Reinventing an organization with Nichol Whiteman

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. On this episode, we’re joined by Nichol Whiteman, the CEO of the Dodgers Foundation. Nichol talks to us about reimagining and revisioning what an organization can be. It’s a really great story of a turnaround. She also shows the importance of having a big vision for your organization and keeping it simple.

                Hey, Trent. How’s it going?

Trent Stamp:

I’m doing okay, Julie. How are you?

Julie Lacouture:

I had some breakthrough COVID, and I’m getting back on my feet, and I don’t sound like Kathleen Turner anymore. So we’re good to record today.

Trent Stamp:

Kathleen Turner is one of the sexiest women alive. So if you had that-

Julie Lacouture:

I could do much worse.

Trent Stamp:

Well, I’m glad to hear that you’re feeling a little better. And yes, it does seem as if COVID has once again reared its ugly head, and I’m hopeful that we can get through summer in a slightly better manner than we have the last couple of years.

Julie Lacouture:

Yeah, that’s true. Speaking of summer, have you been to some baseball games already?

Trent Stamp:

I’ve been out there to see the Dodgers and to see the Angels. I am a lifelong Bay Area sports fan, and so I go primarily to root against the local teams here in Los Angeles, but it’s always a nice time out at the ballpark.

Julie Lacouture:

And I believe my hometown team, the Red Sox gave you quite a baseball moment last year.

Trent Stamp:

This is entirely true. I’ve probably been to a thousand baseball games in my life. I have never gotten close to a foul ball in the stadium, and I’ve sat in stadiums in Oakland, where there were 700 people there, and there were probably 50 foul balls, and one has never gotten anywhere near me. And last year, while at a Red Sox game by myself, I left early in the seventh inning to walk back to my hotel and a ball flew out of the stadium, landed on the street, took one bounce and landed literally in my hand without I having to break stride at any one point. Yes, that was a nice memory. Thank you, Red Sox.

Julie Lacouture:

The reason we’re talking about baseball is today’s guest is Nichol Whiteman, the CEO of the Dodgers Foundation.

Trent Stamp:

Nichol is a hundred percent a rockstar in the field, both within corporate philanthropy and traditional philanthropy and community development, and I’m very jealous that you had the opportunity to talk to her. Why did you want to talk to Nichol?

Julie Lacouture:

I keep a mental list of leaders that I keep an eye on people who, when they do something, I know that it’s intentional and strategic and they’re good leaders, and Nichol is one of those leaders. When the Dodgers Foundation does something, they have a really good strategy behind it. So I tend to watch what they do. And also, she’s a tremendous people manager and is just a great person all around. I had a chance to meet her a couple years ago, and I thought we have to have her as a guest. Plus, I also love baseball and I pay attention to it. So I feel like I’ve gotten familiarized with how the different MLB team foundations work, and they all do something different, and they all do it in a different way. So it’s been interesting to watch the Dodgers Foundation.

Trent Stamp:

Historically, I have been relatively unimpressed with most sports philanthropy programs and most corporate social responsibility programs that are run through professional sports teams. And I have to say, even as a lifelong Giants fan, the Dodgers are not that way, and certainly not under Nichol’s leadership.

                What do you see that the Dodgers Foundation is doing that’s special, that’s different, that is unlike all of those other corporate philanthropy programs run by sports teams?

Julie Lacouture:

Yeah. I mean, it’s exactly that, right? So it’s this commitment to making the programs that they run impactful. Like most MLB teams, they have some kind of youth baseball connection. The Dodgers Foundation goes so far as to evaluate those and then add services onto it through partners. It’s tremendous how much it surrounds the community. It’s not a matter of just going in and throwing down four bases and saying, “This looks nice now. Congratulations, you have a baseball field.” But it’s that commitment to going that extra mile to prove it, and I think that’s really special about what they do because they both act as an organization that runs programs, but also as an organization that funds other programs, but they’re intentional about making those work together.

Trent Stamp:

I get the feeling that you’re right in the use of the word intentional. In my viewing of their work from afar, it seems very intentional, very transformational and really outcome-based, which I don’t think is what we’ve seen from a lot of sports teams in the past.

Julie Lacouture:

When Nichol took over, the organization had some reputation problems, and it was suffering, and I think that they were very intentional in bringing her on so that it could go the other way. She inherited a turnaround situation. It’s great to see how they’ve grown in the last couple of years. She came on and she had, I think, one employee. So it’s definitely something that her team has built.

