teaching language arts, math, science, music, visual arts, or PE classes virtually, but that also means that they’re going to spend the rest of that time doing weekly wellness calls to families to see how you doing, what is it that you need to get to get through tomorrow and the next day? That meant that they were going to be carrying some heavy burdens. That meant we were going to have to train and we were going to have to heal and heal the healers. It became much more in depth. If we tried to do that alone, obviously we wouldn’t have been able to do it. It just took the might of so many to be able to make that happen, and that’s what happened.

Tony Brown:

We shared the leadership responsibility, and I’d say the other part of that is that we also had to develop and tighten up our operational procedures and policies, because that was going to help our staff feel more secure about where the organization, how long the organization was going to be digging deep and to what end, and in an outwardly way it showed how much we cared about the individuals who are doing this work, and weren’t going to let things get too far out of hand.

Trent Stamp:

One of the things that I’m optimistic about is that organizations like yours and yours in particular seem to have gone through a relative transformation in terms of thinking, in terms of processes, in terms of elevating young talent and that when this pandemic hopefully is over, I think organizations like yours are actually going to be stronger and will be better positioned moving forward to bring about sustainable and transformational change. I am optimistic that good things can emerge from this relatively dark time.

Tony Brown:

Absolutely. I agree wholeheartedly.

Trent Stamp:

One of the things that we like to do at How We Run is to invite wildly successful nonprofit CEOs onto the show and then ask them to tell us about a mistake that they have made and what you learned from that mistake. I’m curious, Tony, in your career as you’ve built Heart of LA into a sustainable force, tell us about a mistake you made and what you learned from it.

Tony Brown:

There’s a theme to my mistakes I’ve noticed in reflecting on that question. I think that, in the beginning, because I felt like I had a clear vision for how we were going to get some place, I wanted to hand pick each and every player on my board. I don’t mean on my board of directors necessarily. Pretend that this is a chess board. I wanted to pick every precious piece. I wanted to also be the one to train every single piece that was on the board, and then I wanted to be able to develop new partnerships and take us to new places and create new resource. I thought okay, the shortcut to doing that would be hire really competent people who are self-starters and who have wonderful initiative and meet with them, philosophize and ideate and we go together. They’re professionals.

Tony Brown:

My big mistake was that I held on to allowing them to have that kind of autonomy with less control and procedure and support, honestly, and I tried to support their growth through individual meetings with them, but I realized, wait a minute. There’s not enough time in the day to give each and every director level position the attention that they deserve or need. I hired a senior director of programs way too late. By then my staff, I think, we were starting to feel burnt out. They were starting to feel supported morally, but not supported practically. I just, in essence, waited too long, and we were growing rapidly and I was asking for more and more, and I was adding more and more people. I wasn’t able to go deep with any one of them. That was a problem because then what ended up happening was that anytime big decisions needed to be made, they were always coming back to me to make the big decision.

Tony Brown:

I realized, oh my goodness. I didn’t create enough opportunity for them to where they had the confidence to make those decisions. They didn’t have clear policies and guidelines by which to measure making the best decision possible that they could make. In a way, as much as I was trying to advance us further faster, I actually probably stunted a little bit of the quality of growth that we could have achieved in that time period.

Tony Brown:

Having said that, sometimes I look at my organization and we have so many different pillars of programs that serve it. Sometimes I look at the organization and say gosh, our arts organization could actually be its own standalone 501 c3. Our athletics program could do the same thing. Our college access program could be the same way. How do I bring everyone together? If it was just me responsible for doing that plus external functions for the organization, it wasn’t getting done effectively. I needed to develop that internal infrastructure, like you said earlier, to really help us to have the required added management structures, allow for specializations to occur, to have greater operationalization and oversight so that things don’t get away from us. Adding clear operational policies and organizational procedures has actually made it a lot easier for our employees to find creative and flexible ways to get through challenges like pandemics or growth.

Trent Stamp:

It’s so interesting to me that you would say that sometimes I see young executive directors who tell their staff that they love them and that they support them, but sometimes the best way that you can love and support your younger staff is to give them… you and I are both former ball coaches, but you just have to give the kid the ball and tell them to go pitch. You can wrap your arm around him in the dugout all day long, but sometimes you just have to give them the ball and send them out to the mound. That’s so interesting to me that you think of that as a mistake is that you didn’t empower your people enough while you were wrapping your arms around them and telling them that they were great and that they were part of the fabric in the family. You also needed them. Now go get me a strike out.

Tony Brown:

That’s right. Then what they would tell me back, that athlete would say hey [inaudible 00:21:09], but you’ve got to show me the mechanics of how to pitch. You’ve got to spend some time, but give me the fundamentals. I was missing that part, I think, as we grew rapidly. There weren’t enough trainers to help these guys and gals be game ready. It’s been neat to build out that infrastructure in more recent times.

Trent Stamp:

That’s terrific.

Tony Brown:

And I’ve seen some really great results there.

