Nonprofit Growth with Richard Reyes

From Storytelling to Community Building: the PLUS ME Project

Richard Reyes: My name is Richard Reyes. I am the founder and executive director at The PLUS ME Project. 

Julie Lacouture: Richard, thank you so much for being here. 

Richard Reyes: Thank you for having me. I’m excited to share more. 

Julie Lacouture: Let’s jump right in then. So can you tell us about The PLUS ME Project and its mission? 

Richard Reyes: So The PLUS ME Project, we build confidence in youth through personal storytelling. I started the organization a little over 10 years ago. And it stemmed from my story and the need for needing more relatable role models and understanding that I had a story. So the content that we deliver in classrooms with middle and high school youth here in Los Angeles is designed to support that.

Julie Lacouture: So this is inspired out of an experience of yours. Can you tell me about that moment when you were thinking about it and what convinced you that it needed to be its own organization? 

Richard Reyes: Yeah, sure. So I started PLUS ME because I realized my journey as a first-generation college student was quite unique. And I kind of had that aha light bulb moment while after transferring from community college into my dream school, uh, I went to Occidental it’s where I transferred into here in Los Angeles. And I’ll, I always remember going into one of my classes. I sat down a few minutes later, two girls walked in and, and Occidental is a very small school. There’s only like 1800 students. Everyone seems to know everybody. But as a new transfer student, nobody knew who I was. So these two girls turned to me and they said, Hey, who are you? We know everyone here at Oxy. How come we don’t know who you are? And I said, Oh, I’m Richard. I actually grew up down the street. I didn’t do well in high school. So I went to community college and I tried to get in last semester after my lung collapsing three times, but I got rejected and they looked at each other and they said, that’s such a cool story, dude. And that was honestly the first time where I sat and realized, wow, do I actually have a story? Is my story maybe inspiring? And that led me to just start sharing my story with local middle school and high school youth to try to get that role model that I never had growing up. And after doing that, I realized stories inspire us stories, inspire youth. We need to share more of them with you, but. Youth often don’t understand they have a story and they’re not provided the tools to help them know how to build that story and then use it to apply to college to get into the college of their dreams or land a job they’re passionate about or just build community through the confident individual that they hopefully become.

Creating a Sustainable Nonprofit Organization with Small Growth Strategies

Julie Lacouture: So, how did you go from visiting schools to a full-fledged organization that is just celebrating its 10th anniversary? 

Richard Reyes: Yeah, what a journey it’s been.

Julie Lacouture: I’m sure. Enlighten us. 

Richard Reyes: I’ve definitely focused on small growth. I knew coming into this space, like I bought Nonprofit for Dummies when I started the nonprofit. Like I knew nothing. So being the absolute novice of all novices to getting to where I am now. It was what type of professional development opportunities can I take advantage of to learn? Who can I surround myself to expose myself to information I can gain to apply now or later? And who can I bring on a team? Paid staff, volunteer board members, to help level up step by step to get us to a space where we are now. 

Julie Lacouture: Okay. So tell me what small growth means to you. 

Richard Reyes: Yeah. So small growth means both, I think, from a financial perspective and from a programmatic perspective, you’re leveling up little by little. So you’re not trying to go from a staff of one to a staff of 10 in a year, you’re not trying to go from a 50, 000 budget to a 5 million budget in a year, you’re having to, to really learn those steps, especially if you’re someone as a founder, who’s starting something. There’s so much that I think you need to learn in the early phases in order to be ready to manage and, and sustain a nonprofit that’s serving the community in the long term.

Julie Lacouture: And while I think it all solving the problems in the right order, right? 

Richard Reyes: Absolutely. Yeah, because there’s so much that you’re going to be inundated with as an executive director, as a founder, who’s trying to grow something. And you really have to understand how to prioritize, what, and what to work on while you’re multitasking on these different elements. But. It’s a lot. It can be incredibly overwhelming, right? We just look at nonprofit staff burnout and how high that can be in so many spaces. So I’ve really tried to focus on building a culture within the organization that is able to sustain this long term growth. So how can staff feel supported and welcomed and enjoy coming to work, understanding all of the things that might factor that. How can you get board members who are engaged and active and fulfill their terms and their expectations? How can you get volunteers and donors that want to become ambassadors for your organization? Uh, I think that’s key to have that slow growth turn into momentum that you’ll see result in larger, I think, impact or results that sometimes maybe we want right in the beginning.

A Four Point Strategy for Creating Sustainable Nonprofit Growth

Julie Lacouture: Yeah, tell us where your program is today. 