Trent Stamp:

We do have to give some credit to Dodger ownership there also. They had a vision, and they wanted this to be real. Not a lot of people, when they’re evaluating your ownership of professional sports team, are going to ask how good is your charitable programming in the community. But those folks hired somebody who I don’t think that she would’ve been satisfied with a kind of job where she would’ve just been running those silent auctions and making Dodgers seat and ticket holders feel good. She’s trying to do community development and trying to do it in a city that desperately needs it. And so I think everyone deserves credit for that. Jealous that I wasn’t there for this particular conversation, but what should we listen for in this conversation?

Julie Lacouture:

You got a free ball at Fenway Park. So I think that you should just keep your jealousy to yourself. In this conversation, I think the perception of the Dodgers Foundation is that you’ve got all these athletes and everyone knows the Dodgers, so it must be a really easy job. And so there’s a point where I ask her about using celebrities, or how can organizations or causes use celebrities to their best advantage. And I think, listen to her answer, because her answer goes back to building a quality program. She’s like, this celebrity aspect of it does nothing for you, if you don’t have a quality program. And you need to build that first, and then find people in the public eye for whom that resonates. And I think that might come as a surprise to people, but she’s really smart about that.

                The other thing I think to listen for is just how clear of a sense of where she wanted to land she had, before she even had the ability to even get there. Right? So taking over an organization, having one employee and saying, “Here are the things that I think are important. We’ll figure out how to get there.”

Trent Stamp:

Yeah. I mean, those are themes that we’ve talked about for four seasons now, right? I mean, a celebrity doesn’t solve everything, and you have to have a vision of where you want to go, and then people will join you. But if you ask people where you should go, I think you end up in a ditch most of the time.

Julie Lacouture:

Oh, you get a hundred different answers.

Trent Stamp:

You got to be the one that slaps the sign on the front of the bus and say, “This is where I’m going. Hopefully, you want to come.”

Julie Lacouture:

Can you extend that analogy to board of directors stuff? I feel like I’ve seen a couple of organizations where they’re waiting for the board to set the direction.

Trent Stamp:

Yeah. I mean, the analogy would be that’s driving your bus and waiting for three rich people to get on the bus, and hopefully, they tell you where to go. I think that we, as staff, have an obligation to tell our board and our bus riders, “This is where we’re headed, and I need your help to pay for gas and to navigate, but this is my vision and this is where I’m planning on going. So please come along for the ride and help me in the event that there’s trouble.” But waiting for a board to tell you where to go, it’s a lifetime of frustration.

Julie Lacouture:

Yeah. There’s very few boards that can do that, I think. And then when I talk to board members, they say that probably they think their best place in that is to say, “We would love to weigh in on the vision and help shape it, but we don’t want to have it be top-down. It needs to be a collaboration.”

Trent Stamp:

A thousand percent. Don’t ignore the value that your board brings. Just try to keep them in the lane for where do they bring the most value.

Julie Lacouture:

Yeah. That’s a good way to put it.

Trent Stamp:

So lastly, with Nichol, I mean, what she does is relatively eclectic in the sense that she runs a large corporate philanthropy program for one of the great brands in America, but what can our listeners gather from her lessons? What can they learn from her that’s applicable, even if you’re not running a CSR program or a community development program for one of the most iconic franchises in the history of sports?

Julie Lacouture:

Yeah. I think it’s to listen to how she thinks of the organization and a relentless focus on making it simple to explain. And I think that’s a real key to the success that they had, is it wasn’t trying to be too complicated. They do so many different things, but it’s really clear about why they do it, and that comes from her, and I think that’s a really important lesson.

Trent Stamp:

That’s terrific. I can’t wait. Let’s dive in.

Julie Lacouture:

All right. Let’s listen to my conversation with Nichol.

Nichol Whiteman:

Hi, I’m Nichol Whiteman, chief executive officer of the Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation.

Julie Lacouture:

Nichol, thank you so much for being here. We’ve been wanting to have you on for a while, so I’m glad we could find time to make this happen.

                So Nichol, let’s jump right in and talk about the Dodgers Foundation. What do you all do day to day? What’s the mission?

Nichol Whiteman:

The Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation is the official charity of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and our mission is to tackle LA’s most pressing problems that we believe to be homelessness, education, healthcare, and social justice. We actually both run and we fund programs through a social justice lens that really get at building self-confidence in Angelenos and giving them all an opportunity to thrive.