Trent Stamp:

That is great. That’s part of our obligation. It’s generativity to pass it on to the next group. What’s your big idea for moving forward and how do you get there?

Tony Brown:

I’m very passionate about educational equity and equity in general. I truly believe in humankind that we have everything that we need to be successful on this planet. We just have to put the right pieces together and integrate better. We obviously have structures and systems that have tried to unfortunately create the opposite, but having said that, I want to equitably and I conclusively prepare the next generation for the future, and I think we get there by integrating the resources that we have within our city. One example would be schools. I’d like to see our schools better integrate with both in-school, afterschool providers and off campus afterschool youth development programs like Heart of LA. I’d like to see our parks and our schoolyards be shared with youth development providers, folks who actually know, who can look at a budget and say, this is what it takes to be able to serve this many more kids equality.

Tony Brown:

Those folks need to be in a room with the school boards to say listen, you’ve got vacant land during these hours. How can we maximize this resource so that greater equities is achieved? The families in the communities living in and around these schools, how do we better integrate this whole bastion of senior citizens who are now coming into the retirement years, but still have plenty left in the tank to pass forward? How do we integrate them with the youth providers and with our schools, in-school and out of school?

Tony Brown:

Also, my other big idea is how do we integrate community colleges with our four year colleges and university? This is my crazy idea that I would love if folks would accelerate the growth of this idea. I do love watching college football and think about the UCLA football games at the Rose Bowl. For those of you who’ve been following Bruin football for the last 10 to 12 years, you go to the Rose Bowl and most often there’s a lot of empty seats. So much so that they now put tarps over it, spell out UCLA for all those seats they can’t sell. Usually, sadly in the past, we see more folks from Wisconsin overpowering the Rose Bowls than we do UCLA Bruins. What if every community college was affiliated with a four year college and university? What if it was branded as such? What if I could go to LA Community College and that was say also UCLA, and what if it was branded as UCLA? What if by going to LA Community College, wherever you are in your pipeline and your journey, received a student card for UCLA, so that when we now go to the Rose Bowl, that stadium is packed? Everyone feels like they’re a part of much more vast community of learning and growing, and we lift away the stigmas of a two year or or a certificate or an associate’s degree and a four year degree.

Tony Brown:

What if we could do that? Whether you like that idea or you don’t, the idea is what if we were to integrate these different resources that we have throughout our society and throughout our city? I have a feeling we’ll have a more equitable city and a more equitable country. I’d love to see that. I know there’s under utilization both in two year and in four year college and universities of resources. There’s an opportunity to maximize. I know there’s under utilization on our school campuses too, K12, and I know there’s underutilized parks around our city, and I know that there’s underutilized, caring, great folks in the same pockets around Los Angeles who are trying to get something going for the kids in that neighborhood who because they’re not a large organization or not a school are not able to ever get the infrastructure and resources they need to that same community that’s struggled for now, decades pre-riots, through the uprising, and even now. I would like to extend an extra helping hand to those communities and those grassroots efforts.

Trent Stamp:

I’m with you 100%. Nothing makes me sadder than driving by a public high school at 5:00 on a Tuesday and seeing it completely closed up. It should be the jewel of the community. It should be a place for adult classes. It should be a place for dancing. It should be a place for kids to practice sports who don’t necessarily go to that school, and it should be where we have elections. It should be the center of our community. We should all know our local public schools and we all should be there. Then don’t tell me that won’t improve overall participation in the community. An empty high school at night is no different to me than the empty seats that you talk about at the Rose Bowl. It’s a wasted opportunity.

Trent Stamp:

We can do better. We talk about under resourced communities all the time and communities are under resourced, but there are resources in those communities that we’re not putting to full use. Your example of senior citizens is a great one. We have tons of seniors in these communities who are just dying for a chance to give back to their community. We’re telling them, stay inside and watch TV. It’s an abdication of the civic compact on our part, and we just have to do better, so I love your idea of let’s just find ways to utilize our resources and bring ourselves better together. You, as a Sage leader, what is your number one tip for someone in your position, whether that be a management tip, a fundraising tip, or a tip for growing your organization?

Tony Brown:

I think as you grow and as you want to grow, build and develop a leadership team. At first, that might be board members, advisors to you. They don’t cost you maybe anything [inaudible 00:27:19] zero bottom wide. Start there, but then as you fundraise a little it and have some early successes, continue to develop a leadership team and then delegate and let go and focus on your strengths and build around your strengths. That’s the advice I would give.

Tony Brown:

Don’t try to be everything to everyone. Hire those who can do better in the areas that maybe aren’t your strengths so that you can then focus on the areas that are most comfortable and good for you. I would urge the building out of a leadership team, find the managers out there. If you’re not a manager, find the manager, if you’re a leader, great, but if you’re more of a manager, then find someone who can lead in other ways. Build it out that way and don’t try to do it alone. Having a flattened org chart at the beginning makes a lot of sense. Then as you start to make some impact happen and you start to really scale, then you need to start adding those structures, and don’t wait too long. Start adding that infrastructure. Start adding the team and building it in. I think that’s what I’ve learned in my journey thus far that I’d pass forward to the next generation of leaders.

