 Welcome everybody to another episode of the nonprofit show. We're really excited to have you here. We have one of my personal favorites in the nonprofit sector, Katie Warnick, CEO and really the founder of Staffing Boutique. Staffing Boutique is a really interesting staffing company that just serves the nonprofit and educational sector. And so this is the woman to go to. Katie, I've got to tell this quick story. When Jared and I first started, you know, chatting daily and we called it the Corona Chronicles because I thought it would just be, you know, a couple of weeks. You called me on the phone and said, Hey, my name's Katie Warnick. I want to, I want to, you know, work with you and talk to you and we were like, Oh, okay. Yay. Because at the time, Katie, it was just Jared and I talking. We weren't, we didn't have guests because and then we got you on and we were like, Holy moly. This, this is like an amazing thing. So I've been doing all the talking. Let me get through my housekeeping and then we're going to like completely drill down with Katie about staffing. Again, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American nonprofit Academy. Jared Ransom, the nonprofit nerd is not going to be with us today, but she'll be back here tomorrow. We want to thank all of our presenting sponsors and Katie was our very first presenting sponsor. So I'm going to give a shout out to staffing boutique first. And I want to thank Blumerang, American nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy at National University. Be generous, your part time controller, nonprofit nerd and nonprofit thought leader. You know, if you have missed any of our more than 700 episodes, you can find us on Roku, YouTube, Amazon Fire TV and Vimeo. And queue us up on your pot, your favorite podcast outlet. We are on so many platforms. And as of this last year, we started migrating all of these episodes onto podcast format. So you can take the nonprofit show with you wherever you may go, which is pretty exciting. Katie Warren, CEO and founder of staffing boutique, staffing boutique.org is where you can find her. She and her team are amazing. Sometimes we have one of her compatriots, Dana Skurlock on. And so that's also another great voice. Katie, thank you for joining us. Oh, you bet. Thanks for having me. Dana is my ride or die. We've been working together for a very long time. I trust her 100% with the business. And she's just such a performer that I love when she's on. Yeah, she's really cool. She's really been fun. She's given us some different perspectives. And again, this, I think the staffing issue is the centerpiece of our nonprofit sector. And I got to say, I think it's even more important than fundraising at this point. I don't know if I mean, I think to me it's, I don't want to use the word burden, but it's such a piece of it. And we are not able to get people to work with us. So let's drill down because I have a lot of questions and first and foremost, and this is a big topic, but what is the current market for staffing in 2022? Like, what does it look like? Wow. This year has been amazing. I mean, people are staffing. We've actually been busier than ever as a staffing firm. I think this is our strongest year. I mean, we came on to a strong third and fourth quarter in 2021 with everything with the reopening, but 2022. I mean, I don't know the numbers on a national level for staffing firms, but I know all of my friends that are in the staffing industry that do recruiting for other sectors are having their busiest year ever. Again, it's our busiest year. We only service the nonprofit sector and charter schools, which obviously operated nonprofits. So we're killing it. It was, I would say for a second and even into third quarter, it was almost too much. You know, we were saying no to business. We were really being struck with who we were working with. We were only working with organizations that were only using us as a staffing firm, not any other recruiters in the area. It's been a really busy year and I think it's just the challenge of finding and retaining good talent is so high coming off of COVID and everything that's kind of just been going on with the economy and the world. The need for recruiters has been more important than ever. You know, organizations that always said, I'm not going to use you. I'm a nonprofit. I can't afford a staffing firm. We're kind of knocking at our doors. And one of the things that I've always liked in my business is when I speak to clients that say that to me when, when they do come back to me, you know, and, and I have a really, you know, can the conversation with them and say, you know, you can use me now, or you can try on your own and then call me back in three months and like you were right. And then they go with me anyway. So it's just, it's a time saver. What are we doing here? But to answer your question, we're busy. It's been a strong 2022. Is that he said 2022 and we're looking forward to the next year, right around the corner. So let me drill down a little bit because what I hear you saying it sounds like you have nonprofits that were like, no, we don't use staffing companies. We do it all ourselves. And it sounds to me like you've had not like you had new people enter the marketplace who maybe have never used staffing companies. Is