 I wanna welcome all of you that have joined us for another episode of The Nonprofit Show. Look at this bright shining face right in front of you on the screen, Stephanie Savislin, I wrote it down. Stephanie Savislin has joined us and I'm so excited for our conversation and for you to join us in this dialogue about steps to create nonprofit value-based engagement. And so you're going to be talking to us about that and when you reached out to me, Stephanie, via LinkedIn, I thought, wow, this woman is dynamic and I couldn't not offer you an episode spot because what you talk about is so important and I think you have a bit of disruption moments that you might be sharing with us later. So thank you for joining us. And of course, thanks to all of our presenting sponsors. If you joined us for the Chitty Chat Chat session, you also heard that many of these sponsors actually came to us first, asking if they could support us, like financially support us and elevate the show, elevate the conversations around the globe. So please do check out our presenting sponsors. They exist in your community because they work nationwide and remote. So they are here to lift your missions up and to help you continue to make value-based decisions. Thanks to Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy for having this wonderful idea to create the nonprofit show in March of last year. I'm so grateful to serve alongside you Julia. I'm Jarrett Ransom, also known as the nonprofit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group. And again, today we were talking about steps to creating non-profit value-based engagement and welcome Stephanie. Thank you so much. Okay Stephanie, I've got like step one and you'll see this reoccurring theme of people going up and down steps throughout our time together. But I'm thinking let's back it up a little bit and explain to us what value-based engagement even is. Well, I am really excited today to talk about engagement in general in the nonprofit industry. I've been in the nonprofit industry for about 10 years now and engagement as you know is starting to come to the forefront of what we're talking about. Engagement is how employees feel about working at their jobs. And in the nonprofit sector, we want them to feel good because nonprofits are doing amazing things in the world. There is nothing like hearing for me for hearing stories about what nonprofits are achieving to close gaps, to meet needs, to better the lives of people and animals and nature and so many things in our world. So we want our employees to be excited about doing that work. And engagement, that's what engagement is. And so we wanna look at how employees are feeling when they come to work. And values-based engagement just means that we have the how to our why. We can know our why we can have our mission but it goes a little bit deeper than that. We need to know the how in addition to knowing our why. How to our why. That's like, I love that phrase. Okay, so I love how you teed this up. So let's get into it. Step one, what would that be? So step one is actually to create our baseline. We wanna do an engagement survey. I have never actually worked in a nonprofit that is looking at engagement or measures engagement. And it seems like it might be a buzzword right now but it's actually really important. Engagement is your productivity. It's how people feel about coming into work. It's how good of a job they're trying to do. It's whether or not they're an ambassador for your organization. This is going to affect your costs. This is going to affect your turnover. This is going to affect your reputation. This is going to affect your sustainability. So we wanna start looking at engagement. And unfortunately, the statistics are pretty bad around engagement in this day and age. Over two thirds of employees are unengaged, which means higher costs, more mistakes, less enthusiasm about what they're doing, less commitment. And in the nonprofit space, we don't want that. We want people to be excited about what they're doing and we want them to believe in what they're doing. And that's gonna come with engagement. So value, what values does is it inspires us. And when we know how we're working and what matters to our organization, that's really what it is. It's being able to look around and say, I know what matters here. So the first step we wanna do is measure that engagement. It's not difficult. You can create a survey. There's a ton of free platforms. There's some software that you can use, but you just wanna create a baseline and ask your employees, hey, tell me about where you're at. Tell me about what it feels like to work here. Tell me the last time you felt proud of this organization. Tell me if you would recommend our organization to your friends as an employer. And you wanna look at those answers and know. And so if you're getting pretty bad scores, it's okay to start with. I would almost expect that just because of the nature of engagement in this day and age. If you're getting 25, 30% of engagement, it means that we can raise them. So it's okay to not get the greatest scores, but you do wanna create a baseline of knowing where your people are at and knowing what is lacking in your organization. So I would say that's step number one. And if you need help with an engagement survey, there's so many tools. It's not expensive. It's not difficult to do, but you do wanna take it seriously. You never ever wanna create a survey that you're not gonna do anything with the information because it's just gonna burn people out. It makes people cranky. Jared, go ahead. Well, I wanna know, like, I'm assuming this is an anonymous survey so no one's being identified. And also are you finding through your experience of providing this, Stephanie, are you finding that the answers are honest? Are they truly honest? I believe that if you're asking employees and telling them why you're doing this survey and that you intend to use the data to listen, this is the employee voice, right? Employees wanna have a voice, but they're not gonna give it if they don't think they're gonna be taken seriously or if it's gonna be held against them. So you are gonna get honest feedback if you're really upfront about why you're doing it and what plans you have to use the data that you're getting. You never wanna throw out a survey with no plans to follow up on it. Correct. Yeah, I agree with that. Well, step one was already a wonderful one. So move us into step two. So