Richard Reyes: So, PLUS ME visits now over 75 schools a year. We also work with over 20 organizations here, primarily in Southern California. Los Angeles County is our target. We’re working with middle and high schools, primarily in Los Angeles Unified School District. And in terms of measuring that impact, we do workshops directly in classrooms or in organizations. So our team is in spaces for five hour programming. We measure our success through the surveys that we do with youth. We have four objectives that we’re trying to achieve. Confidence in character so you feel understanding who they are and being able to own it; courage to communicate, getting them to open up and vocalize parts of their stories; feeling connected to their community, so by sharing their stories, are they connecting more with others? And then being committed to their college and their career goals. So how do they really know how that story will support them in those advancements? So we measure different questions and we have logic models that focus on our objectives and outcomes for these programs. And that’s kind of what turns into the stories of impact that we’re sharing out in the community. 

Julie Lacouture: Can you take us through your 10 years of growth and talk about maybe some of the places where you felt like you had to make key decisions? And so one of those has to be that you came up with your four point model.

Richard Reyes: So as I reflect back, I think the first stage was focusing on the programs and focusing on building the reputation. So, I created a board of directors of all educators. In the beginning, the first few years, it was only educators because we needed to build the curriculum. So I needed to have individuals that had experience doing that. And I could trust in that process. We needed to build relationships with schools. That’s where we wanted the work to take place in communities. Just like where I came from. So we needed individuals that had access to those schools and would help us learn the process of becoming a vendor at schools and being able even to get access to students in these schools.

Right. And that was, I think, step one. I’m so glad I started there because we had the expertise to build the curriculum, to pilot, to build relationships with schools that we still have. To this day, right? 10 plus years later. So that was key. And then as the next phase entered, we had piloted the content. We kind of had these great results.

We knew it was working. It was time to fundraise. It was time to be able to fund the programs. And at the time, you know, everything was free. All of our programs were free. So we were trying to just bring in money through the community or through grants. Unfortunately, we had very little to no success with grants as a new organization. That’s often what many organizations experience. So I turned to those amazing board members, asking them to fundraise in their community. I learned most educators have networks of other educators. And educators, knowing the system of how we’re funded, they’re not the most well paid individuals. So when it came time to really trying to get some of these larger gifts that maybe I was told about, Oh, you can get a 10,000 gift, was not having success in that. And it was understanding the phase that you’re in and the needs of your organization from that perspective. So many of those board members as educators stayed on and some of them left and we were able to bring on other board members that came from diverse backgrounds of career paths, locations in Los Angeles that had access to different types of networks that resulted in dollars coming in, right? The educators were able to raise dollars as well and now these individuals were able to raise different types of dollars. So that helped us. Get to a point where, okay, maybe now we have 100,000 budget. We have maybe a staff and a half. So what is the next phase? The next phase is understanding how to grow and sustain this model.

And what I learned at that time for our budget size, for our staff size, for the board members that we were able to attract and maintain who were amazing, it wasn’t going to get us to a 500,000 level at that moment. So we look to a fee for service model. So the schools that were bringing us in were sharing rave reviews about us.

Some of them wanted to pay us. They asked what our pricing was and we didn’t have pricing. We were able to understand through research and just trial and error, what is a pricing model we can implement with these schools because a lot of them, even in some of the most underserved schools in the city, have state or federal funding that is supposed to support programs like this, where they bring in outside organizations to support them and their different learning objectives.

So we built a fee for service model that slowly but surely became the largest part of our organizational budget to date. Our fee for service revenue went from bringing in maybe, I don’t know, 10,000 a year to I think last year it brought in over almost 400,000 in service revenue. It’s been able to sustain us and while all that was happening, you’re still diversifying and changing and growing your board.

So you’re bringing on new people that have access to new contacts that have different skill sets. That can help you in your stage of growth, get to where you want to be. 

Finding Confidence in Nonlinear Growth of a Nonprofit Organization

Julie Lacouture: Awesome. And you outlined it so clearly. My question to you is, did it feel that linear and that clear while you were doing it?

Richard Reyes: Absolutely not. I do think with time you are, I think, able to gain more confidence in that navigation. You are able to surround yourself with those mentors, those advisors, those people that have that other experience that maybe you don’t, that make it feel a little bit more steady, but there are always moments where you just maybe over your head and you’re wondering, are you doing this correctly?