Julie Lacouture:

Can you tell me what’s the biggest misperception about the Dodgers Foundation?

Nichol Whiteman:

The biggest misperception is that we are not a 501(c)(3). We are a 501(c)(3). We are a mission, vision-driven organization, a community-driven organization. We essentially do things very much like your standard nonprofit or foundation. We are focused on the communities that we serve, those that we believe live in the shadows of Dodger Stadium, those that we believe need support the most. And we believe that if we use this Dodger brand to truly amplify the voices of those who don’t have access and opportunity, that we can create significant change.

Julie Lacouture:

That’s perfect. That’s a little different than other MLB teams foundations, yes?

Nichol Whiteman:

Yeah. I think we’re actually all structured differently. I think we all have different missions and visions, and I think a lot of that has to do with the city that you’re in. Los Angeles is a very unique place, and I can’t imagine we wouldn’t be set up the way that we are to really be a part of the fabric of this community, a real way to use the brand to make sure that those who are able to come to Dodger games all the time and those who are not are truly taken care of.

Julie Lacouture:

Now, the foundation wasn’t always like this. Can you talk about, when you first took the helm in 2013, what situation you inherited?

Nichol Whiteman:

Yeah. So I came on board in 2013. I inherited a organization that had just newly been renamed the Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation with the new logo. Unfortunately, under the former ownership group, we actually witnessed a bit of reputation kill. There was some occurrences that happened that were mismanagement of the Dodgers Foundation. Formerly, it was the Dodgers Dream Foundation. And this ownership group really came on board, said, “Hey, we want to have a really strong philanthropic edge here in Los Angeles. We want to bring on a strong leader and a strong team to do that, and we’re going to push this thing forward in a different manner.” And so the last nine years have really been about a new Dodgers Foundation and really a deep mission, a broad mission, and again, one that really is here to serve communities that need us most.

Julie Lacouture:

Do you consider that a turnaround situation?

Nichol Whiteman:

Yeah. I would say it’s a turnaround, and sometimes, I always say to people, we started a business. We started a new nonprofit. We built something. We created something. In many instances, in a weird way, I feel like a founder, which is really special. And so we recreated programs. We defined, redefined our mission. We made it certain that clarity was provided for Dodger fans and for the broader Los Angeles community on who we are and what we’re doing and why we’re doing these things, which was just so very important.

Julie Lacouture:

It seems to me, you had a lot to handle at that point. There was reputation management. There was branding. There was communication. It was, how do we tell our story? Where do we want to go? What did you tackle first?

Nichol Whiteman:

Yeah. So very first, we launched a community-driven program. It was for… It’s formerly Dodgers RBI, actually just rebranded Dodgers Dreamteam. Very important for us to focus first on those on the ground. Youth and families who we know needed us most, who I knew at that moment in time could truly help us drive programming moving forward.

                We created a grant-making program. We knew that it was essential to be supporting nonprofits here on the ground, in the Los Angeles community. And we made sure that we started to build a team. I inherited one full-time staff person. I’m really proud to say today that there are 14 full-time staff people working specifically for the Dodgers Foundation and a slew of part-time staff for various reasons. It was important for us to build, as we figured out what programs we wanted, as we figured out what grant-making we wanted to do. As we came to understand the fundraising that was going to be needed for that and the operation, it was like being an entrepreneur and essentially saying, what are the pieces that we need to pull together very strategically.

Julie Lacouture:

When we talk to other organizations that are in that turnaround situation, one of the things that they talk about is just the need to bring in resources really quickly at the beginning. Did you find that to be true?

Nichol Whiteman:

Yeah. I did find that it was really important to move pretty quickly. The interesting part is we were able, within the span of maybe six to nine months, to hire three full-time individuals, which was really important. We never hired anyone who we didn’t know what they were going to be doing. And obviously at the beginning, everyone was somewhat hands on. And from there, I will say that we grew in this place where we started to then hire people specifically as we built out for a strategic purpose or a specific department or a specific responsibility.

                But it was really important initially to understand who were our board members, what were new board members that we could acquire because the resources and the networks were a clear part of that immediate infusion, right? Who supports this foundation? Does the ownership group truly understand what we’re doing? The Dodgers senior leadership, are they here for us, and are they going to partner with us? So it was a lot of pulling together the networks of people who we consider partners of the Dodgers Foundation.

