Looking back on all the fantastic guests we’ve had on Season 4 of the How We Run podcast and share what we’ve learned from them. Featuring: Leslie Ito of Armory Center for the Arts, Tony Brown from HOLA, Johng Ho Song from KYCC, Roger Castle from the LA Regional Food Bank, Sarah Walzer from ParentChild+, Alexis Madrid from The Painted Turtle, David Diaz from Active SGV, Marc Freedman of Encore.org, and Mollie Marsh-Heine from Earthjustice.
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.
Julie Lacouture:
Trent, Happy Thanksgiving.
Trent Stamp:
Happy Thanksgiving to you, Julie. And I hope you have a wonderful time.
Julie Lacouture :
Do you have family coming in or are you going to spend it with your kid?
Trent Stamp:
No, sadly, my daughter, who is a sophomore in college in Maine is not coming home, so it’s going to be our first Thanksgiving ever without her. But we will have my son and we have a lot of high school basketball on the agenda, because he plays and that’s a week when they like to play high school basketball.
Julie Lacouture :
Oh, well you have a sad Thanksgiving a little bit, because we won’t have your daughter. Well, let’s fill that void with some clips from podcasts then, how about?
Trent Stamp:
That is simply the worst transition I’ve ever heard in my entire life. But I hope people out there on the road are saying, “Yes, absolutely.”
Julie Lacouture :
What better way to take a break than to just really get into the nuts and bolts of how to run a 501(c)(3). We’ve done a lot of episodes this fall, and the people that we’ve gotten to talk to are so great. And I’ve learned something from every single episode, but I want to know maybe some of your highlights.
Trent Stamp:
I mean, I think one of the things I’ve just been blown away by, and it just sounds so stupid, but it’s just how modest all of these leaders have been. We invite these people on because they’re really good at their jobs. And every time we try to tell them that they’re really good at their jobs, they decline it, they defer it, and they give all of the credit to their staff. So we’ve just seen that over and over again from Tony Brown, to Mark Friedman, Johng Ho Song, obviously Leslie Ito, recently, who just refuses to take any credit for anything, under any circumstances.
Julie Lacouture :
Leslie was adamant that she didn’t have a big vision for her organization, yet would lay out visionary statements. Here’s Leslie Ito from season four, episode nine.
Leslie Ito:
Yeah, I just recently read an article about how museum directors are hired and expected to come in with this big vision, and share this big vision with everybody. And actually, I wouldn’t say I don’t have a big vision, but I think the way that I deliver that big vision is maybe not what the field expects. My big vision is to create sustainable organizations, and how we get there are very small, incremental, strategic, and intentional steps. That’s the big vision. If you’re a board member sitting and waiting for a big vision, you may miss it, because it’s happening on a day-to-day level and it’s both operational and strategic. Yes, it would be much easier to lead an organization that just did studio teaching. But I love all of the inner connections that we can make. I’ve been thinking about the big idea, but all I can think about are these tiny little incremental steps.
Leslie Ito:
So I think that’s my big idea. And some of the tiny steps are definitely around cultural equity, is what is really on my mind in terms of training staff and board, creating space for really honest and courageous conversations. The work, the journey that we’re on to create cultural equity within our organization is not the work of one person or one committee, but it needs to be the work of each one of us on staff and board, and each person committing to what they can do within their own little universe to create a more welcoming, more accessible, more relevant art experience for all of the people that come into contact with us, and the people that we are anticipating and want to connect with.
Julie Lacouture :
She said it best when she sang strategy and a vision to me, the series of small incremental steps. But yes, agreed. Everyone is so humble.
Trent Stamp:
Yeah, but if Leslie or the others were in the for-profit sector, they would write a book about their 10 management techniques for saving the world or something, and take all the credit and pat themselves on the back. But yet, these exceptional leaders are trying to convince us on our show about non-profit leadership, that they’re not really leaders. And it’s mildly refreshing and slightly insane, because these are great leaders doing great things under, as we know, the worst circumstances that this country has seen in a really long time, and they’ve steered their organizations to good success and they refuse to take any credit.
