Transcript

 

Trent Stamp:

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

Julie Lacouture:

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

Hey Trent, how are you?

Trent Stamp:

I’m doing great, Julie, how are you?

Julie Lacouture:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Julie Lacouture:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Julie Lacouture:

Yeah. Tell our listeners about Johng Ho Song.

Trent Stamp:

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

Julie Lacouture:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Julie Lacouture:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Julie Lacouture:

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

 

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Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

Of course I was going to bring up.

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

And you have a decent CEO.

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

Well, you got two hours?

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

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

Johng Ho Song:

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

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

I told you I run-

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

Don’t ask me about succession planning.

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

Terrific.

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

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

Trent Stamp:

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

Johng Ho Song:

Thank you so much, Trent. Take care.

Trent Stamp:

Let’s go have lunch soon.

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Julie Lacouture:

We have a request for you, dear listeners.

Trent Stamp:

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

Julie Lacouture:

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