Trent Stamp:

I love that. Find a way to not have to do it yourself. The narrative is one man, one woman against the sea. At the end, I tell you, I’ve been there. You get swamped. The wave will come for you. I don’t care how good you are.

Tony Brown:

That’s right.

Trent Stamp:

You’ve got to find some strength in numbers.

Tony Brown:

Yes. It can be lonely; this role of being the leader in the ED of an organization. That’s another reason for having that team sooner than later. I’d say for those who are midway through their careers, it’s important to have peers even outside your organization. I love the Durfee foundation and some of the other infinity groups that I get to belong to you. It means everything to be able to have conversation with folks who truly do know what you’re going through within your organization and having them, I can’t urge finding them early so that you have them along the way is really important.

Trent Stamp:

How is your intergenerational orchestra?

Tony Brown:

Oh my goodness. It’s glorious. The intergenerational orchestra at Heart of Los Angeles is a community orchestra that provides youth ages 14 all the way up to 80 plus the opportunity to come together once a week and make beautiful music together in a multicultural environment that is truly representative of our great city. This intergenerational orchestra really sought to reach into the various pockets around our city and lift them up and give them a platform to share with their voice, share their gifts. I’m delighted to say that we have members who come from the very special Hawkin communities that exist, oftentimes in somewhat of a shadow within our city. We have some folks from far on the west side, down on the south side of Los Angeles, central and east side, all engaging and making music together.

Tony Brown:

Then we have that, of course, also inter-generationally, so to see a 14 year old playing alongside someone who’s in their 70s and 80s, the joy that they both have in playing these pieces and hearing the strength of a 60 plus person orchestra is really a special experience. We’re just so excited and grateful to the Eisner Foundation for seeding this opportunity for all of us to come together in this way, and we’re super excited to be able to share back with the community certainly at our winter concert, and then beyond that, safe outdoors under the trees and the birds and the sun and the stars in the spring. We’re on our way, but the orchestra sounds great.

Tony Brown:

Maestro Daniel Suk, he’s a wonderful conductor. He speaks Korean, Italian and Spanish, and is just a joy to be around. We’re really working hard, but we’re having fun in the process. We’re encouraging anyone who has played an instrument anywhere in their life, join me who hasn’t since high school, or join the more advanced musicians who are in this orchestra and just come to play your heart out and come join us.

Trent Stamp:

There can be nothing more of symbolic than LA coming out of this COVID cocoon than people of different colors, ages, races, genders, coming together to literally make music in the heart of LA. I’m very excited. You know I’ll be in the front row. I can’t wait.

Tony Brown:

Yes. We can’t wait.

Trent Stamp:

Tony, thank you so much for being here today. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Tony Brown:

Oh, this has been such a pleasure. I think it’s conversations like these that I hope folks will listen and come up with their own ideas for how they’re going to help make this city and this world a better place.

Julie Lacouture:

We have a request for you, dear listeners.

Trent Stamp:

I’m hoping that if you enjoy How We Run that you will go and leave a review for us. Your review allows others to find us, and that’s a good thing because the more people that listen, but the more we impact we can have on the sector and that we can bring about positive change for other non-profits that are out there. If you like what you’re listening to, please leave us a review.

Julie Lacouture:

If you want to be a guest on the show, you think you have a good story and you want to share, you can email us at info@nullgoodwaysinc.com. We will see you in a week.

Trent Stamp:

Can’t wait.

 

Julie: Today, we’re talking about virtual events. I know that you don’t like a virtual event that is just an in-person event put to a live stream. So, you don’t want to see a two-hour live stream with speeches and stories and a band playing.

Trent: That’s correct. That’s exactly what I don’t want to hear. But let’s be honest. The most important thing that you said there was two-hour event. I have no interest in sitting in front of my screen, no matter how interesting the topic might be for two hours. And I realized that good organizations have figured out a way to adapt and change their programming and change their gala structure for the new reality of us all being tired in front of our screens.

Julie: So today we have Alexis Madrid and Amanda Willms from The Painted Turtle who did a virtual event. This was their first time doing one last year and it raised $450,000.

Trent: I’m obsessed with this for a variety of reasons. What exactly is a Camp-a-Thon? And how do you raise that kind of money? And did you figure out with what they did was replicable for other organizations in any way?

Julie: The Painted Turtle is a camp for kids with medical conditions where they can go and just be free at camp under some very good supervision and support. It’s a great organization they raise a lot of money through events where they can bring their funders and their donors to camp, to experience camp.

So last year, when everything was shut down and they were doing camp virtually, they thought what are we going to do with our event fundraising if we can’t anymore? So Camp-a-Thon was something they created, which was basically a 24 hour period of camp content that they did on Giving Tuesday.