Julie Lacouture :
I saw that the most when you were talking to Tony Brown, and he was talking about leading like a coach.
Trent Stamp:
Yeah, Tony he’s an old coach. He’s an old sports coach, and he is running a multimillion dollar organization and he’s acting like he just has to get his players in the right places so that they can succeed.
Julie Lacouture :
And here’s Tony Brown, from season four, episode two.
Tony Brown:
My staff were starting to feel burnt out. They were starting to feel supported morally, but not supported practically. And we were growing rapidly. And I was asking for more and more and I was adding more and more people, and I wasn’t able to really go deep with any one of them. And that was a problem, because then what ended up happening was that anytime big decisions needed to be made, they were always coming back to me to make the big decision. And I realized, oh my goodness, I didn’t create enough opportunity for them to [inaudible 00:06:11] to where they had the confidence to make those decisions. They didn’t have clear policies and guidelines by which to measure making the best decision possible that they could make. And in a way, as much as I was trying to advance us further, faster, I actually probably stunted a little bit of the quality of growth that we could have.
Trent Stamp:
You and I are both former ball coaches, to just have to give the kid the ball and tell him to go pitch. You can wrap your arm around him in the dugout all day long, but sometimes you just have to give him the ball and send him out to the mounds.
Tony Brown:
That’s right. And then what they would tell me back is that athlete would say, “Hey, look. You got to show me the mechanics of how to pitch. You’ve got to spend some time, but give me the fundamentals.” And I was missing that part, I think, as we grew rapidly, right? There weren’t enough trainers to help these guys and gals be game-ready. And so it’s been neat to build out that infrastructure in more recent times.
Trent Stamp:
That’s terrific.
Tony Brown:
And I’ve seen some really great results.
Julie Lacouture :
I thought that was so telling.
Trent Stamp:
Yeah. Sometimes you have to put them out there and let them miss a shot, because when you really need them, they’re going to have that experience. So, that was terrific.
Julie Lacouture :
You’ve come back to that theme of being humble. One thing that I’ve noticed from a lot of different guests is just maybe because of necessity, I’m starting to notice a trend of less planning and more doing, adapting. We’ve talked to a couple of organizations as you’ve pointed out that have gotten into food distribution, because of the pandemic, and they’ve all said something to the effect of that’s just what our community needed. We just had to do that. And I think that there is some planning there. I don’t mean to say wake up in the morning, have an idea, and go get it done. You can have a good idea of where you’re going, but just try it.
Trent Stamp:
It’s more difficult than it sounds though, right? I know at the philanthropy side, on the foundation side, we’re always railing against mission creed. We’re always telling organizations, “Stay in your lane. Do what you do, and don’t go over there, because that’s not what you do.” And yet, we’ve heard from several good leaders who have said, “We had an obligation to do something different, and we did not have the ability to sit around and put together a strategic plan or some sort of 10-point blueprint for how we’re going to do this.” They’d had to trust their gut and they had to just implement programs on the fly. And we heard that from Johng Ho, at KYCC.
Julie Lacouture :
Let’s take a listen to Johng Ho Song from season four, episode five.
Johng Ho Song:
When everything stopped, our leadership 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 the transportation. And we didn’t have the capacity to serve whole Korea town. 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 low income senior housing, so we wanted to target our senior housing families and we could deliver essential items and meal for the next four month or so. So that program started in April and then they close to last September or so, but that was about close to 12,000 meals and essential items. And we had an opportunity to get even closer to our clients during that time.
Trent Stamp:
We heard it, obviously, with some of the fundraisers, with Roger Castle and Alexis Madrid, where they just had to throw out the playbook of, we have to figure out ways to keep these donors in house, we have to figure out ways to do virtual events, and we have to do things differently. And you’re going to have to trust us that we know what we’re doing, and that we’ve been around for a little while, and not just that we’re doing something because it sounds good, and we saw it at a seminar somewhere. There is great value in this experience, and I think that’s one of the things that we’ve gained from many of our guests is that their experience prepared them for when things got difficult.
