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.

 

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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.