Transcript

 

 

Trent Stamp:

Welcome to How we run a podcast where we examine how non-profits become successful. I’m Trent Stamp CEO of The Eisner Foundation.

Julie Lacouture:

And I’m Julie Lacouture, founder of Good Ways Inc. This episode features David Diaz, the Executive Director of Active San Gabriel Valley. He speaks with us about transitioning his organization from a fiscal sponsor to an independent 501(c)3 and all the work he’s doing on collaborative decision making and culture to retain and support his staff. Trent, do you all fund organizations that are with fiscal sponsors?

Trent Stamp:

I’ll tell you the honest truth, Julie, we try not to. Just because it adds another layer. Usually there’s a cut that has to come through. That goes to someone other than the organization we’re funding. I know in some cases, and we have had some grantees where it’s necessary, small organizations, fledgling organizations, I prefer that organizations bring as much in-house as they possibly can. It sets up a level of accountability and transparency that we’re usually more comfortable with, if we know that when we want to support an organization, we write a check to that particular organization. It’s not perfect, but generally we stay away from organizations with fiscal sponsor.

Julie Lacouture:

I genuinely didn’t know that and I feel bad about not knowing it, because I’ve talked to you for like 25 hours on this podcast. So-

Trent Stamp:

It’s not a hard and fast rule. We’re a family foundation and we change based on if we really trust the person or if there’s a compelling reason for it. But I will say that when it comes to evaluation time, it generally is a strike against you when you’re being evaluated by the Eisner Foundation. Not any other foundation, just us.

Julie Lacouture:

And I’m curious, can you elaborate on that? What’s the difference between an organization that’s fiscally sponsored and one that’s not?

Trent Stamp:

It just introduces another organization into the dynamic that I haven’t evaluated, because when I go to make a gift to an organization, I know who’s on their board. I know who their accountant is. I know their CFO, their COO, I know who their staff is. I know who their constituents are. If I’m going to make a gift to an organization with a fiscal sponsor, do I now have to evaluate that level of the organization also? Do I have to now run the board of the fiscal sponsor through our metrics? It’s just another level of evaluation, another level of that reduces my transparency and my accountability with the organization. Again, they’re perfectly normal reasons for it, but it’s just something that I’m not as comfortable with it as many of the foundations are.

Julie Lacouture:

I know from my point of view, what I usually see with organizations that are fiscally sponsored is that with donor relations, it can be harder to get the information faster about who donated and when did the letter go out. It can make it just a little bit of a slower reporting system in terms of donor lists and stuff like that.

Trent Stamp:

I just like to know if I have a question or a concern, who do I call? And sometimes that gets a little confusing. If I can keep it simple I prefer to.

Julie Lacouture:

Right. So I got a chance to talk to David Diaz who runs Active San Gabriel, which is a tremendous organization in that, the thing that they’re trying to do is so complicated. And he mentioned that they are transitioning from a fiscal sponsor to be their own independent 501(c)3. There I think they’re four months into it. And so we started talking about one thing and then I think that we really got some details on making that transition and was fascinating to hear about all the due diligence he’s done as the leader of that organization to make that possible. It really is a big change.

Trent Stamp:

It is. I think it’s a natural evolution for most organizations. If you think of your larger, more corporately kind of non-profits, very few of them have fiscal sponsors, right? It’s for fledgling organizations, it’s for grassroots organizations who don’t necessarily want to have that kind of back office on staff, who haven’t really put those kind of processes in place for the kinds of things that they’re trying to do. But I don’t know a ton of organizations that are 10, 15, 20 years old, who still have a fiscal sponsor.

Julie Lacouture:

It is a great tool though, for some of the new organizations and some of the more grassroots organizations, as you said, the other thing he’s talking about as a small organization, how hard he works to take care of his people there, to prevent burnout. And I know that you and I have talked a couple of times about what it’s like from a funder point of view when you’re getting high turnover at an organization. So it was really interesting to hear him talk about what he’s doing to retain staff and how he’s taking care of his people.