that fair to say that's, that's accurate. I mean, that's always been a little bit of a challenge for recruiting firms with the nonprofit sector, you know, I don't work with large corporations, right. So, right. I worked at places that did recruiting for large corporations and you know it's very easy to make a sales call on the first call when you're new to recruiting and get a company that wants to work with you because they really don't care about every single dollar in their budget they have an amount for a lot of nonprofits especially smaller ones don't ever sort of budget in temp workers number one and they're very strict with their dollars obviously and rightfully so. So a sales call for me blinds is never really going to turn into a sale and I know that it typically doesn't turn into a sale, you know, for for six to nine months quite frankly because it's been working on a fiscal year right. So, with that being said, yes, new organizations that have said, you know, hard nose to me in the past, have reached out and it's always funny because you know I keep a pretty strong database of just who I've touched base with spoken to people I have notes on from when I first started my company back in 11, you know, are now calling me, you know, directors of finance or HR that are still the same organization, we've never had a challenge recruiting, but this year has been been challenging for us, especially the larger more prestigious organizations in New York City, they have a pretty strong volunteer base, as well as job applicant base that they can tap into pretty easily that they wouldn't have to ever use me. And those resources have dried up, and they're coming into the dark side. So what are they looking for like what what are nonprofits saying, you know, we need help in this I mean, are there certain segments of the labor market that people are looking for, or is it just like, we need a warm body to do a lot of different things like what does that look like. Yeah, it's not really warm bodies. We, we find that's pretty challenging just always with nonprofits, small offices, hard, you know just warm bodies don't really fit into that sort of work environment. So what we've seen a trend with in terms of hiring is people that want to be in the office office managers. So organizations that, you know, a lot of organizations are remote or hybrid or some of them completely closed and just kept like, you know, we work space or something like that. But there are organizations that actually have a physical space that there needs to be a present presence there so people that can do a solid schedule that want to be there unfortunately those jobs tend to pay the least. So that's, that's a big position so you know, again, operations managers, office managers, anyone that's vaccinated that will commit to you know in nine to five schedule Monday through Friday or eight to four or whatever. So that's the first, I'd say position that's high in demand. We've seen a huge uptick in events jobs. We've always done events, you know, staffing so from anything from an events assistant to a director, you know, soup to not events, whatever, but I would say the past third and fourth quarter, we've had a tremendous amount of events jobs. If I was to speculate why and they're, and they are temp job is because when COVID happened they probably laid off their events director, and now they're back in full, you know, event swing of things. So they need to hire back attempt to run the logistics of it, maybe the director of development is handling sort of the bigger picture stuff the solicitations the table sales, the logistics and now they need someone to come in and run it and maybe they haven't budgeted in that position yet. So, while they set up to do that they're hiring temps. That is fascinating. This is why I love talking to you, because I feel like within our sector, you're on the leading edge, you're seeing like what's going to come down, you know, the path for us. And before a lot of other people do and I am fascinated by that because that really isn't is a shift in not just saying okay yeah development, you also do events take it over. Yeah, yeah, and it's funny because I was actually having a conversation with a client last night, specifically about an events position that we're recruiting on. It's actually his organization specifically needs a temp and then a permanent person and again we've had a number of events jobs come in on both ends of the spectrum so temp our time and then full time firm. So we've been heavily in the events recruiting I'd say the past six to nine months, and we're struggling to find the talent within the compensation that is budgeted for that position, specifically. So, let's just use some numbers here, if we were to recruit for a permanent events manager and the organization has budgeted, let's say 65,000, which probably was a good salary, someone that is working full time in the same area, making pretty the same money isn't incentivized to then move. And so we're in like a situation of the new organization that we're recruiting for is paying maybe, you know, $2,000 more a year than what they're currently making, is it worth it for that person. No, right. And I don't know, remember, I don't know which episode I was on with you, it probably was earlier in the year we