So here’s what I think is replicable. They were really smart about activating their corporate and foundation sponsors around this event.

Trent: It’s fascinating to me because one of the reasons why corporate and foundation leaders often give to organizations, let’s be honest, is that they’re able to create high-quality visuals. They’re able to put their CEO with a kid or they’re able to put one of their major funders out there into the camp setting where you can see them doing good work. So I’m curious how Painted Turtle was able to satisfy that kind of narcissistic view of fundraising and giving

Julie: I think for them, it was really about creating a whole day of stuff. I think the thing to listen to in this interview is the fact that they weren’t sure what they were going to do – they just knew they had to do something online and how they worked backward and figured it out. And then as it started to come together, they started to add on more and more things and let it snowball into a much bigger event. I think the lesson here is plans are great, but also at some point, you just have to start reaching out and doing.

Trent: That’s super cool that they were able to adjust. I’d be curious to hear what it looks like moving forward.

 

__

 

Alexis: My name is Alexis Madrid. I am the Director of Development at The Painted Turtle. I’ve been here about 12 years. The Painted Turtle is one of Paul Newman’s medical specialty camps. We are one of 16 throughout the world. We were the first on the West coast.

We started in 2004. Since then, we’ve served over 80,000 campers and family members through illness, specific summer sessions, as well as spring and fall family weekends, where the entire family can come to camp. We have traditional camp activities from horseback, riding, fishing, arts and crafts.

Everything we do is free of charge to campers and family members.  That is what makes fundraising so important is to ensure we can provide these experiences. And lastly, we have a hospital outreach program called Outpost, so we go to 22 hospitals and clinics throughout California to bring camp to them in playrooms or in during bedside visits.

 

Julie: Amanda. Will you introduce yourself and tell us what you do at the organization.

 

Amanda: I am the events manager at The Painted Turtle. I have been involved with camp in various ways. Since about 2012. I started as a summer cabin counselor. I flew out from Southern Ontario thinking that I would go for one summer placement and I fell in love with it. And now over eight years late, here I am and in various roles throughout the organization.

 

Julie: Yeah, that’s a great segue into the first question. You’re the events person. It was really hard to do events last year. So probably January, February, March kind of felt like, okay, I’m going to do this plan. And then what happened?

Amanda: And then our entire calendar of planning and our blueprint kind of went out the window and we had to learn to be okay with that. And I feel like that was the biggest step in any of it was knowing that it was going to look entirely different than what we had expected.

It was definitely a big shift, but it also allowed us and kind of forced us to think outside the box. I definitely don’t think we would have ever come to the event that we did if we hadn’t have been in this position to completely shift our current path than maybe what we were used to every year, I think it definitely never would have come to fruition because it never would have been a requirement to.

 

Julie: Tell me what you had planned for the calendar year, in terms of donors, what was the thought process. Did you have that set out?

 

Alexis: Yeah, I would say we’re fortunate in that one of our most major events – Bingo – we snuck it in, we were able to hold it in person. And so what our calendar looked like included the LA marathon, which was a peer-to-peer fundraiser for us. As well as what would have been our largest event and something we had just done for the first time, the year before, which was our Harvest Moon Concert at camp in person in 2019. So that was in our head – how do we continue that momentum? It was very successful in terms of sponsorships VIP ticket buyers general ticket buyers. And so we were trying to figure out how we create an experience and then an event that could create some continuity for them.

Amanda: So we started, as a team and throughout different departments as well to sit in on different events and it didn’t even have to be a virtual fundraiser, it could just be any kind of virtual event.

And then we would share what we liked, what we didn’t like, what was engaging, what made it feel slow, moving, like anything like that. The more that we started participating in different events. I think the more we then were realizing the events that we were sharing feedback on, they were all so similar.

 

Julie: What were your takeaways from the events?

 

Amanda: I think the biggest thing and Alexis had touched on it as well, is that we wanted to keep consistency amongst donors. And so, you know, for different events that they anticipate happening, or groups of donors that are used to coming together, we wanted it to facilitate that still. But at the same time, I think what we discovered going along in the planning is that as much as we wanted things to be consistent, we also were given the opportunity to showcase different parts of our programming or things like that. That typically donors wouldn’t be able to see.

Julie: Can you give an example of that?

Amanda: The Outpost program. The Outpost program is going in and out of hospitals and clinics and dialysis centers. They’re not able to just take groups of people in. They have a couple of volunteers go with them, each visit. But in this sense, we have just wrapped up this new Outpost video and we could showcase that and have a camper speak to it.

And there was just so much that we could show without there being a geographical barrier that there typically is. And we could bring donors from different parts of the country, and the world, together for the first time.

Julie: When you were watching these other events, you made a choice. What persuaded you to not do a live event?

Alexis: I think for us, we had a lot of research to do, and we didn’t have very much experience with live tools and live technology. And so in watching some of our sister camps and other organizations, you know, we didn’t want to risk being live and just flubbing, and not having the right experience to know and manage.