Trent Stamp:

It’s hard in normal circumstances, right? I mean, generally in the non-profit world, you’re going to make a little less money than you might have made in a different sector. But if you get to the point where you’re working just as hard, if not harder for not enough money, in a difficult challenging environment where you’re not as appreciated, it’s just human nature, but it’s part of this great reservation.

Trent Stamp:

So I really commend CEOs, Executive Directors for finding ways to support their staff. We always talk about it when we make a grant that the foundation, which is what are you doing to keep your good people? What are you doing to retain your people? What are you doing to support them? I think it’s perfectly fine to talk about how you have a good leave policy. You’ve done things for people, some team building around the office. If that’s what people are interested in, make sure you have good coffee, make sure you do what you can to get people good parking spots and leave them alone on the weekends. If that’s not part of their job, but don’t send people texts and emails at two o’clock on Saturday afternoon or 10 o’clock on Thursday night, let them have a life and support them, because you need them in your field.

Julie Lacouture:

That’s so good to hear you’re using that as part of the evaluation.

Trent Stamp:

Oh absolutely. Because so many of these non-profits are just personnel heavy, right? The product that they provide is hard to differentiate from that of their peers and when organizations are great, it’s usually because they have great people. So hopefully you’ll get what you can to retain or support those people. Because if you lose your good folks, you’re destined for failure in the sector.

Julie Lacouture:

I think that’s the thing to listen to in this interview with David, he has some really great tactical things he’s doing. So let’s take a listen.

 

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David Diaz:

My name is David Diaz, Executive Director of Active San Gabriel Valley. Our mission is to create a more sustainable, equitable and livable San Gabriel Valley.

Julie Lacouture:

You know the first reason I wanted to talk to you, is because I know you’re a Fellow in the John W. Mack Movement Building program. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

David Diaz:

Yes. So I am a Fellow currently, it’s an opportunity for myself and other leaders from in and around the LA area and other places as well, to have an opportunity to connect with one another as folks that are in leadership positions. Sometimes being in a leadership role does feel relatively lonely at times. And so this is the opportunity for folks in leadership positions or Executive Directors to learn and talk amongst each other, to learn from each other, to learn from others, to be able to continue doing the movement, building work in the respective communities.

Julie Lacouture:

That’s wonderful. What have you learned from your peers? Because I think you’re right. It is lonely at the top and sometimes you want to bounce ideas off of someone else that understands. So what have you learned?

David Diaz:

One thing from talking to someone at another organization that I learned and have adopted into our organization, which is the 40 hour rule. Essentially you give folks 40 hours, right? So that could be five business days or five days to be able to uplift a concern or something that folks may have had issue with, that may affect the interpersonal relationship amongst colleagues. And so I think one of the things that I appreciate a lot individually and professionally is the ability to be able to have conflict resolution. Because if it’s not resolved  miscommunication and things you wouldn’t want to see come up in your organization. Interpersonal conflict is one of the things that comes up a lot. We created a standard operating procedure around how to call people in, how to adjust it, along with the framework for folks to follow.

Julie Lacouture:

When do you use the 40 hour rule? Tell me how you present it to staff.

David Diaz:

For example, let’s say that you felt that I called you out, indirectly or directly during a meeting for something, right? And that didn’t sit well with me. The impact of what you said didn’t sit well with me. And we’ve developed a process where the 40 hour rule, where we want folks to be able to have conflict resolution with each other. And so this process basically means that either you resolve it within those 40 hours, if you don’t resolve it, or if you don’t bring people in or you don’t talk about it, then let it go because we don’t want that to build over time.

Julie Lacouture:

Got it.

David Diaz:

So you can’t two years later say: “I remember this one time at this meeting, you said this led to that.” Right? It’s a way for people to be able to resolve a conflict that may come up. And this could happen in smaller, big ways. It doesn’t include things like major things like sexual harassment, bullying, other more serious things. Those are all good to go to human resources, things that may have had an impact on folks negatively that they could resolve amongst each other.