Julie Lacouture :
Yeah. I think the Alexis and Roger are really good examples of organizations that saw a moment in time and said, if not now, when? Let’s go try something. So with Alexis at The Painted Turtle, just really saying, we’ve got to do a virtual event, we have no other options right now. And when you hear her talk about what they did, she just started having the conversations with people and saying, “Here’s, I think what we’re going to end up doing, would you be into this?” And it was almost building the plan along with the supporters. And then with Roger, talking about how much storytelling his small staff is able to do with just elbow grease and iPhone and getting the stories of the people they serve out there, and how much that’s paid off. Here’s Roger Castle from season four, episode three.
Roger Castle:
Good luck is when preparation meets opportunity, and that’s really what happened with the pandemic. We already had increased our fundraising over the past four years, about 35%. During the pandemic, of course, with all the awareness from the emergency drive to distributions, we acquired more donors than we had required in the last eight years. But so our strategy is content, so we try to capitalize on great stories, impact stories, and then also getting that free media, which we did well before the pandemic. People will say, “Well, how do you get stories about people getting food?” Well, we go to distributions. It’s not easy. You have to walk up to people and ask them to tell their story about being food insecure. You get a lot of interviews that don’t work out. So it’s really rolling up your sleeves and going to these distributions and getting stories.
Roger Castle:
And we just are very nimble about getting these things out. One of the things one of my teammates said the other day was the team was a little spoiled, because we got approvals through so quickly. And so I don’t want to be a block in the process for the content. I’ve seen other organizations where one direct mail letter at the end of the year takes four months, because you have nine people that have to weigh in on it. And so being nimble and responsive, that’s really one of the great ways that we keep the process moving. The other thing I’ll say is things are cheaper nowadays. We have lots of videos we do. We probably do five or six a month. You can do these on your phone. And even the other day, our marketing managers, he was like, “I don’t need the camera. I got my phone.” And nowadays, that’s good enough, especially if you’re just doing social media videos or YouTube videos, and not doing it for broadcast.
Julie Lacouture :
That’s a great example of just start doing it, just start trying it, and see what works.
Trent Stamp:
Yeah. And it’s dangerous. It’s hard. In the hands of a lesser leader that goes awry and we’ve all seen that. But some of these leaders that we’ve talked to this year, they were well positioned. And I think we can all be thankful that they were in the positions they were in for the people that they-
Julie Lacouture :
Yeah, absolutely. On the programmatics side, we heard that from Sarah Walzer as well, at ParentChild+, when they took their whole program virtual. And because they have this great network and because they have a communication structure in place and have very well-trained partners, they were able to make a quick pivot to virtual programming. And then, she drops this information, when she was talking about it, about how much better it’s made their program, and how many more families they’re able to serve, and how many more families in different languages they’re able to serve. And I feel like it really opened up a whole world for them. Here’s Sarah Walzer talking about that in season four, episode six.
Sarah Walzer:
Now, if you had asked to me, even in January of 2020, could this model, this evidence-based model that’s all about relationship building between staff and parents and between parents and children, could this be done 100% virtually, I would’ve told you no way. We can’t build those kinds of relationships. We didn’t even think it was worth testing at that point. And then yes, in mid-March of 2020, our hand got completely forced, but it came out of the learning that, oh, this actually could work virtually, but then that there were families we were just missing, because we weren’t offering this as an alternative method of participating in the program.
Sarah Walzer:
And part of what we are doing now is, with an outside evaluator, really trying to dig into the question of what about virtual visits worked for families? What about it worked for staff? But even more importantly, who were the families it worked so well for and why, and how do we make sure we are offering multiple ways for families to engage with the program? One of the really exciting things for us is so we currently work in 40 different languages across the country, but we’re only able, in any given community, to support families in the language that we’ve been able to hire staff in that community. But this may mean that the Bengali family in Madison, Wisconsin, can get a visit from a Bengali home visitor in San Jose, California, because they can do it virtually. That opens a whole world now.