step two, I would say you wanna ask people what they see happening in your organization. And I wanna throw out a caveat before we get into this, your leadership has to be on board with us. If your leadership doesn't wanna create the how to your why, if the why is plenty good enough for you and you don't wanna have a culture of accountability or a culture of inspiration, then don't even bother doing this because going through this exercise, the purpose of this exercise is to create expectations and to create a little bit more uniformity or not uniformity, unity in your organization. Sure. And so if your leadership isn't on board and that includes your board and your C-suite, you don't wanna leave either one of those groups out of this. So if you're not interested in this, don't even bother because it's just gonna make people more unengaged. So the second step is to ask people what they're seeing happen. Sometimes it takes others to be able to see what we can't put our finger on. So you don't wanna ask your employees what they want the values to be because it's not up to them to decide what the organization believes in, but you do wanna ask what they see happening. You know, what's showing up in your culture? What do you see that matters? Do you see service? Do you see excellence? Do you see power? You wanna ask them what they see and that's where you're gonna get the best idea of what values are currently in play. And it might be a mix of good and bad but also ask people you do business with, vendors, clients. So you just wanna take kind of an informal poll. Hey, if we were to ask you what you think our values are, what would you say? And then you start to make a word cloud or just start to collect that data so that you can start to see what is at play in your organization. So I shared with you Stephanie in our chat previous to the show, I reached out to my friends, close friends. And I said, give me three to five words that you would use to describe me, right? Like as a person, as Jared and I was amazed with a lot of the same words, right? Like a lot of people really provided a lot of the same three to five words. And I did just that, I created a word cloud and I now have that in front of me in my studio. And like one of the biggest words that shows up is service, right? Another is passion, another is kind hearted, right? And I was just like, wow, these are the words like just short, sweet, brief words that people think about when they think about me. Now, when I think about me, I don't know that those would be the top words that came to mind. And not to say that I don't possess these values, I feel like we ourselves are a little bit harder on ourselves, right? When it's like, oh, I don't know, am I really that passionate? But to elicit the results, as you say, from other people, not just the team, but vendors, partners, you know, there's so much value in that itself. So great, yeah, Julia. So I'm fascinated then we've got, you know, values-based search, if you will. We've started with a survey to create that baseline. We've moved into more of a descriptive, we've pulled in our vendors, stakeholders, people that we work with. Now, step three, I can't wait. Step three is to identify what your values actually are. And what's fun about this is there are not a ton of rules about how you wanna create a value statement. Southwest Airlines, they have two prevailing values and then they have like different values under those values. The company Mad Greens, they have one word, nourish. And for them, that means they wanna nourish their employees, they wanna nourish their vendors, they wanna nourish the community. So their one value is nourishment. Some organizations, it might be service. You can have 10, you can have one, you can have three. There aren't a lot of rules, but it brings so much life to your organization when you find out this, this is what really matters to us. This is the heart, this is the core of our business. This is what we would be willing to be punished for. This is what we're not willing to compromise. And the reason I think nonprofits need this is because likely if you're, if you have a nonprofit and you're watching this, you're probably not the only nonprofit that does what you do. Oh, sure. You know, if you have a homeless services shelter or an animal hospital, any kind of nonprofit, it's not likely that you're the only one, but how you go about achieving your mission, that's what's gonna set you apart. And that is what is gonna unify your staff. If everyone knows, you know what? We are here to serve this population and we're here to do it with integrity. We are here to do it with service and kindness. That gives people that, first of all, it inspires them. And second of all, it creates an expectation. They know what they need to show up with every day and they know what they can expect from their colleagues, that they're gonna get that same treatment that they're expected to treat your customers. So you wanna go through and you wanna identify what those core values are and then you don't wanna stop there. You wanna start putting behaviors to those values. So if you say, you know what? We really value professionalism. We wanna be known for how professional we are. What does that look like? What does professionalism look like? Is it what you wear? Is it how you speak? Is it what kind of memos you put out? What does that mean to you? Because I can almost guarantee that what professionalism looks like to me might be different than what it looks like for you, Jared. So we wanna create expectations. If we say we value community, I need to know what that looks like because my idea of community and your idea of community might be pretty different. A lot of, sorry, go ahead. I do have a question because I am shocked that this step three is not step one, right? Like wouldn't we want to identify our values before we survey and create that baseline? Like tell me why and maybe these aren't in priority, right? But tell me why that wouldn't be our first step. Well, you can make it your first step. I wouldn't put it before step two because a lot of what's going to inform your decision on what you value is gonna be a lot on that feedback, right? Of what your employees are saying they're seeing, what your vendors are saying. And you wouldn't wanna come up with all of your values before you had asked your friends for those three to five words. You do wanna kind of take into account what other people are