Julie Lacouture:

I think what that does and where I see that being very effective is that one is I think sometimes things interpersonally at work can eat at you and then you think: “Oh, I should have addressed it in the moment, but I lost that opportunity.” So you said five days, you have a choice, it’s still open to talk about, but you have a timeline there. And if you can’t bring it up in five days, then you should move on. So it’s for those littler interpersonal conflicts. Am I understanding that right?

David Diaz:

Yeah, that’s correct. And folks also have an opportunity to bring in someone like their Project Manager or the Executive Director. If they feel more comfortable having that conversation with someone there or if they can resolve it themselves, they can do so. There’s different opportunities for them to do that.

Julie Lacouture:

That’s great. And you learn that in the fellows program, you got that from another leader. I don’t want to give folks the impression that y’all are fighting a lot over there. Tell us little bit about Active San Gabriel Valley.

David Diaz:

Yeah. Our mission is to create a more sustainable, equitable liable San Gabriel Valley. If you’re not from LA or the LA region, we focus on Eastern Los Angeles county, which is comprised of 31 cities and four large unincorporated areas, roughly about 2 million people. It’s a very diverse set of neighborhoods. And so we really want to create a participatory, equitable process for public funding to address the multiple needs in our area around active transportation, climate, as well as other sustainability or climate related things in the area. We’ve been around for 10 years, we’re going on 11 years, we recently transitioned from a fiscally sponsored project. So we are formally fiscally sponsored as of last fiscal year. So as of this fiscal year, we’re now our own independent 501(c)3. So we’re coming up on almost four months of being in our own independent 501(c)3.

Julie Lacouture:

Oh, excellent. Congratulations.

David Diaz:

Yeah. Thank you. It’s not a process that I advise folks to go through, especially when you have multiple contracts to transfer from your fiscally sponsored to your organization. It was just a tremendous undertaking. So I definitely don’t recommend anyone to do that.

Julie Lacouture:

Yeah. Well let’s talk about that. So you were fiscally sponsored and what made you decide to go out on your own? Because fiscal sponsorship can sometimes last an organization decades.

David Diaz:

Correct. I think for us the biggest thing was the growth that we had experienced as an organization. We were formally known as the Westside Gabriel Bike Coalition, that’s actually how this organization started. A group of concerned residents in the San Gabriel Valley, organized a Facebook page and called it the West San Gabriel Valley Coalition of Bicyclists, through a participatory internal planning process, we found that the name Bike San Gabriel Valley didn’t really match or reflect the work that we were doing. It was to focused on bikes, where really our work was at the intersectionality of the climate crisis. In 2018 we rebranded and expanded our mission to be Active San Gabriel Valley to really reflect all the work that we do.

Julie Lacouture:

For folks that aren’t from LA. It might be hard to understand how biking is intersectional. So can you go into that a little bit about what it is to have access to transportation and how that intersects with biking? It sounds to me like a very logical move, but maybe you could go into that.

David Diaz:

Yeah. I’m a big proponent of systems change in looking at root causes. And just to provide a little bit more context background around the communities are in the San Gabriel Valley. We have a large immigrant population or foreign born population. We have over 50% of folks who are foreign born. The number of folks who like to work is about 1%, which rivals the city of LA. However, 35% of our sidewalk network is missing. There’s what would say poor transit access in the area. And we have little to no infrastructure support people walking, biking to and from popular destinations that include economic workforce opportunities. When we looked at what it means for an individual to have economic opportunities, usually reliant on how much access you have to a car, right? If you apply to a job, what’s one of the first things to ask you for? A driver’s license, insurance, can you get to and from this location, right? What do you need in order to buy a car or have access to a car?

David Diaz:

You need to have capital, right? If you’re taking out a loan, you need to qualify for the loan. Sometimes those terms aren’t doable. And so really creating these car centric, car culture communities in LA that we have right now, really limits economic opportunity for folks, because the transit isn’t reliable. You can’t walk there safely. You can’t bike there safely. And so it really limits people’s economic opportunities, especially in areas like the cities in El Monte and South El Monte, where you don’t have that much economic opportunity. So people have to travel far distances to get to where they work. So for example, my dad lives in South El Monte and for the last 20 something years, he’s have to commute all the way to Huntington Beach every day.