What we did learn from one of our sister camps is, it’s a stressful thing to take on, to begin with, a production like they did, like we were attempting to do, and that having it prerecorded really gave us that confidence that what we wanted to show would be shown.

There wouldn’t be any glitches if someone’s internet wasn’t working. We had many people involved and we’re bouncing back and forth from different videos to event MCs and hosts. Pretty early on and through some research that Amanda and our communications team did, we honed in on technology, and the benefits of being prerecorded far exceeded our comfort level with being live. We were very intentional and Amanda can speak to this about trying to make it seem live and trying to make it seem that the banter or things happening were happening in real-time.

 

Julie: So let’s talk about how you came up with the idea. So where did you start with this event? What came first? Was it the date? Was it the concept or was it something else?

Amanda: I would say the date definitely was not the first one.

Julie: You’re both laughing.

Amanda: We’ll just we’ll laugh so that people can still hear it and know that they are not the only ones if they have to reschedule dates along the way. But I would say the idea was definitely there first. And it was such a broad idea when we started with it.

Julie: Tell us about the big concept.

Amanda: the big concept was having it be something different that we maybe hadn’t even seen anywhere yet. And I think, you know, Alexis had said that we wanted something to stand out and something to be different. And so Camp-a-Thon came about. There were so many different aspects that we were like, we could highlight this area of camp, like, oh, but we could also highlight this. And all of a sudden we were like, well, we don’t really need to only do one or the other, like it’s virtual, you know, we’re not going to have people coming on-site for a 13-hour visit or things like that, where like your virtual people can be at home, be in the comfort of their own space.

It was so broad in the sense that we really could do anything with it. And we’d have so many ideas that were like, let’s just make a full day of it.

Julie: Okay. So your idea was Camp-a-Thon and it was a 24-hour fundraiser that happened on Giving Tuesday, which is a crowded day. And I have to say, when I first heard about this, I was like, that’s risky.

Amanda: We had talked about it – do we want that Camp-a-Thon to be its own day? Because if we are looking at, four, six, eight hours, whatever it was going to end up being. Does it overlap with something or do we give it the space to be its own thing?

And I think because it was a completely new event that we were putting out there, we felt comfortable pairing it up with a day that was already known throughout the community and that we would already have awareness for that day, people are coming to the page or they’re looking to give on that day as it is.

So what could we do to enhance that and stand out?

Julie: Because you knew your donors would come looking for you on Giving Tuesday, so you’re going to give them something. It ended up being a smart move because you certainly couldn’t have done it later. It was kind of the last day, especially how last year (2020) ended up finishing, which was in a ball of fire, right? Any virtual events I saw after Giving Tuesday kind of were struggling to get attention. Do you feel that way too?

Alexis: Yes. Another part of it as we kept doing our research and trying to figure out what our backward timeline looked like. Before you knew it, August was too soon, September was too soon. And so as we kept on feeling like that, we’re like, okay, what is the latest we can do it?

As Amanda said, Giving Tuesday is really a strong day for us in terms of people waiting to give until that day and we’ve always had a matching grant tied with Giving Tuesday. So they liked that matching component and, and similarly, you know, Harvest Moon was an event in the fall. And so again, trying to capitalize on that fall period was really important.

I think also in maybe it’s more just of a personal feeling, but I would say. I felt this in calls with donors, Giving Tuesday happens right after Thanksgiving, and it being the year of COVID people were very grateful for where they were at personally. And I think through that, reflecting and being grateful and seeing the work that we had done throughout the year It was this cumulative feeling of gratitude that I think we were able to harness during that period.

Once we got into the rest of December, it would have been really hard for us to, along with other mailed end-of-year appeals as we were doing kind of end of your giving follow-up things along those lines. It provided the right separation for us for some of our different initiatives.

For us Giving Tuesday really spoke to us and luckily I think worked out well.

 

Julie: So when did you start planning this event? I’m sure you’re doing research as you’re planning…

Amanda: The research started in the summer and research, even at that point, being, just participating in different virtual events or hearing from family, friends, coworkers, anyone that had participated in virtual events, like what were their thoughts? And so that, that was a whole first piece because there are so many different ideas that are out there and there are wonderful ideas that are out there.

So once we decided on Camp-a-Thon, that’s when more of the detailed research started, and had to think about how we were going to execute it. So tech-wise, how would we get it out there? Do we want to do it live on film or prerecorded? And all of that has these micro-steps that you wouldn’t necessarily think of until you go to plan it and put it together.

The run of the show, how to run a show and there were all of these subcategories to get it out there successfully that it just, it was a lot of research happening at the same time in different aspects.

Julie: Break that down for me. What are the pieces that had to come into place to get this off the ground? Cause you did not create a 24-hour video. How long was the actual video?