Julie Lacouture:

Did you go with where the enthusiasm and trust already was? Or did you have to build back some of that?

Nichol Whiteman:

Yeah. You know what? We spent a lot of time building back trust. We spent a lot of time with audiences who honestly questioned the prior iteration of the Dodgers Foundation. We spent a lot of time with folks who wanted to know where does the money go, and folks who wanted to know why do you exist, and if you’ve got this billion-dollar ownership group, why do you even do this work? So we spent a lot of time clarifying for those audiences, frankly, who were questioning the Dodgers Foundation, who wanted to know why. That was really important.

Julie Lacouture:

So for an organization who’s listening to this right now and saying, “Yes, that’s exactly what I need to do,” what format did that take? Is that one-on-one meetings? Is that just being at events? How do you do that?

Nichol Whiteman:

It’s a combination of a lot of different things. Yes, there can be some one-on-one meetings, but because we have this massive platform that is the Dodgers and that is Dodger Stadium, we had an opportunity to do it on the big stage. And so we took advantage of increasing our visibility. Literally, we made sure that the messaging was what we wanted people to hear in any way, any how, any time we could get that messaging out. We were flooding people with it.

                It was really important for us to increase our social media presence and, frankly, launch Dodgers Foundation platform separate of the Los Angeles Dodgers. It was really important for people to start to see the brand do our own things separate of the club, separate of the for-profit, for people to understand that clearly we were not here for players kissing babies and shaking hands, and then we take photos and say, “This is the Dodgers Foundation.”

                We had to be really clear in developing a strategic plan, messaging, and creating visibility, and that came in the form of events, sometimes fundraising events, sometimes fundraisers. So that came in the form of various marketing partnerships with many corporate entities, foundations and others that folks saw display throughout Dodger Stadium. That came in our partnerships with our grantee partners, and we support about a hundred different organizations a year. And I always say they became the reason why so many folks truly understood who we are and what we do. And community buy-in, right? Really being on the ground with youth and families in our flagship program, essentially making sure that people, they saw us, they felt us, they understood that we wanted to be out there with them and that we were here to support them. So definitely, a myriad of ways in which we did it in a short period of time.

Julie Lacouture:

Can you tell me some of the stuff that was in that first strategic plan? Because I think for a foundation, you probably want to be reactive, and so sometimes, that can work against having a strategic plan. But how did you define your strategy initially?

Nichol Whiteman:

Yeah. Yeah. Initially, it was creating. It was really around creating. It was what is missing, and it was about filling those void. And so when we think about what we were known for back in 2012, if you asked [inaudible 00:17:42] Dodgers Foundation, some folks would immediately say Dodgers Dreamfield. And the fields are very visible locations. We have 58 Dodgers Dreamfields throughout the greater Los Angeles community, and they were the thing that people would say because they were the tangible thing that people could feel, the thing that people could see, the thing that many people drove by in various neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles.

                And so it was time to not move exactly away from that, but it was to say, first of all, why do we even have Dodgers Dreamfield? Why are we doing this? And then secondly, what else is it that we really want to do as an extension of this mission? What else do we feel are the activities, the inputs that get us to our short-term goals, our midterm goals and our long-term goals? And so we set some goals for ourselves, and we really said, at the end of the day, we could use sport to really transform lives in many different ways, and that doesn’t mean building major league baseball players. That means building major league citizens and what are the areas that we need to be focused on.

                And we quickly focused on the fact that education, that health and that sports could be three really broad buckets for us, and how do we then create some really succinct programming and partnerships in those three buckets so that people are getting a clear indication of who we are and what we do and we’re beginning to make an impact. So I would definitely say that first strategic plan, it was about building. It was about creating. It was about making sure the right donors, the right board, the right funders were in place. It was also about making sure that there was that community buy-in. That, for me, was ultimately important from the beginning, that families throughout Los Angeles, who were living in really challenged situations, felt like, “Wow, the Dodgers Foundation is here for me.” So what programs and what grant-making to what nonprofits, what supports those families was most important.

Julie Lacouture:

It also sounds like something within that plan is the desire to be very succinct about what you’re doing so that when I hear you talk about getting that message everywhere and anywhere, you can do it because your message is so succinct.