Julie Lacouture:

Wow.

David Diaz:

Every day. And I can’t tell you the impact that it’s had on his life in terms of the things that he’s missed out on because of all the times that he spends commuting.

David Diaz:

However, my dad doesn’t have another opportunity locally to be able to do the same type of work or get paid the same that he does at this company that he currently works at. And that’s a similar case for a lot of folks. And so for us, people who bike are just trying to get to a place of economic opportunity, trying to get to a library, trying to take their kids to school, trying to get to a community center, trying to access resources. And so when we don’t have the infrastructure, the public infrastructure to support them doing so, we’re directly impacting their quality of life.

David Diaz:

And we really see this all connected. But some of us choose the bike because it’s good for the environment. Some of us have no right privilege of choosing: “I want to bike because I want to keep my greenhouse gas emissions down.” But some people don’t have that option. Then when you look at how many workforce opportunities are there in your community, what type of housing is available in your community? Is it affordable? How close is it to a park? How close to your kid’s school? Do you have healthy food nearby? All those things are connected, right? And they directly affect people’s wellbeing and quality of life. We are all products of our environment.

Julie Lacouture:

That’s wonderful. Thank you so much. So you start off as a bike coalition basically. You expand into all of these other areas because it matters so much and you can see the intersectionality there. Let’s talk about how you begin to prepare to be independent of your physical sponsor. What do you do?

David Diaz:

So I have a checklist of a hundred things that you need to do in order to do that. As the assessment of your current contracts and how amenable your funders will be for you to make that transition. A lot of their funding, that you may be awarded, comes with certain contractual obligations that you’ll need to meet, regardless of whether your with your fiscal sponsor or your new 501(c)3. So we had to do an assessment of our funders and amenable they would be for us to make the transition from community partners, which was our fiscal sponsor to our own 501(c)3. And so that’s the first step, do an assessment.

Julie Lacouture:

So as an assessment, a conversation with the funder or review of the contract, all of the above, what happens in the assessment?

David Diaz:

Correct. Multiple conversations with each individual or funder around what are the requisites for them to feel comfortable to contractually move the contract from your fiscal sponsor over to your new 501(c)3. And so they each came with a different set of obligations. Some could be as simple as, as long as you meet the insurance requirements of their own 501(c)3 and you have your articles in corporation and all your 501(c)3 documentation, that’s fine. That’s enough for us to be able to move over the contract. Others, Valley County in particular was a little bit more onerous . So they had a set of different requirements for… So those got a little bit more detail than intricate that required County Council to get involved. So each individual funder came with its own set of requirements for us to be able to move over from being fiscally sponsored, to becoming our own 501(C)3.

Julie Lacouture:

I am not surprised to hear that different funders wanted different things. That’s not news, I think.

David Diaz:

Yeah.

Julie Lacouture:

How did you make the go or no-go call on this. Because I can imagine that when you got to the assessment part, you were probably 80% of the way to that decision.

David Diaz:

Yeah. I think after talking to all the funders, we then set out a realistic timeline for when we would transition, when it made most sense for the organization. And so we review things like, when do contracts end, when do contracts start, the beginning and end of the fiscal year, the term of the contracts that we had in place, how easy or difficult it would be to move contracts, what contracts needed different types of amendments? So we put that all together and then ultimately we set out a 10 month timeline, from the time that we just had these conversations with the funders, to then move over to our new 501(c)3. So we gave folks plenty of notice. And so it wasn’t like we sprung it on them like: “Hey, in three months we’re making this transition.” I think the thing that was challenging or difficult was building out the infrastructure for the new organization, as you’re ending infrastructure or some of the components for the fiscally sponsorship agreement. So essentially it’s like you’re closing up business and you’re opening one at the same time.

Julie Lacouture:

Can you talk to me about the pros and cons of being out on your own?

David Diaz:

So far, it’s only approaching four months and I love it. I love having that. It defends, I think it signals maturity to the funders. That’s one of the things that we heard for foundations that it signals maturity from the organization after being fiscally sponsored for so many years, to be in a place where now you can become your own 501(c)3. I like the autonomy of that. We’re still building the infrastructure for the organization in particular, the admin infrastructure for the organization. And in the meantime, that burden or that load of work falls on me. I’ve learned how to process payrolls. I hope not to be doing that anymore.