And is this going the way you thought, but having time to pause, step back and reflect has been incredibly helpful. So I’ve had different executive coaches work with me for many years now through either programs that I’ve been admitted to that fund it or through volunteer programs that have really helped me. Reflect as a leader and not just go, go, go, go, go without strategizing, pausing and understanding your wins, your losses, the things you’re going to learn from those mistakes. I think it’s been integral for me as I’ve grown in my leadership and as a staff has grown to make sure that we do that because if not, you might not see it in the moment.

Julie Lacouture: Would you be willing to share what you feel like are some mistakes you made? 

Richard Reyes: I think some mistakes I made one is for all those years in the beginning, thinking a hundred thousand dollar grant was going to fall on the wayside for a brand new organization that had this idea that I thought was super helpful.

Julie Lacouture: Oh, you wanted a map to the money tree. 

Richard Reyes: Exactly. You know, I think some of the narrative you hear when you’re starting a nonprofit, right, is sometimes that can be a reality and it just wasn’t and I heard so much about grants and so much about investing in grants and that’s the way you’re going to get funded. I can’t tell you how many no’s we’ve received, right? The rejections just were endless and there were moments where it just really, I think, affected my confidence and me wanting to give up and stepping out of that. I would have told that younger Richard or that younger individual try to start that organization is maybe for some organizations, grants will be the way, but it is not, I think the reality for most startup organizations, therefore you have to diversify your revenue streams and understand how else you can generate revenue to help you grow your mission. 

Finding, Attracting, and Retaining Board Members as a Nonprofit Growth Strategy

Julie Lacouture: Will you share with me how you recruit people to be on your board? Because you’ve mentioned your board a couple of times and it’s clear how much they’ve helped shape the organization and how, so how they’ve evolved. How do you find, attract, ask, retain your board?

Richard Reyes: Yeah. I think board attraction, retainment, all the things is, is so important for nonprofit. It’s evolved over the stages, but thinking back, we’ve recruited individuals through my personal network. We’ve included, we’ve recruited individuals through volunteer match, which is a website where you can post volunteer opportunities. 

We’ve recruited individuals through other board members. So board members nominating or looking at what the needs are and recruiting people in their own network. We’ve recruited people through a program called board lead, which is matched with many corporations across the country that match nonprofits with prospective board members.

We’ve used LinkedIn fairly successfully to recruit board members. I think those are, those are the main ways that come to my mind, but I think what’s important is. You’re very clear on the opportunity, so a board job description and or just knowing what your need is at this time as an organization. You have a very structured board onboarding process. So, meaning, you know, I don’t think you should have one conversation with someone and give them a seat on your board. It needs to be an in-depth, multi-leveled conversation with questions to understand. You need to have clear expectations, a document of like, what are you expecting from this person and making sure they know what it is before they agree, and then you need to have, I think, just a very simple, but effective onboarding process once they are on your board so that they get are given the tools to do what you’re asking them to do.

And that’s something I probably, I would say four years ago, I invested just so much time into building, building the board process for prospective board members. So that they can, we can really gain the most from them. And I’m super proud to say we have a hundred percent board give, get, you know, they’re able to reach their give gets every year, a hundred percent of them give to us every year. It’s been really special, the board that we’ve built and, you know, in the future, it’s going to have to evolve again and there’s either different skill sets and/or access to certain individuals that maybe we’re going to need on our board, but we go through these phases and it’s important that you do the best you can to kind of get through those phases.

Designing an Effective Onboarding Process for Nonprofit Board Members

Julie Lacouture: Would you be willing to share roughly like what your onboarding process looks like for board members? 

Richard Reyes: Ideally, we try to bring them in, in groups of at least two so that they’re in a mini cohort. Each person is given a board buddy, someone who’s more experienced on the board and can work with them throughout the year. They go through a one-hour onboarding, which is a deck where they get to experience part of our program in that moment of storytelling and learn about the core objectives. We have an entire drive. We use Google, so our Google Drive is all set up for them to follow. Going through a board manual process and signing some of the documents we have them do. And then at that board meeting, they’re really onboarded into either a committee or, you know, understanding just clearly what the asks are and how they can get involved from the get-go. So it’s either there’s a calendar events they’re given to attend or to get involved with. There’s the upcoming campaigns with the languaging, the templates that we send them so they know.

And then we use a spreadsheet on identification. We work with them to identify who is in your network that we can tap into to build that connection with. So, providing all the resources up front. Sometimes it’s overwhelming for some board members. I get it. And I would be, I think as well, but I think as the weeks and months go by, they realize everything is here. Everything is here for me to be successful with what you’re asking me to do, which I think is you’ve done the job. So now let’s execute together and grow this work. 