were talking about leveraging, maybe I think a job offer. And, you know, I think it was the beginning of 2022. That's what we're in now. Yeah, we were talking about what's the at when you're asking for your own set salary and negotiating and industry standard was a 25% increase of where you're at. So if we look at the, and again, we deal with the nonprofit sector so let's just be flexible, let's just say 18%, and someone's offering $2,000 more, it's just not worth it, you know, to go to a new organization that you don't know, you know, you really need to be able to negotiate that and be competitive and that's been an issue. So we're seeing that on the smaller scale smaller organizations and then the very large hospital foundations and performing arts organizations, they're just not budgeting what they want to attract. So we're at a place with our clients where you know it's content communication and dialogue, but should you lower your expectations and take an events assistant and train up, because that seems to be the best bet here. And I mean I can say that across the board with all of the positions that were you're having trouble filling because of salary, but you really need to let go of the expectations of what you want in someone at the budget that you're at like those days are gone. Okay. Okay, so I just want to reframe that because what I hear you saying is that we are not going to get the caliber you use something fascinating use that that phrase train up just to like give it over and say I'm going to have to come in at a lower level, have the resources to train somebody and help navigate them so that they can do a higher level job. I think that that's what we have to do, especially talking about hiring, you know, more on the di side of things right I think we need to be looking bigger spectrum talent, how can we grow our organization up from the ground up and I think we just look at, you don't need to look at training up just in general. One other thing I did want to touch, touch on is, again, we do events staffing all the time. And typically when we do post events jobs we get a strong number of events nonprofit people. What we've seen with our job postings on indeed a monster on idealist is we're getting a ton of people from more like corporate events marketing events catering events, and this would be a different sort of lifestyle for that more of a steadier schedule. Those people are very strong with logistics but they don't have that fundraising piece. So I think, and this is the first time I'm seeing this because you know two years ago for years ago I would have never entertained a resume like this. You know, that person's never worked in the nonprofit sector before. Maybe they've done a fundraising event at a restaurant for a nonprofit but that's a totally different, you know, human right. Now I'm at the point where I'm just like it might make sense to bring this, this person in, or trial them, at least. So that's something that I'm exploring with one of my my organizations now, because they can't budget what they want you know they don't have the budget for what they want. I'm fascinated by this because what an incredible arc of change and results from when we first started talking with you. You know, I remember Katie it was like, keep your job, don't let it go because you'll never find another one that you know the marketplace is shriveled up and we're seeing layoffs. And now it's just been such a dramatic shift to where we're looking at and we're questioning even something, dare I say, integrity or work, you know, ideas. Talk to us about what we should be expecting in terms of change because I feel, and I'm just speaking for myself, being back out in the community from for profit to the nonprofit. There is a different tenor in how people are doing their jobs and how they're being responsible for their place in the work environment. What kind of changes are you seeing? I've said this before and it's, you know, it's nothing new I think that we really have to adjust to the work ethic gap, if you will, that's going on. And again, it's not just the nonprofit sector it's across the board I see it all the time I see it at the gym I see it with friends in different worlds you know no one wants to work and I say this and I sound abrupt but it's true the work ethic the priority of work is just on a different level. So I don't want to say you need to lower your expectations with your staff, but you certainly need to be more empathetic to what their lifestyle demands now, and where do you meet them. Right, whether that's PTO days working from home, benefits, you know just sort of some sort of flexibility, or I don't know I can't you know I don't even know how to articulate it. I don't know, I want to say Larry expectations and what you think you're going to get in the next five years because we're at a really weird place. You know, so this is like a follow up question to this. And we were talking at the beginning about, you know, salary and compensation. Do you think there's a higher value for things like personal time off or, you know, gym membership or free lunch or are there things that are more intrinsic to that sense of why somebody wants to work in your nonprofit that maybe goes beyond dollars. Yeah, huge always that's always it and and I think that you