Julie Lacouture:

I hope you don’t have to do anymore too. Did you lose anyone in the process?

David Diaz:

In the transition we did not lose anyone in the process. One of the things about Active SGV, is that we do have this participatory decision making process, where we take input and feedback from folks into account for our decision making. And so folks overwhelmingly were very supportive of making this transition. Everyone that was there with us as a fiscally sponsored project, moved over to the new 501(c)3.

Julie Lacouture:

I assume you had to raise some more funds in order to make this transition from a fiscal sponsor to your own independent 501(c)3. How did you do that?

David Diaz:

Luckily, all the funders that we had were amenable to making the transition from our fiscal sponsor over to our new 501(c)3. So we transfer existing contracts over to the new 501(c)3. And then most recently we received support from the Winegart Foundation for unrestricted operating support for us to build our reserves and then also be able to implement our DI work, as well as take on anything else for the new 501(c)3.

David Diaz:

That’s really helpful. So I think securing the existing funding was enough for us to be able to make that transition. And some of the work around, having to certified public accountant, help facility things that came out of our unrestricted funds. So we didn’t necessarily have to raise new funds for it. Now one of the things with the fiscal sponsor is that they had a 50% admin fee. That was then for them taking to account, to pay for the backend infrastructure that included rent, utilities, insurance, all that operating costs, essentially in effect, we’re saving more money because the fiscal sponsors no longer taking that 50% admin fee than using it for the backend stuff that we typically don’t see.

Julie Lacouture:

So it sounds like then, and this is a great lesson, I think for other organizations, it really wasn’t about, can we raise the funds to do this transition? It was looking at: “Okay, we have general operating support already. We will save 15%. So that goes into to help us with our additional costs. Plus we know that all of our funders will move with us.” Those three things, all working together, you knew you could support.

David Diaz:

That’s correct. And I think it’s really important to have the conversations with the funders. That’ll give you a pulse of where they’re at, because it hasn’t been… I think our experience is our experience. It won’t be the same experience for everyone. Our experience is our experience and our funders really amenable to making the transition. Whereas some project, their funders may not be as comfortable with that. It may go the other way where the funder isn’t comfortable with them making the transition to a 501(c)3 independent of the fiscal sponsors. So really it’s important to have that conversation with your existing funding sources to make sure that they’re in agreement with you, because if they’re not, then you have to weigh the consequence of life. We may lose this funding and are we okay with forward without it? Will we be okay?

Julie Lacouture:

It sounds like you’ve also done a really good job when you budget and you fundraise around that budget of saying there needs to be funds to make the organization go. It’s not just project based fundraising. And then you’re left with an unfunded administration team.

David Diaz:

Yeah that’s correct. With the admin team, making sure that we have multiyear projections around our budgeting and our staff plans and what projects are upcoming. We keep a close eye on the request for proposals, making sure that we have a good sense of what’s out there. Our thing is that we work in a specific geography. We work in east and Los Angeles County. And so we have a very good understanding of what opportunities are upcoming at the state level, what good opportunities at the regional level, what good opportunities there are at the local level. And we work closely with cities to be able to submit proposals at times on behalf, and collaboration with cities. And so we have a good understanding of what’s coming up, what’s on the docket and how to best budget for future work and what our staffing needs are going to be.

Julie Lacouture:

So let’s talk a little bit about how your organization runs. What do you think makes your team run well?

David Diaz:

Yeah, one of the things that I think makes our team run really well is that again, we are a non-profit report of the city of El Monte, who is comprised of folks from the San Gabriel Valley. And so I think at the root of it, there’s a big affinity for the place that we all grew up in and love for the mission, right? To be able to be of service to others and to tackle the climate crisis, which we feel was the biggest threat to us all right? And I think it’s really special Julie that most of us, including myself, started off as a volunteer intern. So I’ve started from a volunteer in 2014 to full-time staff in 2018 to later that year, December 2018, becoming the Executive Director.