Nichol Whiteman:

Yes. The messaging is so important that it’d be consistent, that it’d be impactful, that it’d be clear, that it doesn’t leave or beg for 5 million questions. And I think that our former iteration, it did, it just did. And so this idea that we moved into this next phase that was about clarity, transparency, was very-

Julie Lacouture:

Something that doesn’t beg 500 questions is really meaningful. I have a client that says, if you’re explaining, you’re losing, especially for fundraising.

Nichol Whiteman:

You can’t talk in circles. We have to get to the point exactly why. We always talk about how there’s specific statistics that are unfortunately dire statistics throughout Los Angeles, in many communities that guide the work that we do. And we ask ourselves the so-what every single day. So what? Why do we do this? So what? And if we can’t answer that for ourselves internally, we don’t do it. And so I have a director of evaluation and impact on our staff full-time because of that. We have a senior manager of marketing communications because of that. It’s their job to work in partnership to make sure that the messaging is clear, but that the impact is tied to the messaging. And if those things don’t add up for whether it be programs, initiatives, activities, grant-making, we just don’t do it.

Julie Lacouture:

And to me, it sounds like it’s related to what you were talking about with the Dreamfields. The reason it was resonant to people is because they could see and feel whatever they thought the impact of them, but having the evaluation on your staff allows you to take control of that story.

Nichol Whiteman:

Exactly. And we backtracked. We said, “Hey, we’ve got X amount of fields.” I can’t remember exactly how many we had back in 2013, but we said, we have this many, and we know we want to keep doing this, but in order to keep doing this, what we’re going to do is make sure that there’s a strong impact framework, so we understand where we’re going, why we’re going, what is the criteria for every single field, what needs to be the key ingredients that exist in partnerships with boots on the ground to make sure that they work, and then we move forward in that manner. So it’s nice to take a little bit of a step back and recalibrate because the partnerships on the Dreamfields have been clearly just so much more success.

Julie Lacouture:

You can’t just build something and then hope it’s successful. You got to continuously invest in it.

Nichol Whiteman:

There’s a lot there.

Julie Lacouture:

Yeah. Let’s switch gears a little bit because I think that one of the things that maybe people might misunderstand, or something I hear from a lot of organizations actually is, can we just get a celebrity onboard? Can we get someone that has a big social media following? And then the fundraising will just happen. In your experience, Nichol, you’re laughing, is that true?

Nichol Whiteman:

I would beg to differ and say no. I actually feel like it’s the other way around. I think you need to build a really strong base, a really strong foundation, a strong body work that, to the point we were just talking about, has real value, real mission, a real vision, some real impactful outcomes. We live in Hollywood. You can’t ever forget that. And having a celebrity, whether that be athlete or actor, actress, et cetera, tied to the work can never be a bad thing, but I think people see right through it when it’s just because you want a celebrity involved. But I think if you’ve got something really strong and something that’s substantive, and then you attract a celebrity because maybe they have a shared interest or they have lived that experience of the beneficiaries or the constituents that you serve, it can be even more impactful.

                So I think it’s about amplifying the existing mission and model. It’s a way I think about the Dodgers Foundation. We are literally getting to use this big Dodger brand, think of that as your celebrity, to help people who don’t have all of that celebrity and all of that power and all of that. It’s that brand, it’s that celebrity, it’s that athlete that can put that icing on the top, if that makes sense, but they, I don’t think, are at the foundation of it. They’re not at the creation of it. They’re not with you on the strategic visionary piece of it, but I certainly feel like they can add a lot to it if they come as a supporter.

Julie Lacouture:

Yeah. It sounds like you’re saying it’s a tool that, if used properly, it can be very successful.

Nichol Whiteman:

Absolutely.

Julie Lacouture:

So thinking about you and your team of 14 now, what do you think makes your team run well?

Nichol Whiteman:

We are very clear on internal buy-in. And one of the things that I will say very first and foremost is we lead the way that we serve. Internally, we essentially really embody the same values that we have. When we came together a couple of years ago and said, “Hey, we want to really put to paper our values,” we were like, “Are these for us? Are these for the people we serve?” It’s for both. We are a culture of partnership, a culture of collaboration, and we see ourselves that way every single day, and we know that’s why we are where we are today. Folks that know me know that I will say partnership is the secret sauce, at least 10 times a week, because I strongly do believe that.