know we really need to look at retention always I think that that's the first priority. So when you're thinking about what you need to change in your organization, look at retention. Your end is coming this is a great time if you have some sort of HR department in place to do maybe a survey monkey, what your current staff is looking for, because people are going to go and remember we're in a time where communication is lost. So even if you have, you know, a grant writer database person that you think is super duper happy and you have a great report with them and you think your communication via email is great. If they get approached by another organization to make 18% more, they're out the door. So, but that you know they don't want to be and, and again, no one wants to speak up and ask for more money and leverage that and of course you want to have that open dialogue. I say it to my staff and my staff has grown quite a bit over the past 16 months. And that's the first conversation I have when I check in with them. And that's the first conversation I have with them when I hire them. If there's something that you do not like, if there's something that I do wrong, if there's something that you're uncomfortable with, I want you to call me and I want you to tell me and I want this to change I want to fix any sort of problems that we have going on, so that you're comfortable, and you're happy here. I mean that they're asking for more money. Maybe it's just responsibilities. Maybe there's a task that they have to do that's so administrative that they don't feel like they should be doing it okay. I can have one of our attempts to that you know like I can very easily fix anything. I'm the owner of this company, but I need to know, and I'm not going to know unless they don't tell me. Are you having open dialogue with your staff constantly monthly quarterly whatever it is it's so important, and that's just why retention plan is way more important than a recruitment plan any day. That's fascinating. I mean, that that's a fascinating thing because in my lifetime. This has never been a conversation. It's always been you're lucky to have a job. And so you're privileged to be a part of our team. So that leads me kind of to the next question, you know, is having a job and working in the nonprofit sector, still sexy and still something that people want to do. Or because I think that covered a lot of multitude of sense. I think people would be like, yeah, I'm not getting the right salary or my benefits are crappy, but I'm working, you know, for mission or working with purpose. Are you seeing that change or is that getting stronger what do you what are your senses of that. I think that it's lost appeal. Okay, by any means, but I yeah, I think that there's still those people that want to work in the sector, and they know that and and they're of the same people that know that they want to be, you know, a healer or a nurse or a teacher kind of have in your gut, what you want to do and what you definitely don't want to do. So I think that there's always going to be people that want to work in the sector. I do think it needs to be extremely competitive with with how they keep the people in the sector, right. That's so to answer your question yeah I do think that the sector is still strong. Yeah, I think that's really interesting thing. So you know we have 1.8 million nonprofits registered in this country. We forget there's a lot of competition within our own sector. Right. I mean, yeah, so you're going to get picked off by yet another nonprofit if you're not right looking at that retention which I loved that you brought that up because we don't talk about that enough. We don't talk about retention plan always. We really don't talk about that enough. It's so interesting. Okay, now I was chatting with you in the green room, and I was like so proud of myself because I found a girl holding a crystal ball with red hair. For those of you listening to the podcast, Katie has glorious red hair and I actually found an image holding a crystal ball. So this is where I put you on the hot seat. What's your crystal ball forecast. Yeah, so I think that the sector and hiring is still going to remain strong it we're definitely living in a weird time you know I listen to all these financial podcasts and we're technically in a recession and you know tech is laying off but you know, we're still strong the industry is still strong. We're still seeing hiring trends on employment rate is still very low. So, I think that the sector will definitely remain strong into the first and second quarter of 2023. If there is any sort of slow down or hindrance on nonprofits, it probably won't happen until the next fiscal year, you know we are typically late right so many organizations are their new new budget on July one but I think that first and second quarter hiring is going to be strong. There's competition, you know there's like you said there's so many nonprofits you have to think about all the nonprofits that are competing to get the same talent. And how are you going to step up your game, because that's what this is about at this point. You know it's really interesting to about how many it's it's it's a big question in our sector how many people are actually looking at retention. Are they thinking about this. I mean, I