Julie Lacouture:

So be careful what you volunteer for.

David Diaz:

Yeah. It may become your life’s work. Most of us have graduated from volunteer intern to full-time staff. And so I think that makes us truly unique. We have about 21 folks right now and of those folks most have started on as a volunteer or intern. So I think that really helps. And then in addition some of the systems that have been set up for us is that we really try to mirror the approach that we want to see in our communities, that we want to see by government, that we want to see in other places or institutions. So we really take a collaborative approach to how we do the work. I mentioned earlier about our decision making, having input and feedback from folks. Some of those things play out. For example, in meetings we have an agenda, that’s structured for folks. We switch minute takers and facilitators.

David Diaz:

So sharing a power and delegation of who’s doing what, and it’s also good for professional development. We have a conversation around whose best suited for tasks. And so people are able to discuss now in this meeting, who’s the best person suited for this depending on their workload or their week and what things they have going on. You have autonomy over schedules. No one’s handed a schedule on Sunday evening or Monday morning. Here’s what you’re working. We have enough trust in the folks that work at Active SGV to give them autonomy over their schedules. We use Google calendar and they’ll mark on Google calendar, what times and days they’re working and at what times. And then we also provide people… Even before the pandemic, before COVID 19, we offered folks the opportunity for remote work or telecommute because we knew it was good for people’s wellbeing, as well as for the environment to keep their vehicle miles traveled down and all that.

David Diaz:

So even before COVID 19, we already provided autonomy over schedules, remote work. And then the other two things that I’ll mention, is that in terms of the culture, I think we’ve done a lot of work around building a good work culture, healthy positive work culture. For us one of the things that we’ve implemented is Brené Brown’s BRAVING. BRAVING just, each letter stands for something, right? So B for boundaries, R for responsibilities, A for accountability, vault is V, integrity and non-judgemental and generosity. And we in our retreat and our conversations, have had really frank discussions around what this means for us as a collective and matter what this means for us as individuals. Similar to like in community settings, right? Our community meetings. We want to have shared agreements around how we work with each other, how we resolve conflict, how we do the work. We’ve adopted these agreements, according to us.

David Diaz:

So some of the things haven’t played out the way that we want to. So I’ll give you an example, G right, G is for generosity. Brené Brown says: “Always assume good intentions.” And we found that even if you always assume… Julie, if you say something mean to me and I didn’t really like what you said to me, but going to make me feel a certain type of way. And so there’s still that impact that landed on me. And so this idea of intent versus impact right. Is really important to us. And so we’ve adopted and modified that, right? Yeah.

David Diaz:

Assume good intentions. However, let’s focus on impact-

Julie Lacouture:

But however mean comment is still a mean comment.

David Diaz:

Yeah. Impact versus intent, right? And so we’ve made it work for Active SGV. And so we’ve done that as a collective that is individuals sharing so that everyone knows these are our group agreements. And all of this I would say is done in collaboration. So really the other thing is analyzing and setting up these systems and concert with your colleagues is really important, because if it was just David saying: “Hey, y’all, this is what we’re doing now, everybody, BRAVING is it.” Right? And everyone’s looking at other, what is a BRAVING? Really taking this approach of building these systems together with folks as much as possible.

Julie Lacouture:

David, I think what’s so significant about what you’re doing and what you’re saying and all of these things, is that you are really taking care of your team as a resource. Though I think sometimes especially in non-profits that are doing movement building and are doing really close to the ground stuff, vs let’s say like an academic institution or a hospital or some of the bigger non-profits we have in the sector is that the burnout is a real risk to your business. Is that where some of this comes from?

David Diaz:

Absolutely. I think absolutely. I’m a big supporter of mental health and wellbeing. I think that if we’re going to have any legitimacy, we need to also model the behavior that we want to see. And I believe that’s particularly important of someone in a leadership position.