Trent Stamp:
Yeah, I guess that’s the other factor here, right is that these people are recognizing that the world has changed and they’re not in a hurry to just go back to the way things were before. This is such a thoughtful group of leaders and they’re evaluating in the process as they go by as, is this now a better way, whatever it means. We heard from Mark Friedman, who his whole office went virtual, and I don’t think they’re coming back. And he just said, “We’re actually better this way. And we’re supporting our people, and we’re getting things done.” And Mark’s a long-time leader in the sector, been a leader in the non-profit world for 30 years, at least. And he just said, “We’re going to adapt to this, and we’re going to be better as a result of this.” And I thought that was really interesting.
Julie Lacouture :
There’s a story that I heard in business school, I think it’s about Cornelius Vanderbilt, the railroad tycoon.
Trent Stamp:
Oh, go-
Julie Lacouture :
Yeah, pull up a chair to this fireplace.
Trent Stamp:
I’m here for the Cornelius story. Let’s go.
Julie Lacouture :
He made tons of money as a railroad baron and was asked to invest in this early technology called airplanes and declined, and said, “I’m not in the airplane business, I’m in the railroad business.” And then that industry grew, while the railroads went away as a business. Because, he didn’t think big enough about what his organization did. He didn’t think he was in the transportation industry. And I think that one of the things I’m starting to hear from a lot of leaders that we’re talking to, like David Diaz and Mollie Marsh-Heine, is really about thinking bigger about the work that you do and the intersectionality of it. And how, for David Diaz, thinking about how transportation is a social justice issue and what that means for work opportunities and economic opportunities for a community. And that is, I think, a really exciting development in the industry.
Trent Stamp:
Yeah, we heard that from a lot of people, that justice, the anti-racism work, that that kind of thing of providing not just equity, but equality, it runs through everything that they’re trying to do. And if you can’t imbue it into your regular programming, no matter what you do, you’re not going to be successful. And so I think that’s another thing that the non-profit world is embracing much quicker than the for-profit world is doing. But they’re both analyzing it from a justice factor, but also from a cost-effectiveness, cost benefit analysis of do we need to put this into our work, to do better work, to provide more options, more access, more opportunity for people?
Julie Lacouture :
And here’s Mollie Marsh-Heine from season four, episode eight.
Mollie Marsh-Heine:
Most importantly, you’ve got to begin and to do it. I really don’t think any organization has an excuse. I don’t care if you’re the professional golf association or what. Everybody who has an incorporated non-profit in the United States of America, their lives are touched by racism, and need to be finding a way to center their work in racial and social equity.
Trent Stamp:
I think that all of the leaders that we talked to were very thoughtful on that, and incorporating how the world has changed and how some people are just not getting the right bite at the apple in any way whatsoever. And it’s really an inspiring group of people. I wish I could be more like them.
Julie Lacouture :
I know. I want to be all our guests when I grow up.
Trent Stamp:
They’re just good people. And they’re not good people in the way that we think of do-gooders. These are people running multimillion dollar organizations who are cutthroat when it comes to making business decisions. They’re strategic, they’re smart, they’ve done all the reading and all the talking and all the thinking. They’re inspirational. But they’re doing it for the right reasons,, and they understand the systemic causes that are making their work hard. And they’re trying to change not only the people that they serve, but those causes that are influencing not only their work, but the rest of our lives. So I’ve been so inspired by the people we’ve talked to.
Julie Lacouture :
It’s a hard industry to work in. You have fewer resources than any other industry, and you have way more to do than any other. They should all be commended and the stuff that they get done is exceptional.
Trent Stamp:
Yeah. And they got pain-in-the-butt foundations telling them how to better run their organizations, as if we have any idea we’re talking about.
Julie Lacouture :
And then you have us trying to be like, “Can you explain to us exactly how you do your job? Thanks. We’re going to edit it down.”
Trent Stamp:
Yes. Quick boil down your 30-year career into one soundbite for me, please. But most of them do it.
Julie Lacouture :
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. We are thankful for you for listening. Trent, I’m thankful for being part of this and doing such great interviews, and just lending your expertise at every turn. And we look forward to doing more.