                But when I think about our values, I’m thinking about opportunity, access, equity. We are leaders. It’s impact for us. It’s excellence for us. Those things are the things that, yes, we are forcing ourselves to really make sure a part of our day-to-day, but they’re also the same things we’re trying to impart upon the people that we serve. And so I think that the way in which we lead, the way in which we do the work, it’s very collaboratively. It’s a partnership internally. It’s a partnership externally. We want to make sure that everyone internally is bought in. We have an amazing team of passionate, diverse individuals who come from all walks of life, who are here for all different reasons, but everyone is waking up every day really excited to do this work, and that just changes the game.

Julie Lacouture:

I can see in your leadership that you really leave space for people to grow and achieve and you set a really high bar and your team goes for it.

Nichol Whiteman:

Yeah. I believe in professional development. I’m a product person, and I’m definitely a bull in the China shop who’s “We can do it.” I have the crazy ideas. I’m certainly the one who was like, “Yeah, we can do that.” Like-

Julie Lacouture:

They’re visionary ideas.

Nichol Whiteman:

Yeah. But I have an amazing group of people behind me who I think they trust that I’m not going to lead them. They’re loyal to the mission of the foundation, and I think that’s most important. I think there’s a lot of leaders who get that wrong, right? It’s loyalty to you. It’s not loyalty to me. I want them to love the mission and want to do this work as much as I want to do this work. And I want them to feel invested and bought in, and I want to it to be mutually beneficial. It should be a rewarding experience. I always say anyone who’s doing any work within a nonprofit space, if it isn’t rewarding, get out because that just doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t lead to the greatest productivity. And I definitely feel like for me, I’m leading with this sense of, I want you to grow. I want professional development to be at the forefront of what we do.

                And we learn by activity that is the Dodgers Foundation activity. We supplement that with additional learning opportunities for our team. We encourage our team to go seek additional learning opportunities. Everybody on our team should have a mentor. Everybody on our team should have a sponsor. Everyone on our team should feel like they can go talk to someone. My style is mentor manager, but I even say I shouldn’t be the person that you’re coming to all the time. You should have multiple outlets and multiple people who support you.

Julie Lacouture:

So what’s something that you’ve done to adapt in the last couple of years?

Nichol Whiteman:

In March of 2020, when we went home, like many, obviously, we thought we were just going home for a little bit of time. And so that immediate pivot was really challenging for myself and for the team at large, but I will say that I think the majority of us really do believe that the last two years has made us strong. The reality is I think that while we were at home and we couldn’t serve our youth and families in person and we couldn’t move forward with fundraising in a typical baseball season, it forced us, frankly, to think differently, to act differently, to innovate, to create differently, to actually think about us ourselves in a very different dynamic way.

                And we continued to show up for the community. We continued to fundraise, and we did that because we had built such a strong foundation prior to that, that I really believed that we were poised in that moment, together with so many of our part, to really just move forward. And yes, we had to move forward in a different way. A lot of Zoom, a lot of remote, a lot of different, when we were out and about in the community, everybody masked up and gloves, and at some points, you felt like even you were putting your own life and health at risk, but we doubled down. We really said, “Hey, now is the time to show up for Los Angeles in a bigger way than we had even done before.

                The last two years also consisted of a lot of racial unrest. And so because of that reckoning, we were also very intentional with folks about the fact that we’ve been doing this work through a social justice lens, predominantly serving the black and brown community here in Los Angeles, but we even decided to be even more intentional about it, to serve as a leader in the space, to show people that this work was important to us and we understood that there were many communities experience inequities, which is frankly why we do the work that we do.

                And so it’s been a challenge. If I reflect back, what I would say is that I think we gained a real sense of empathy for each other, which has actually made us stronger, which is actually helping us to have more impact. We understand even more now the communities that we serve. We understand each other as a team even more. I understand myself. I hope people are saying that after what we’ve all gone through. I understand myself as a leader even more, and I know what skills I need to pull on in really challenging times, and I know what skills I can develop during really challenging times because of the last two years. And it’s forced us to lead a little bit different.

Julie Lacouture:

I don’t think it’s a humongous percentage of your budget, but you do the in-game raffles, right? That’s a foundation activity. And-

Nichol Whiteman:

We’re about a third in-stadium fundraising, which includes the 50/50 raffle. We’re about a third fundraising events, which includes our annual Gala. And then-

Julie Lacouture:

And for folks that are not from Los Angeles, Dodger Stadium was a 50… What is it? 57,000 seats [inaudible 00:29:46]?

Nichol Whiteman:

56,000 seats.