David Diaz:

I know it’s cliche, but the people at Active SGV make what Active SGV be what it is right. Without them what do we really have? And so that’s really important to me. Self care is important to me, avoiding burnout is really important to me. Professional development, building next pipeline of leaders in or around this region is really important to me. Being able to do this type of work is… Again be of service to folks is important to me. One of the things that’s probably really frustrating to everyone is non-profit, industrial complex. And this sentiment of you should work out of the goodness of your heart, not get [crosstalk 00:27:54] wow. You should just be grateful for what you have. I think that non-profits and people who work in public service provide tremendous value to society, to our communities. I just don’t think that’s caught up yet. Products have a lot of value, right? There’s a lot of value placed on products. I don’t think that same assessment or that same sentiment is placed on non-profits and the type of work that we do.

Julie Lacouture:

Well, you’re building up value, even if society’s not there yet. Is there something you’ve done to adapt in the last 18 months to the changing environment? It sounds like you all were pretty set up to adapt to a global pandemic.

David Diaz:

Yeah. We had the remote or the telecommuting systems put in place before, but I think for us, one of the things that we traditionally have focused on is direct engagements because we recognize we needed to meet people where they were. It’s during COVID 19 lockdown, right? How do you meet people where they are, if you’re not supposed to meet people at all, how do you engage with folks in the… Again, our approach is multilingual, multicultural. And so we traditionally focused on direct engagement. I’m going to go to your house, I’m going to meet you at a community event. So now we utilize text banking, we’re sending more emails, we’re phone banking. We’re calling people as much as people don’t like to be called, right? We’re sending out multilingual mailers, we’re doing pod casts, we’re continue to do social media. We have webinars or virtual community meetings.

David Diaz:

We still do the door to door. We have community canvassing, community sites. We do pop-ups all physically distant and secure. All of our team is vaccinated. And in addition to the direct service or some of the tactics, we also participate in food bank distributions. We do High School education and repair for folks. For us the adaptation has been some around our community engagement and how we do it. Now we do all those things combined. We do all those things to really get the word out and do some participatory planning and engagement with community members.

David Diaz:

And some of that is yielded good results. We hosted a number of focus groups, did some pop-ups, did door-to-door, mailers, surveys, phone banking, text banking, around the development of an aquatic center, in the San Gabriel Valley. And fortunately it looks like we’re on our way to receiving full funding. We’re about, I would say 80% or 85% of the way there, it’s in collaboration with LA County Department of Recreation, parts and rec, as well as a Los Angeles Unified School District. Then we want to make sure that it continues to be community driven, equitable participator, planning and input process to get infrastructure that’s going to meet their needs of this climate crisis.

Julie Lacouture:

Can you tell us about a mistake you’ve made or what you learned from?

David Diaz:

I would say one of the biggest mistakes that I’ve made, is just taking on too much. We want to model the behavior that we want to see. And I think that there’s been times where you just take on too much. And so I think that’s really affected my ability to focus on big picture things or donor relations or whatever it that may mean. And so I think that’s been one of the mistakes that I’ve made. And I think for me, what I’ve learned about it is that we need to make that investment in those resources. It’s not just me having to take on all this additional work, whereas I could have hired someone else or hired some type of support to be able to get that done. And so that’s a learning that I think it is ongoing with the job, right? Like things come up, you get new funding, you have to react. Sometimes there’s a literally short deadline on it. And so I think it’s just a process of knowing how much work is feasible.

Julie Lacouture:

Yeah. That comes with experience right. Where you know how long something’s going to take, that’s hard to get down. So what’s the big idea moving forward and how do you think you’ll get there?

David Diaz:

I think the big idea for us is a 32 hour work week. And I want to be very specific about-

Julie Lacouture:

Yeah. Tell us about this.

David Diaz:

It’s not the four day work week, right? There’s a four day work week and then it’s a 32 hour work week. So again, folks at Active SGV have autonomy over their schedules and the ability to do work remotely or at the office. And so for us as of October 2021, we’re implementing the 32 hour work week. And this is directly in response to the learnings from the pandemic. I feel to me it’s outlandish or just beyond me to think that we’ve all gone through this tremendous trauma of seeing others be ill, die, be near death, get sick, have to worry about that. And then to come back to something, that’s how we used to operate. It’s just beyond me. And, and I think we cannot continue to operate in the same fashion that we were before. We have to learn, because what do we see in that pandemic? Food insecurity was rampant.