Trent Stamp:
I, too, am thankful for this partnership with you. And I’m also thankful for the amazing people in the sector who are doing great work and are willing to give us the time to talk about that work. Here’s to a nice holiday season, and a better 2022.
Transcript to come
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.
Julie Lacouture:
Inc. Trent, Happy Thanksgiving.
Trent Stamp:
Happy Thanksgiving to you, Julie. And I hope you have a wonderful time.
Julie Lacouture :
Do you have family coming in or are you going to spend it with your kid?
Trent Stamp:
No, sadly, my daughter, who is a sophomore in college in Maine is not coming home, so it’s going to be our first Thanksgiving ever without her. But we will have my son and we have a lot of high school basketball on the agenda, because he plays and that’s a week when they like to play high school basketball.
Julie Lacouture :
Oh, well you have a sad Thanksgiving a little bit, because we won’t have your daughter. Well, let’s fill that void with some clips from podcasts then, how about?
Trent Stamp:
That is simply the worst transition I’ve ever heard in my entire life. But I hope people out there on the road are saying, “Yes, absolutely.”
Julie Lacouture :
What better way to take a break than to just really get into the nuts and bolts of how to run a 501(c)(3). We’ve done a lot of episodes this fall, and the people that we’ve gotten to talk to are so great. And I’ve learned something from every single episode, but I want to know maybe some of your highlights.
Trent Stamp:
I mean, I think one of the things I’ve just been blown away by, and it just sounds so stupid, but it’s just how modest all of these leaders have been. We invite these people on because they’re really good at their jobs. And every time we try to tell them that they’re really good at their jobs, they decline it, they defer it, and they give all of the credit to their staff. So we’ve just seen that over and over again from Tony Brown, to Mark Friedman, Johng Ho Song, obviously Leslie Ito, recently, who just refuses to take any credit for anything, under any circumstances.
Julie Lacouture :
Leslie was adamant that she didn’t have a big vision for her organization, yet would lay out visionary statements. Here’s Leslie Ito from season four, episode nine.
Leslie Ito:
Yeah, I just recently read an article about how museum directors are hired and expected to come in with this big vision, and share this big vision with everybody. And actually, I wouldn’t say I don’t have a big vision, but I think the way that I deliver that big vision is maybe not what the field expects. My big vision is to create sustainable organizations, and how we get there are very small, incremental, strategic, and intentional steps. That’s the big vision. If you’re a board member sitting and waiting for a big vision, you may miss it, because it’s happening on a day-to-day level and it’s both operational and strategic. Yes, it would be much easier to lead an organization that just did studio teaching. But I love all of the inner connections that we can make. I’ve been thinking about the big idea, but all I can think about are these tiny little incremental steps.
Leslie Ito:
So I think that’s my big idea. And some of the tiny steps are definitely around cultural equity, is what is really on my mind in terms of training staff and board, creating space for really honest and courageous conversations. The work, the journey that we’re on to create cultural equity within our organization is not the work of one person or one committee, but it needs to be the work of each one of us on staff and board, and each person committing to what they can do within their own little universe to create a more welcoming, more accessible, more relevant art experience for all of the people that come into contact with us, and the people that we are anticipating and want to connect with.
Julie Lacouture :
She said it best when she sang strategy and a vision to me, the series of small incremental steps. But yes, agreed. Everyone is so humble.
Trent Stamp:
Yeah, but if Leslie or the others were in the for-profit sector, they would write a book about their 10 management techniques for saving the world or something, and take all the credit and pat themselves on the back. But yet, these exceptional leaders are trying to convince us on our show about non-profit leadership, that they’re not really leaders. And it’s mildly refreshing and slightly insane, because these are great leaders doing great things under, as we know, the worst circumstances that this country has seen in a really long time, and they’ve steered their organizations to good success and they refuse to take any credit.
Julie Lacouture :
I saw that the most when you were talking to Tony Brown, and he was talking about leading like a coach.
Trent Stamp:
Yeah, Tony he’s an old coach. He’s an old sports coach, and he is running a multimillion dollar organization and he’s acting like he just has to get his players in the right places so that they can succeed.