Julie Lacouture: You mentioned you think sometimes it might be overwhelming, but I think that’s so much better than the opposite, which is someone being at their third meeting three quarters of the way into the year and being like, what am I supposed to do on this? You know? 

Richard Reyes: Absolutely. 

Julie Lacouture: It felt like from early on, you weren’t afraid to ask. 

Richard Reyes: Definitely not. No. Yeah, and I think I learned that earlier on. I’m very much an introvert, but forcing myself to take advantage of those professional development opportunities and go to networking events. That’s something I just forced myself to do because being an introvert, I was like hiding in the bathroom, right? Not wanting to put myself out there. But doing it over and over and over and over again over those early years tremendously just shifted my confidence in those spaces, my ability to work a room, my elevator pitch, my ability to articulate the work that we’re doing, and over time I think it just attracted different things to come my way.

Finding the Courage to Ask as a Nonprofit Leader

Julie Lacouture: I’m always interested in hearing about like, how did you coach yourself along to being a good asker? Did you find a special sauce that worked for you? 

Richard Reyes: Maybe the special sauce was just in the story. So I really leaned into the mission of the work. So when I would go to events and I would say, you know, we focus on building confidence through storytelling. Either people just didn’t get it at all. And they were like, what is this? Or they got it and they were interested. So I then would just happen to my story. And it was just, I’m going to be vulnerable in front of you. You may not know who I am, but I’m going to be able to get my story into like a one minute pitch right now. So that you can get to know me as a person. And whether you’re interested in this nonprofit angle or not, you’re at least going to get to know me. Now we can likely form a personal connection where I’m now going to get to know you. That has just kind of grown my network and my ability to connect it back to the mission to then make the ask to the individual in whatever capacity that is. So, honing into my story and being willing just to be vulnerable in a space of strangers, I think has been key for me. 

Julie Lacouture: Yeah, something I’ve noticed, um, in the time that we’ve talked is, I think you’re very good at answering questions succinctly, but giving the listener something to say, well, what, tell me more about that detail. I think you are good at leading breadcrumbs in conversation. Do you feel that way? 

Richard Reyes: Oh, thank you, Julie. I appreciate that. I think sometimes it’s intentional and maybe another time it’s not, but maybe because I’ve been intentional in other spaces to do that, it just becomes maybe part of what I do now that I’m not even aware of it anymore.

Julie Lacouture: Yeah, I would be remiss then if I didn’t go back to a breadcrumb I think that you had it there earlier in the interview of, when you were a student, your story about wanting to go to the school and then taking the community college route, but then you happen to throw in that your lung collapsed three times. So please, Richard. 

Richard Reyes: Yeah, it’s, you know, it’s funny. You know, I’ve been sharing my story since 2011. It does not fail where at least once a year, I’m somewhere living my life outside of PLUS ME. And then it’s like, Oh my God, are you the guy whose lung collapsed? I remember you from my school eight years ago when I was in middle school, you know. 

Julie Lacouture: Oh, cause you’ve told your story to so many middle schoolers.

Richard Reyes: I’ve  told my story thousands of times, not exaggerating, to hundreds of thousands of students. 

Julie Lacouture: Well, let’s not disappoint the listeners who are right here right now. 

Richard Reyes: Let’s not disappoint. So the brief story about the lung collapse. One day was sitting outside a class reading a book and I just felt air was going straight through my body. It was just immense pain. I didn’t know what to do. And ultimately after a few hours, I ended up going to the hospital. They told me my lung collapsed and I didn’t know what that meant. So I thought I would be there for a couple of hours. I was there for a couple of days. They did a minor surgery where I learned I had blebs on my lung, which are thin pockets of tissue. And typically, a lot of males, sometimes even females are born with them. They’re fairly normal. So say doctors and x rays, but the chances around, my doctor said one in a million where the bleb will form a hole causing your lung to collapse. And that just happened to me three different times. So within a month, I had those two minor surgeries and because it kept happening, I had to get a major surgery where they essentially went in and glued my lung to my chest wall so it wouldn’t happen anymore. And they fixed it all. And that was all while I was going to community college. So I missed a month of class and I came back, finished my classes, had that 4. 0 GPA applied to my dream school at Occidental college, and I was rejected. And it was just. I thought I had everything a college would want. I had the 4.0, I was working a full time job, I knew exactly what major I wanted at the college, like, I’m, let me in, right? Yay, this is me! 