David Diaz:

The ability for us to be able to deploy vaccines to everyone, regardless of insurance status. I love universal healthcare. Why don’t we have that? And so I think for me really, it’s that focus on mental health and wellbeing, the gender of quality, and also it’s good for the environment, for us to have a 32 hour work week.

David Diaz:

As a new dad I really cherish and appreciate all the time that I get to spend with my kid. And I think for everyone else, I recognize that our lives are much more than the work that we do. I love the work that we do. I’m super passionate about it. However, there’s a consequence of working 60, 70 hours or commuting five hours a day. That’s taking away from your interest, your own personal health and well being and how sustainable that is.

Julie Lacouture:

The staff likes it so far?

David Diaz:

Yes. Haven’t heard otherwise.

Julie Lacouture:

They have five days to tell you.

David Diaz:

Yeah. And then this week, yesterday we recognize indigenous people’s day and they will work a total of 24 hours.

Julie Lacouture:

Right. David, I’m going to ask you to give a tip for someone who might be at a non-profit who wants to have more government relationships to start working with cities more or improve those relationships.

David Diaz:

I would say, get to know city agencies and staff. That’s one of the first things, right? Elected decision makers, but ultimately it’s like staff that makes things happen. So get to know those folks, I would say organize in and around your community. So if you’re interested in working in a respective community, please get to know the community. We do not advertise or like what people from other communities come in and try to do work without really knowing the community or having a better understanding. So as a place based organization, the San Gabriel Valley is a place where we all have a lot of affinity towards. Get to know agency staff, get to know the community. I get familiar with the needs. And that’s one way to be able to work with government.

Julie Lacouture:

I want to give you a chance to give a general tip for someone in your position.

David Diaz:

Yes. My tip for someone in my position would be to develop standard operating procedures. When I became Executive Director, I was about 30 years old. So I consider myself a pretty young Executive Director. And for me looking for learning toward other folks that I admire and I’ve worked with Rudy Spinoza, Dr. Forza was at the Social Justice Learning Institute. This is one of his big tips is to create standard operating procedures. And I can’t tell you how much of a difference that makes just because when I started there was about five or six of us at the organization. And so now it’s about 21 of us. So having to explain how we do things to each incoming person, as you’re growing a team, becomes quite time consuming. We’ve developed a menu of standard operating procedures in terms of how we do community engagement, how we do text banking, how we do social media, how we request that off.

David Diaz:

It’s just, it runs a list of how we, we do things. And so it’s important for people and for the organization to write down how we do our work, because then it makes it easier for folks to follow, provides clarity, I think it provides professional development for folks that are incoming that may not have that skill set or been exposed to that type of work in the past. And it provides autonomy. But then also for us, we do provide, or both check-ins for folks to be able to ask questions if somethings lot clear on the standard operating procedure. And it’s not just me writing it again. It’s a collective process of different folks writing these standard operating procedures. So I would say that figure out how to make sure that each position is able to clearly define or describe the tasks that they’re conducting.

David Diaz:

So you can then easily translate that to other folks, right? Because then you’re going to be inundated. How do I do this? Where do I get that? How do I log in here? Was this right? And so that’s really important. And then the other tip, Julie, I’ll just say really quick, is continue to read. I think that’s one of the first things that… Not the first things, but that I just kept doing it and I actually did more as a new Executive Director is just reading everything I get hands on. Seven habits of affected leadership, Surprising science of meetings, some book called Power, How to do nothing. The body keeps a score. Just continue to read, I think is really important. Now with the 16th month old, I don’t get to read as much as I’d like to, but I definitely recommend to continue reading.

Julie Lacouture:

Excellent. We’ll get some book recommendation and put them up on the website when this comes out. And David, thank you so much for your time. It was really great to talk to you and exciting to learn from you.

David Diaz:

Thank you, Julie. I really appreciate it.

Julie Lacouture:

We have a request for you dear listeners.

Trent Stamp:

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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.