Julie Lacouture :
And here’s Tony Brown, from season four, episode two.
Tony Brown:
My staff were starting to feel burnt out. They were starting to feel supported morally, but not supported practically. And we were growing rapidly. And I was asking for more and more and I was adding more and more people, and I wasn’t able to really go deep with any one of them. And that was a problem, because then what ended up happening was that anytime big decisions needed to be made, they were always coming back to me to make the big decision. And I realized, oh my goodness, I didn’t create enough opportunity for them to [inaudible 00:06:11] to where they had the confidence to make those decisions. They didn’t have clear policies and guidelines by which to measure making the best decision possible that they could make. And in a way, as much as I was trying to advance us further, faster, I actually probably stunted a little bit of the quality of growth that we could have.
Trent Stamp:
You and I are both former ball coaches, to just have to give the kid the ball and tell him to go pitch. You can wrap your arm around him in the dugout all day long, but sometimes you just have to give him the ball and send him out to the mounds.
Tony Brown:
That’s right. And then what they would tell me back is that athlete would say, “Hey, look. You got to show me the mechanics of how to pitch. You’ve got to spend some time, but give me the fundamentals.” And I was missing that part, I think, as we grew rapidly, right? There weren’t enough trainers to help these guys and gals be game-ready. And so it’s been neat to build out that infrastructure in more recent times.
Trent Stamp:
That’s terrific.
Tony Brown:
And I’ve seen some really great results.
Julie Lacouture :
I thought that was so telling.
Trent Stamp:
Yeah. Sometimes you have to put them out there and let them miss a shot, because when you really need them, they’re going to have that experience. So, that was terrific.
Julie Lacouture :
You’ve come back to that theme of being humble. One thing that I’ve noticed from a lot of different guests is just maybe because of necessity, I’m starting to notice a trend of less planning and more doing, adapting. We’ve talked to a couple of organizations as you’ve pointed out that have gotten into food distribution, because of the pandemic, and they’ve all said something to the effect of that’s just what our community needed. We just had to do that. And I think that there is some planning there. I don’t mean to say wake up in the morning, have an idea, and go get it done. You can have a good idea of where you’re going, but just try it.
Trent Stamp:
It’s more difficult than it sounds though, right? I know at the philanthropy side, on the foundation side, we’re always railing against mission creed. We’re always telling organizations, “Stay in your lane. Do what you do, and don’t go over there, because that’s not what you do.” And yet, we’ve heard from several good leaders who have said, “We had an obligation to do something different, and we did not have the ability to sit around and put together a strategic plan or some sort of 10-point blueprint for how we’re going to do this.” They’d had to trust their gut and they had to just implement programs on the fly. And we heard that from Johng Ho, at KYCC.
Julie Lacouture :
Let’s take a listen to Johng Ho Song from season four, episode five.
Johng Ho Song:
When everything stopped, our leadership 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 the transportation. And we didn’t have the capacity to serve whole Korea town. 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 low income senior housing, so we wanted to target our senior housing families and we could deliver essential items and meal for the next four month or so. So that program started in April and then they close to last September or so, but that was about close to 12,000 meals and essential items. And we had an opportunity to get even closer to our clients during that time.
Trent Stamp:
We heard it, obviously, with some of the fundraisers, with Roger Castle and Alexis Madrid, where they just had to throw out the playbook of, we have to figure out ways to keep these donors in house, we have to figure out ways to do virtual events, and we have to do things differently. And you’re going to have to trust us that we know what we’re doing, and that we’ve been around for a little while, and not just that we’re doing something because it sounds good, and we saw it at a seminar somewhere. There is great value in this experience, and I think that’s one of the things that we’ve gained from many of our guests is that their experience prepared them for when things got difficult.