Amanda: We probably had closer to two hours of actual. Video content. We were able to use videos that we had from our summer programming, the “camp at home” programming that we did with campers and families, children, and clinics. We were able to use some of that between our main segments throughout the day.

Julie: So you have about two hours of video to make. So is this the first piece you start working on – the video content?

Alexis: You know, we’re a small but mighty team. Amanda was a great leader in delegating to each of us, our responsibilities. And so, you know, while communications and Amanda were working on technology and the way in which we were going to deliver it, you know?

Julie: So you started thinking about distribution first?

Alexis: Distribution first, so that we didn’t get too far down the line and say, this isn’t going to work and we have all these videos and they’re on Vimeo or YouTube, or, you know, and then does this work with restream, which was the tool we were using to push it out.

And, you know, we learned it wouldn’t push out to certain social media channels like Instagram, but it would on Facebook. But then all of these variables came about and it’s like trying to shoot a moving target.

Julie: I love that you start with distribution because when you start with distribution, what you’re doing is you’re putting your audience first, right? You’re saying, how will my audience receive this? And so what I’m hearing from you is you wanted them to be able to access your content all day. But that they could get it all day on multiple platforms. You’re starting with that and you chose to use Restream, which is a powerful tool because you can schedule a video to launch at a certain time and it will go out to all channels. It’s nice, did you look at anything else?

Amanda: I guess I would say there are a few of the different social media channels, like Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn. Once I got that, we are all on, but that we found needed an additional tool through Restream in order to be able to push it out that did add an extra step compared to just pushing it out to YouTube, to our website, page to Facebook. Because we also were limited on time we didn’t want to have to spend more time than necessary to make the event even bigger than maybe what we could handle in the amount of time that we had.

So we decided, okay, we know that we can put it out on these three different platforms at the same time. We’re not able to do it on, you know, maybe a, B and C platforms. At this time, but we can still use those channels to promote watching the video somewhere else. And so we still made sure that we used those channels that we had.

So on Instagram, we had a post 10 minutes before each of our five daytime segments that said, don’t forget, the kickoff with Danny DeVito and Herb Alpert at 11:00 AM – tune in! And here’s the link in bio. It maybe looked a little bit different than what we had initially hoped for, but we were flexible in that our main event is just getting it out to our entire community and how can we reach everyone on these different platforms? And it didn’t need to be the exact same way on every platform. We just wanted to put it out there. That it’s happening.

Julie: Awesome. So I think your main channels were Facebook, your website, and YouTube, right? Those were the main places to find it and that your other social channels push people towards your website, which was home base.

Alexis: That was another thing we grappled with and learned. We wanted only one place, that there could be different channels, but having one place where they could go to watch, where they could go to comment, and interact with other people, and not needing to go to different places to interact in that way.

Simultaneously, while we’re talking about how it’s going to be distributed, we were also talking about what is the giving page and the platform we should be using? For us, we typically use Classy. For our peer-to-peer and event tools. But one thing we were exploring and reading were that text-to-give was growing and popular. We’ve sometimes struggled with getting lower-level donors or volunteers to engage. We thought it was worth trying. Amanda had researched Give Lively, which was an incredible and free and a pretty awesome tool for not having a real cost associated with it other than, you know, the credit card fees for processing.

Julie: And the reason why this is so important is that this event is available for free. Everywhere. So the risk you’re taking is this event will be happening all day. We’ll be putting it out there and hopefully, people will donate. You knew they would cause you know your community, but, but can you describe that moment of doubt?

Alexis: Going into it before any money was secured for this event, there was that concern or that nervousness and “How are we going to pull this off?” Pretty early on we knew we wanted to continue the matching gift concept. We decided was to procure matching gifts for sponsorship dollars, as well as matching gifts for the day of.

Typically we raise between $30,000 and $40,000 on Giving Tuesday. So that’s kind of what we thought and estimated plus a little bit more because we were doing a much more robust program. Our matching donor pledged $30,000, so that was fantastic. And they were willing to roll it over to this Camp-a-Thon event. For us, the snowball effect that happened that blew us out of the water is that on the sponsorship side – a couple of donors in particular – were very gung-ho about matching gifts.

Julie: Matching gifts of other sponsors and of individual donors?

Alexis: Yes, it was incredible as we were having these conversations with donors, they’re like, I know there’s a matching gift for the day of, but is there a matching gift for sponsorship? And at the time we had already met our initial $50,000 sponsorship, and then we got another $50,000. So we’d already matched $100,000.

Julie: So you’re saying you address the risk of not raising anything out with this video by procuring gifts before the event. That is the way to take an event from a $5,000 fundraiser to a  $100,000 fundraiser. Can you talk about those conversations and how you’re having those conversations with your sponsors? And are you going back to previous sponsors or are you reaching out to any new people?

Alexis: So for the first two matches they were prior gifts and one of them actually came in the summer. And as we were planning that was our ask of them, “When this event is more firmed up and we have a full idea of what it’s going to be. Can we use your gift as a match?”