Julie Lacouture: What else can I do, right? 

Richard Reyes: And it was like, I’m sorry, you have not been accepted. And, looking back, they don’t tell you why you get rejected, right? But, I know why it was because of my college personal statement. I wasn’t able to articulate my resilience, my story; I didn’t write about my lung collapsing to Oxy, which I should have. I wrote about something else. When I went back and read it one day, I was like, what was I thinking? And it was just, I didn’t know I had a story. I didn’t know I mattered in that way to really hone in on what sets me apart. What makes me unique? What makes me who I am. And that’s the skill set we strive to teach and educate youth and adults about. You have a story. Your story matters. And let’s uncover that today. And let’s get you to feel confident in writing and sharing that for others. 

Julie Lacouture: When you share this story with middle schoolers, what do they take from it?

Richard Reyes: Never give up. Always go for it. Don’t listen to the negative voice in your head. Listen to that positive voice. I think those are the three key things I always hear from them. 

The Decision-Making Process for Nonprofit Organizations: Prioritizing Opportunities Versus Chasing Opportunities

Julie Lacouture: I think that’s good fundraising advice, too. You know, you, you’ve done a great job of telling us how you got to where you are, but what are you wrestling with right now?

Richard Reyes: So, PLUS ME now, about 10 years in, we’re right about that million dollar budget. We have a staff of 13. We’re looking at what’s next, right? So, what does growth and scaling look like? What is the need out there that you’re still solving or trying to solve? What are some of those opportunities that are now in front of you that you never had access to before that can help direct and or shift that it’s a lot of prioritizing and really sitting in and understanding where do you want to go? And I think for a founder, for any leader that can weigh heavy on individuals, because I can tell you, we probably have 27 different roads in front of us and do you try to get on all 27 at the same time? Do you go on the five that are to the right of you? Do you take one in each direction? And it’s exciting. It’s incredibly exciting because those opportunities are there. And I feel a deep sense of, I don’t want to say pressure, but just wanting to make sure that I’m doing my best to take all the information and lead the organization moving forward in the best direction that will help us not only sustain and grow the work, but do the mission and serve the communities that we’re striving to serve with these resources. So I’m trying to put a lot of thought into where the future of PLUS ME goes, as well as trying to take action on that without waiting for the answer to fall in my lap, because it’s not going to fall in my lap.

Julie Lacouture: What you just said is I think more true about nonprofits than anything else is trying to prioritize all the opportunities you see in front of you and you’re constrained by resources. So how do you decide? My question to you is, do you have a decision-making process for your organization? How do you make those tough decisions?

Richard Reyes: We built one over COVID in a way at a very basic level, but I wouldn’t say we have, that’s one that we are consistently turning to when every opportunity comes our way. Right. Which is something to, to look at. And you know, truthfully, I don’t plan to be the executive director of the PlusMe Project for the rest of my career.

One day, I have this vision and hope to pass it on to someone else so that they can run the organization. And as we think about succession planning in the nonprofit space, I think that is so important that you set the organization up for success for eternity, essentially, right? So what can that decision making process be with more individuals in the team that are part of that without obviously not having 20 voices at the table either, right? So that I’m a very collaborative leader. I really like hearing voices from team members. And as we’ve grown, I’ve also learned when you have 20 different opinions in a room, a decision needs to be made, right? So I think we’re also entering that phase where that decision making process is so important. We need to hone in on creating something even more concrete than what we have right now to help us in this in the coming years because I think these next few years are truly going to be the decisive years for where we go either in any direction. Still, I think how large we can become and/or how impactful we can be either in Los Angeles and or in other areas. 

Julie Lacouture: What do you want your headline to be for the next two years?

Richard Reyes: Ooh, what do I want the headline to be for the next two years? Something along the lines of, PLUS ME Project helps LA County know every story matters. 

Julie Lacouture: That’s great. Tell folks how they can find out more about and how they can support you. 
Richard Reyes: Yeah. So the PLUS ME project, you can visit us online where our website is the plusmeproject.org. We are also on social: Instagram, Facebook at the PLUS ME Project. You can learn more through our blog as well. Following our newsletter on our website, we send out information quite consistently to just inform you about what we’re doing, volunteer opportunities. Whether sharing your story with youth or reading stories from youth when they apply for our scholarship, as well as donating, all the dollars are helping us bring these resources to more underserved schools. And we have our new storytelling center in Highland Park. Where we will be having free programming for the community to experience storytelling in the many facets that we do at our organization.