Julie Lacouture :
Yeah. I think the Alexis and Roger are really good examples of organizations that saw a moment in time and said, if not now, when? Let’s go try something. So with Alexis at The Painted Turtle, just really saying, we’ve got to do a virtual event, we have no other options right now. And when you hear her talk about what they did, she just started having the conversations with people and saying, “Here’s, I think what we’re going to end up doing, would you be into this?” And it was almost building the plan along with the supporters. And then with Roger, talking about how much storytelling his small staff is able to do with just elbow grease and iPhone and getting the stories of the people they serve out there, and how much that’s paid off. Here’s Roger Castle from season four, episode three.
Roger Castle:
Good luck is when preparation meets opportunity, and that’s really what happened with the pandemic. We already had increased our fundraising over the past four years, about 35%. During the pandemic, of course, with all the awareness from the emergency drive to distributions, we acquired more donors than we had required in the last eight years. But so our strategy is content, so we try to capitalize on great stories, impact stories, and then also getting that free media, which we did well before the pandemic. People will say, “Well, how do you get stories about people getting food?” Well, we go to distributions. It’s not easy. You have to walk up to people and ask them to tell their story about being food insecure. You get a lot of interviews that don’t work out. So it’s really rolling up your sleeves and going to these distributions and getting stories.
Roger Castle:
And we just are very nimble about getting these things out. One of the things one of my teammates said the other day was the team was a little spoiled, because we got approvals through so quickly. And so I don’t want to be a block in the process for the content. I’ve seen other organizations where one direct mail letter at the end of the year takes four months, because you have nine people that have to weigh in on it. And so being nimble and responsive, that’s really one of the great ways that we keep the process moving. The other thing I’ll say is things are cheaper nowadays. We have lots of videos we do. We probably do five or six a month. You can do these on your phone. And even the other day, our marketing managers, he was like, “I don’t need the camera. I got my phone.” And nowadays, that’s good enough, especially if you’re just doing social media videos or YouTube videos, and not doing it for broadcast.
Julie Lacouture :
That’s a great example of just start doing it, just start trying it, and see what works.
Trent Stamp:
Yeah. And it’s dangerous. It’s hard. In the hands of a lesser leader that goes awry and we’ve all seen that. But some of these leaders that we’ve talked to this year, they were well positioned. And I think we can all be thankful that they were in the positions they were in for the people that they-
Julie Lacouture :
Yeah, absolutely. On the programmatics side, we heard that from Sarah Walzer as well, at ParentChild+, when they took their whole program virtual. And because they have this great network and because they have a communication structure in place and have very well-trained partners, they were able to make a quick pivot to virtual programming. And then, she drops this information, when she was talking about it, about how much better it’s made their program, and how many more families they’re able to serve, and how many more families in different languages they’re able to serve. And I feel like it really opened up a whole world for them. Here’s Sarah Walzer talking about that in season four, episode six.
Sarah Walzer:
Now, if you had asked to me, even in January of 2020, could this model, this evidence-based model that’s all about relationship building between staff and parents and between parents and children, could this be done 100% virtually, I would’ve told you no way. We can’t build those kinds of relationships. We didn’t even think it was worth testing at that point. And then yes, in mid-March of 2020, our hand got completely forced, but it came out of the learning that, oh, this actually could work virtually, but then that there were families we were just missing, because we weren’t offering this as an alternative method of participating in the program.
Sarah Walzer:
And part of what we are doing now is, with an outside evaluator, really trying to dig into the question of what about virtual visits worked for families? What about it worked for staff? But even more importantly, who were the families it worked so well for and why, and how do we make sure we are offering multiple ways for families to engage with the program? One of the really exciting things for us is so we currently work in 40 different languages across the country, but we’re only able, in any given community, to support families in the language that we’ve been able to hire staff in that community. But this may mean that the Bengali family in Madison, Wisconsin, can get a visit from a Bengali home visitor in San Jose, California, because they can do it virtually. That opens a whole world now.