They were a corporate partner that we also wanted to recognize in this fashion to give them some recognition and steward them. So that was fantastic. The other was a board member who had given the gift a little bit before Camp-a-Thon and we said, “Hey, matching gifts are a unique incentive right now we have this Camp-a-Thon event. Can we use it for that?” And that board member was on board as well. So as this is going on, I’m also having phone calls and conversations with other major donors that typically give at the end of the year. They had additional funds in which they wanted to give us this year.

And so in talking through the different options and the, you know, different ways in which they could support programming, they also said, “and if you are interested, you’re welcome to use our gift as a match.”

They beat me to the punch in terms in having that conversation. Within, I think a day and a half, I put together a proposal and sent it off to them. And later that evening they replied with. Yes and approval. And you know, that it could be used as a matching gift for Camp-a-Thon.

This was happening simultaneously to a prospective sponsor being interested and navigating on their own how much they’d be able to give to support this event. As this donor was asking, can it be matched? I was simultaneously ensuring that we could offer this additional hundred thousand dollars as a match.

Julie: I’m imagining you on two telephones. But that’s how it happens. That’s really interesting to see that one donor asks you a question and what they’re signaling to you is like, this is a way to make more my gift more meaningful? And then you say, let me see if I can make that happen. And so you’re able to go back to other donors and say, if you say, okay to this, we can inspire this donation over here.

Did you reach out to people that you weren’t already in conversations with?

Alexis: That’s kind of how we then shifted aside from our board. That’s how we kind of shifted to this focus on the continuity of the sponsors from Harvest Moon. They were our priority supporters to go to and speak to the fact that because of COVID and having to pivot, we’re so grateful for their support of Harvest Moon, and we have something new and special coming this year. You know, I think it was also very important. Because it was new to everyone to be clear and succinct as to what the event was.

Sometimes it was a challenge trying to describe a 24-hour campaign and then saying you’re really going to be showing video and content for 24 hours. What I personally did with my outreach to major donors was really focused on, what we called the closing campfire, which was the longest portion and the closing of the event. That was going to run at seven o’clock. In communicating with major donors, that was the crux of the show. The recognition that I really wanted. Them to focus on and understand what was going to be presented and how it was going to be pushed out.

Julie: You didn’t want them to feel like they needed to commit to being content creators for 24 hours, or you’re going to focus them on the big end of the thing fireworks, the finale.

Alexis: I think we were also trying to be mindful of their schedules and the busyness of being in this pandemic and having kids and school. Because it was a Tuesday, it was a weekday, which I think was concerning to us. Other events had been on weekends. Homing in on that 7:00 PM closing period, it was this finite period of time when we hope to get their undivided attention.

Again, reaching out to all the past Harvest Moon sponsors and explaining and sharing who the celebrity guests were going to be, what performances were going to be involved because that was an element in which I’m guessing was intriguing to them about Harvest Moon. Not only being at camp and getting a taste for what we do but also the performances and the celebrities that they were going to get to see.

In talking with donors it didn’t end up being really about that. They wanted to support our programs and they knew how challenging of a year it must have been. Many of them were very impressed with our prior communication beforehand showing videos of what virtual programming looked like us piloting virtual visitor days. That proved to be very helpful in terms of their commitment, to what we were trying to accomplish.

Julie: You’re approaching sponsors that sponsored your inaugural Harvest Moon event in 2018 and you thought we’re going to do this every year. Then the world was like, “I don’t think so.” But you’re coming back to them and you were not saying, look, I know that was great, but we had to change it this year. You said we have something new and special, and I think that’s a really important distinction in asking for those gifts, you’re coming at it from just a little bit of a different point of view.

Amanda: I think anything camp-related, we always want to put it out there that it’s positive and it’s something fun. That was our take on it. Everyone’s already aware of what’s going on so how can we present this in the most positive light so you’re not also thinking about what could have been right.

It was really successful doing it that way. And I think it just got people excited and onboard from the start.

Julie: Before the event started, how much was committed?

Alexis: Quite a bit. So we had about $375,000 in sponsorship. A smaller component of what we were doing simultaneously was that Sam, our development coordinator, was putting together a peer-to-peer fundraising component. We were reaching out to ambassadors or champions to create their own fundraising pages to share the story, to share on social, reach out to their family, friends, and colleagues to fundraise money.

So that was another component. So going in, like you said, with that much in sponsorship I think it truly boosted our confidence.

Julie: I mean, it was more than 10 times you would raise normally on Giving Tuesday so yes, I would imagine that boosted confidence.

Alexis: The real focus was giving Amanda and communications the space to fine-tune everything because, you know we had plenty of content from prior years and summers, and we had two new videos that were just finished by outside people that we used a new general camp video, the new outpost video we had past gala’s that we had performances recorded. So we could incorporate those.

Julie: I want you to share your robust communications plan leading up to Giving Tuesday. And then we’re going to talk about what happened on that day.