Julie Lacouture:

56.

Nichol Whiteman:

And we were doing close to 4 million annually on the raffle in 2019.

Julie Lacouture:

People buy tickets, and it’s just fun at the park.

Nichol Whiteman:

Exactly. One great winner goes home per game with 50% of the pot and the other 50% goes to do really good work. So not having that, not having our big Gala, there was a major hit. I’m laughing at it now, but we actually created a fan cutout program, where we had watched it happen. I think we watched it happen in London, and we were like, “We think we can do that.” And because fans couldn’t physically be in this stadium in 2020, we gave fans an opportunity to buy images of themselves or their loved ones in cardboard cutout fashion, and they were in the seats. While the players were able to be there playing safely, fans were in the seat. Then we used that as a fundraiser. That was somewhat the way in which we thought about replacing the 50/50 raffle and really giving fans this continued connection to the team and to the stadium.

                Certainly wasn’t the same, but just one example of a way in which we have to pivot. We did drive through distributions that we either donated to or that we were physically present for throughout this pandemic, really because we wanted to be on the ground, addressing food insecurity for the youth and families that we might have been doing softball clinics for before the pandemic. We might have been at schools doing certain education, literacy events, reading story times, all the above. We changed those into what do people need. We actually issued two assessments immediately once we had all gone home, one to the organizations that we serve and one to the families that we serve. And we said, what do you need? And we had that inform and drive the activities that we did, and have been doing frankly consistently right now.

Julie Lacouture:

What is a mistake you’ve made? And what did you learn from it?

Nichol Whiteman:

Thinking that I could do it all by myself. We talked about how I came onboard in 2013. I have somewhat founder’s syndrome, where there’s a lot of history in my head. There’s a lot of creation in my head. There were just days I woke up and I think we should do this. There were days I woke up and said, I think that we move in this direction. It made sense. And that becomes really hard as you engage additional people and you engage additional partners. I’m glad that because of mentorship and because of so many things that have happened over the last couple of years, we’ve grown so rapidly, I quickly came to learn that we’re not experts in everything. I’m not an expert in everything, and that it’s really essential for us to bring to the table the right people and the right voices who need to lead in the spaces in which they’re experts. It’s really important for us to continually look in the mirror and say, “This is not about us. This is about the community that we serve.” If we’re really doing mission-driven work, it’s really about those individuals.

                And so I think early on, when you’re building something, you tend to be a little insular. You tend to really think about how that benefits the organization and the reputation of the organization. I realize quickly that those things get taken care of, if you start to really think about the fact that you are not the expert, and if you really are okay with being vulnerable and open to people who really are living through some of the experiences that you claim to be tackling or some of the problems that you claim to be tackling. You almost let them… And I think that’s been really important for me, for the team, for this iteration of the foundation, and it’s going to take us a long way moving forward.

Julie Lacouture:

Do you have an example of a time where you put yourself in that place where you’re like, “I’m not the expert. I’m vulnerable here,” and it changed the outcome maybe that you were thinking about?

Nichol Whiteman:

I think that in the beginning, there was this idea that if we create a flagship program, Dodgers RBI, and we have all of these young boys and girls running around Los Angeles with Dodger logos all over them at various park, that this is what is ultimately going to bring them joy, and that this Dodger brand in itself does bring families joy. But when you really listen to people and you really start to evaluate and survey and have focus groups and things of that nature, and people start to tell you their real challenges and what they gain by being a part of Dodgers RBI, now Dodgers Dreamteam, we quickly realize they’re the drivers. They are the community that is benefiting from this. They’re the community that should be specifically talking to us about what it is that they want.

                So instead of in the office, us creating program elements, asking them what they want, asking them what they need, asking them what they fear, asking them what could be important to them. We were a little surfaced in the beginning, and quickly, our families showed us that mental health is important. Our families showed us that many of them, like myself, were first-generation college. And unfortunately, while some information may be available to them, if the Dodgers Foundation presented to me, I might consume it differently. Many immigrant families, I’m not going to build a certain medical facilities for health, dental, and vision screening. So if the Dodgers Foundation presents that to me, I’m probably going to consume that differently as well.

                And so we quickly came to understand our place in the partnership was there’s a trust in our brand. There’s a trust in our partnership. And so if you could use that to provide us with access and opportunity, in addition to the sports of baseball and softball, so we get to participate and benefit from the amazingness that sport can provide our children, that holistic wraparound approach is what we need. It is what we need. The families really led us to this wraparound approach, which I don’t think we were bucketing in that way.