Trent Stamp:
Yeah, I guess that’s the other factor here, right is that these people are recognizing that the world has changed and they’re not in a hurry to just go back to the way things were before. This is such a thoughtful group of leaders and they’re evaluating in the process as they go by as, is this now a better way, whatever it means. We heard from Mark Friedman, who his whole office went virtual, and I don’t think they’re coming back. And he just said, “We’re actually better this way. And we’re supporting our people, and we’re getting things done.” And Mark’s a long-time leader in the sector, been a leader in the non-profit world for 30 years, at least. And he just said, “We’re going to adapt to this, and we’re going to be better as a result of this.” And I thought that was really interesting.
Julie Lacouture :
There’s a story that I heard in business school, I think it’s about Cornelius Vanderbilt, the railroad tycoon.
Trent Stamp:
Oh, go-
Julie Lacouture :
Yeah, pull up a chair to this fireplace.
Trent Stamp:
I’m here for the Cornelius story. Let’s go.
Julie Lacouture :
He made tons of money as a railroad baron and was asked to invest in this early technology called airplanes and declined, and said, “I’m not in the airplane business, I’m in the railroad business.” And then that industry grew, while the railroads went away as a business. Because, he didn’t think big enough about what his organization did. He didn’t think he was in the transportation industry. And I think that one of the things I’m starting to hear from a lot of leaders that we’re talking to, like David Diaz and Mollie Marsh-Heine, is really about thinking bigger about the work that you do and the intersectionality of it. And how, for David Diaz, thinking about how transportation is a social justice issue and what that means for work opportunities and economic opportunities for a community. And that is, I think, a really exciting development in the industry.
Trent Stamp:
Yeah, we heard that from a lot of people, that justice, the anti-racism work, that that kind of thing of providing not just equity, but equality, it runs through everything that they’re trying to do. And if you can’t imbue it into your regular programming, no matter what you do, you’re not going to be successful. And so I think that’s another thing that the non-profit world is embracing much quicker than the for-profit world is doing. But they’re both analyzing it from a justice factor, but also from a cost-effectiveness, cost benefit analysis of do we need to put this into our work, to do better work, to provide more options, more access, more opportunity for people?
Julie Lacouture :
And here’s Mollie Marsh-Heine from season four, episode eight.
Mollie Marsh-Heine:
Most importantly, you’ve got to begin and to do it. I really don’t think any organization has an excuse. I don’t care if you’re the professional golf association or what. Everybody who has an incorporated non-profit in the United States of America, their lives are touched by racism, and need to be finding a way to center their work in racial and social equity.
Trent Stamp:
I think that all of the leaders that we talked to were very thoughtful on that, and incorporating how the world has changed and how some people are just not getting the right bite at the apple in any way whatsoever. And it’s really an inspiring group of people. I wish I could be more like them.
Julie Lacouture :
I know. I want to be all our guests when I grow up.
Trent Stamp:
They’re just good people. And they’re not good people in the way that we think of do-gooders. These are people running multimillion dollar organizations who are cutthroat when it comes to making business decisions. They’re strategic, they’re smart, they’ve done all the reading and all the talking and all the thinking. They’re inspirational. But they’re doing it for the right reasons,, and they understand the systemic causes that are making their work hard. And they’re trying to change not only the people that they serve, but those causes that are influencing not only their work, but the rest of our lives. So I’ve been so inspired by the people we’ve talked to.
Julie Lacouture :
It’s a hard industry to work in. You have fewer resources than any other industry, and you have way more to do than any other. They should all be commended and the stuff that they get done is exceptional.
Trent Stamp:
Yeah. And they got pain-in-the-butt foundations telling them how to better run their organizations, as if we have any idea we’re talking about.
Julie Lacouture :
And then you have us trying to be like, “Can you explain to us exactly how you do your job? Thanks. We’re going to edit it down.”
Trent Stamp:
Yes. Quick boil down your 30-year career into one soundbite for me, please. But most of them do it.
Julie Lacouture :
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. We are thankful for you for listening. Trent, I’m thankful for being part of this and doing such great interviews, and just lending your expertise at every turn. And we look forward to doing more.
Trent Stamp:
I, too, am thankful for this partnership with you. And I’m also thankful for the amazing people in the sector who are doing great work and are willing to give us the time to talk about that work. Here’s to a nice holiday season, and a better 2022.