Amanda: It was certainly a team effort. Our co-worker Beth was great and set up a communications timeline. So the wonderful Beth had created a communications timeline early on, so we could have these deadlines of and we kind of worked backward from Giving Tuesday. We started by saying the morning of we want an email to go out and then we’ll have another reminder for the big closing campfire that’s happening. Okay. How many days before that, do we want to have another reminder? Working backward helped a lot. Once you start putting it on a calendar, you go, Oh my gosh, I need two more weeks still. So you have to backtrack it all. So that was laid out, which was really nice. And that was helpful to have those internal timelines, to know what our goals were for communicating it to the public as alongside, you know, our internal timeline of video production and sponsorships and peer to peer pages and all of that.

Julie: So talk me through when you started messaging about this event and then the journey you took somebody on. I hear you loud and clear about like a day of reminder and then reminders about like the big events.

So you’re not pummeling people on the day of, but you had a pretty robust communication schedule leading up to that. So can you walk me through that in a broad way?

Alexis: Sure. To Amanda’s credit, she started this massive Google document for all of us. There had to have been over 20 tabs on this document that included, sponsorship offline gifts, run of the show. All sorts of things. So one of them was the communications timeline. And so again, with communications being so busy, Beth kind of charted everything out, not just email it was social media posts that we would do and personal outreach that we would do to the committed sponsors to board. Chris, our CEO would communicate and remind the board, separate from each of these different things. I think it was seven emails in total from the save-the-date that went out. One thing we played with in MailChimp is an RSVP function where they could click and through the action of RSVP us having a sense of how many people would be watching, but also, you know, when you commit to something and you share with others, it’s more likely that they’ll actually follow through. So we did the RSVP link and we provided the calendar reminder options so that it could push to their calendar. Then each of the emails or each time we posted, we wanted to announce something. So we used each of those to announce a different celebrity or celebrity duo that was going to be featured and what they were going to be talking or sharing about.

Julie: It wasn’t just seven emails about like, just don’t forget, don’t forget this. It was new information in each one.

Alexis: Correct. And we scrapped some messages or combined some messages as things transpired based on, the information we had already shared, and getting the right headshots for the celebrities and different things. We had to be agile, even though we might’ve had a game plan for eight emails. At certain points felt like this is too much, so we adjusted. All of the emails were usually supported with a social media post. Social, we did a bit more often.

On the day, after a segment, we highlighted again to allow people to share and view without having to watch and stream it live. Alongside that was the actual landing page for Camp-a-Thon and updating talent, who was going to be on next, the timeline that Amanda meticulously kept track of, and what was going to happen. Every time a video aired on our landing page of our website we created a library: every time a video was done airing, we added it. So people could go back and watch it any those were kind of the different components of email social and the landing page itself and how we tackled that.

Julie: That’s amazing. Okay. So how much did you raise?

Amanda: We raised just over $475,000.

Julie: How many individual donors did you have?

Alexis: I’m counting just over 330 individual donors.

Julie: And how does that compare with the number of individual donors and the amount raised from past Giving Tuesdays?

Alexis: The last Giving Tuesday, we had 150 donors, so we more than doubled. We raised between $30,000 and $35,000 the prior Giving Tuesday as well. So tripled and doubled.

Julie: Congratulations. If you can share, Alexis, how much did you spend making this happen?

Alexis: Aside from raising what we raised, I think our second proudest, element of this event is how few expenses we had. We were just over $4,000 in total. We did outsource some of our editing – we hired an outside person to do some video editing for us.

We did do watch party kits for the sponsors. So again, nothing too expensive. I believe they were less than a hundred dollars per sponsor in terms of the value, but it had a camp blanket. It had our camp songbook for the higher-level donors, a bottle of wine. It was very campy and within our Painted Turtle kind of vibe.

As Amanda spoke to and give lively was free, the technology portions were pretty –

Julie: Restreams is probably a hundred bucks or so, right?

Amanda: We even had an add-on to have that scheduler to help us still with only $130. It was a monthly charge too. So we’re not like committing to commit to too much right away. And I mean, yeah. Our expenses to come out. Less than 1% of the revenue.

Julie: And how many kids get services from that amount? How many kids are impacted by that dollar amount?

Alexis: Close to 600.

Julie: Amazing. Will you do this again?

Amanda: We definitely want to, it is on our agenda and looking ahead to future events coming up, but it was, there was so much success that came from it in so many different aspects. So many that we have talked about expenses but also including so many different members of our community at the same time.

And even internally, you know, being able to bring staff in from different perspectives too, because everyone was working virtually in a different manner. It was just such I think both internally and externally, people walked away from just feeling camp again. And that’s, what’s so important to us, in raising funds is getting the message of camp out there.

And I think we were. Extremely lucky and successful in doing that, that it’s, I mean, that’s half the battle there is getting the story across. I think we found a way to do that and successfully, so we definitely want to continue with it.