Julie Lacouture:

It sounds like just from a business plan point of view, it was from being organization-centric to being customer-centric. It’s just a little bit of a shift, but you tilt a little bit and then walk five miles, you’re going to be far apart from where you landed.

Nichol Whiteman:

Yes. And you feel better for it, and you see it in partnerships just exuding. It’s so helpful.

Julie Lacouture:

And then in terms of fundraising, how do you bring the donors along in that story?

Nichol Whiteman:

I always tell people that when you think about the Dodger brand, okay, yes, everybody wants to be tied to the Dodger brand, but take the Dodger brand and now add philanthropic community edge to it, and it’s 10 times over. And so donors really give us a chance to amplify, to add volume, to do even more, to have much more significant impact. And so really working with corporations, working with foundations, working with individuals, we get to bring to light a lot of the challenges that our communities face. We get to actually storytell in a way, sometimes, that we all would not be storytelling, if we were doing this in our own individuals silos.

                I strongly believe that, yes, the funding is so important because it means that we get to serve more youth and families. We get to train more coaches. We get to educate more teachers, and I could go on and on, but the opportunity to do it with partners in a way in which the message is amplified and the leadership voices are amplified is tremendously amazing. Folks don’t understand sometimes the merging of brands can be such a major impact on one community.

Julie Lacouture:

And I think it goes back to what you were talking about before with partnerships. So what’s your big idea for moving forward, and how are you going to get there?

Nichol Whiteman:

Wow. You know what, I’m in a very much a bucket of building capacity right now. On the heels of this pandemic, I just really feel like so much crisis was exasperated. There were so many communities that were struggling before, and they continue to struggle. Recovery’s going to be really hard for so many, but capacity building in the areas that need us most is really the focus at this point. It’s about how do we send ourselves up internally to be the sponsor, to be the big partner, to be the resource, to be the guide for those on the ground so that they can continue to sustain what it is that they do. So if that’s adding an additional person or funding an additional person for a partner, if that’s making sure that families have food distributions as a consistent part of our programming, that’s really important.

                How now do we really help people in programmatic ways, but also in unrestricted ways? It’s really hard, I know, for many of us to see ourselves giving folks dollars for them to go do what they need to do with it. But we now are thinking in the framework of how does this contribution serve you best? How does this partnership serve you best? What’s going to make it better for you on that end? And so capacity building, frankly, for the communities that we serve is just so important now.

                Impact and scale is really important. It’s hard to be the leader of something that is the Dodgers Foundation, because yes, people want you to be all things to all people in all places all the time, but now, the tricky part is I do believe that we can scale some things and we can have some impact in the manner which we’re able to touch even more people in very creative ways. We all figured out this Zoom situation throughout the pandemic, and we know that virtually, fortunately, was a way in which we reached a lot of people who would not show up in person for various reasons. And so how do we take the lessons from some of these things that we’ve learned the last two years into this sort of capacity building, scaling model? And so that’s the next iteration of the Dodgers Foundation. So I think folks are going to see us get bigger and get better because we want to serve more people.

Julie Lacouture:

Oh, I’m so excited to watch that happen. Nichol, what’s your number one tip for someone who’s in your position? And maybe it’s someone coming into a turnaround position, or maybe it’s somebody that’s looking to impact and scale.

Nichol Whiteman:

Number one, always think about the why. And I say, always think about the why, because the why is the rationale that’s going to guide you every single day. If you lead with the why, people will know that you’re leading with the why. People will know what’s the team’s why, which all filters right into that mission, filters right into that. I think that is very important to ask yourself on a consistent basis, why? We all know the last two years, the why has changed, the why pivots. And so I think it’s really important for us to consistently ask ourselves the why, so that we know if we need to improve upon something, if we know that we’re doing really well at something, but we need to pivot, so we know that maybe we’ve accomplished something and we need to do something else. But I think asking ourselves the why so that we don’t become complacent.

Julie Lacouture:

I’ve heard that talked about as the true north, but I think it gives you that flexibility to say our situation changed, but our why has not. So how do we meet it in this new situation?

Nichol Whiteman:

Absolutely.

Julie Lacouture:

That’s terrific advice. Thank you so much for being here. It was so great to talk to you.

Nichol Whiteman:

Thank you. Thank you so much.