bet it we tend to be so reactionary in the nonprofit sector anyway to our own detriment. How many of us are actually stepping back and saying okay, who do we have what do we have and what's the work situation and I appreciate you bringing that up because that has not been a trajectory that American business for profit or nonprofit has really taken. Yeah, right. Yeah, you know, we've we've been used to saying, don't worry there's a line of people that we can bring to the door to take these these jobs. Yeah, and you know it even the larger organizations do have you know the the exit interview, but what happens at an exit interview what where is that data going, you know, is it even looked at or is it just a piece of paper in the file. So you really need to look at that and then you know the other thing I still think that this, this world is just kind of on edge, I think everybody is that like an 11 on a one to 10 scale you know nerves are heightened, you know, where it's just constant confrontation and it's constant confrontation via text message or email. It's never confrontation anymore via phone. And you know, knowing that, how can you communicate how can you pick up the phone and call someone and have a difficult conversation is just something that we really need to preach and look at you know how many times are you sending an email where it should have been a phone call. I think that that's huge. I just think that's so huge and it's so forgotten where so many keyboard warriors out here and you know, I mean I think two weeks ago I said three times to someone is, is this a professional thing to send to me via email when you can call me you call me. Three people apologize to me 48 hours later. You know, I love that you said that and I know I needed to take that into my heart to because I think that I have been pissy lately. And yeah, you send emails and texts with a different tenor than if you have to look at somebody in the eye. And so I appreciate that you said that that's really interesting. Wow, Katie Warnock, you are just such a, well first of all, I truly believe this if I if I need to know what the trajectory is, you're the first call to make because you Thanks. Yeah, you see these things coming about that then impact everything and in labor again, I really do believe this Katie is the central issue of our time right now in the nonprofit sector, more so than virtually anything else because you know we can talk about technology we can talk about fundraising we can talk about management, but if we don't have the talent, we can't do any of that. Exactly. So it's such an important conversation to have well before you're in crisis and so yeah, you know Katie Warnock CEO and founder staffing boutique check out staffing boutique.org and you can learn about their work. It's such an interesting piece of the puzzle when you think about them just working in the nonprofit sector on this labor side super cool and always a delight to have Katie again I'm Julia Patrick CEO of the American nonprofit Academy, Jared Ransom, the nonprofit nerd herself will be back with us tomorrow. Again, we want to thank all of our presenting sponsors, which staffing boutique as I mentioned at the front of the show was our very first one so yay team. We have joined hands with nonprofit thought leader nonprofit nerd your part time controller be generous fundraising Academy at National University, Bloomerang and American nonprofit Academy. Really a cool cool episode. One question just came in and so I'm going to put you back in the hot seat Katie. So, somebody writes in has burnt out in the nonprofit sector affected how recruiting operates. I have burnt out from the sector because of massive overwork toxic bosses inadequate salary and inflexibility in work hours. It's something everywhere though it's not specific to the nonprofit sector, everyone is sort of at that burnout level, you know, and, and you need to do what's best for you is it something that it's worth communicating to your boss and trying to fix the problem, or you are already out the door. And so what are you going to do about it, are you going to resign and then look for another job or you just going to actively look for another job, you know it's really, it's really up to you and if you're a value to the organization, you can start with how you communicate, you can probably leverage it to put yourself at ease to put yourself in a better position. Those are words to live by. Thank you, Katie Warnick this has been great. I'm going to witness to you this morning before I came on air, my sister, my saintly sister who is just an angel on this planet quit her job this morning because she just had too much and she is a woman that works in a really hard, hard sector. And did exactly what you just said she just got to the point where she couldn't take it anymore. And so yeah this is happening. So thank you Katie Warnick, a staffing boutique you are a rockstar happy holidays my friend. Absolutely Merry Christmas Happy Hanukkah enjoy whatever you're celebrating. Have a healthy 2023. Absolutely we need to be doing that. Alright everybody as we like to end every episode we want to remind ourselves, our viewers, our listeners, our sponsors, and our guests to stay well so you can do well. Thank you everyone we'll see you back here tomorrow.