seeing. If someone had asked me my values I probably would have said, oh, compassion, dignity. But one of my friends was able to say, you're a risk taker, you take risks. And I thought, oh, you know what, I do. And I don't know that I would have been able to pinpoint that about myself. And the only reason I wanted to do the engagement survey ahead of time is to create that baseline that if we're moving in the direction of making values based engagement let's look at what it is before we roll our values out and then let's look at it afterwards and see if we've moved the needle at all. That's why I would put it in that order. You don't wanna spend too much time identifying your values and putting behaviors to them until you're really, first of all, sure that that's the direction you wanna move. And second, you're confident that that's truly what your organization is about. Interesting, interesting. Okay, so now we're on to step four and I'm fascinated to see where this process leads us to. Well, as you can probably guess, once you've identified these values and now created some expectations around them, meaning behaviors, we wanna start bringing them into our operations, right? We gotta let these values change the way we do business. So if we say we really value service, how do we value service? Let's look at how we're doing things. Get some feedback from your frontline managers, your frontline employees, what's making it difficult for them to act with service? What obstacles are they coming up against? What about some big decisions that are coming up? If you've chosen respect as one of your core values, how are you making decisions respectfully? What do your meetings look like? Do you have expectations around how your meetings are run? Is anyone allowed to interrupt anyone else? Cause that's not very respectful. So you wanna start looking at the way you run your nonprofit through this lens of what you've said you're about. And once you've kind of put it out there internally, you know, if you've rolled it out to your staff, you wanna start scrutinizing first of all your own behavior. And leaders, this is where it's gonna come down to you. You're gonna model the behavior that you wanna see and you're gonna need to model these values as best as you can. And yeah, you might slip up, you might have a rough day, you might get stressed out, but then what you need to do is own it and say, you know what? I didn't act according to our values and I'm sorry and I recognize that and I'm gonna change my behavior. And people are gonna be looking to see, do we really, are we really valuing this or are we just saying we are? And if you work with service. Yeah, and I'll tell you what, when it comes to engagement, people can see through a lot of this, if it is lip service, they're gonna know pretty quick. If you really value service, people are gonna have to see it. And the reason I'm so passionate about this is because I want nonprofits to do really well and values are so inspiring to people. This is what brings out the best in us. This is what allows us to make biggest impact on all of our audiences. If we can know who we are and stay true to what we believe in as an organization and work as a unified core unit providing these services seamlessly and as a true team, that is what's gonna change the world. And I remember, gosh, maybe I'm dating myself as 80s or 90s, like you'd walk into an office and you would see the values on the wall. Like it would either be painted or sticker art kind of things. And it was like, these are our values. And to your point, Stephanie, there might have been one word or there could have been 10. But I remember seeing that so visually, vividly, like in offices that I would walk in or work in. So I love that you're bringing this back up. I love that. I feel last year, of course, 2020, we've all had so many uncertainties to navigate. And I do think our values have been questioned. So it's time, I know a lot of us, myself included, have done a lot of personal reflection. What do I value? I always say, my why is freedom, flexibility and travel. But what are my values? And that is something that I think it's really important for us to know. So we've currently gone through step one, two, three, four. If I'm correct, if I can count so early in the morning. You're good. We're on to step five and tell us what step five would be on your list, Stephanie. Step five is going to be reinforcing those values. So look at how you are conducting annual reviews. Are your values in that? Are you reviewing your employees based on how they're exemplifying the values of your workforce? Look at what behaviors you are either permitting or punishing for the sake of performance. This is going to be huge. This is where the rubber meets the road. If you're not reinforcing these values and bringing them into your everyday and creating habits and expectations, you've just had a colossal waste of time. People are going to be wanting to see these in action. So you're talking about this on the employment review. How might we incorporate this when we hire, right? Or we're looking to bring on new employees or even volunteers. How might we include our values in the preliminary process? That is so great that you brought that up. So everything in the employee experience, starting with recruitment, you want to be recruiting people who match those values of your organization. If you are a homeless organization and your value is dignity and service, you don't wanna bring in an employee who believes that homeless are actually lesser people and need to get slapped around a little bit in order to get out of their predicament. And what makes us all- That's gonna be a big alignment. You're gonna be going for that alignment. That's a great word to use is that alignment. You want to find people to work with you who agree with your values. And it doesn't mean that you're looking for a homogenous workforce. It can be people of all different races, shapes, sizes, backgrounds, economic status. But all of us can get behind these values, right? It doesn't matter where you've come from or what race you are. You can still believe in kindness. You can still believe in dignity or passion or grit or any of the values that you've identified. That's where you wanna build your workforce. Yeah. Well, and it's interesting because this is something that should be communicated to whoever is doing your corporate communications, your marketing, certainly development. I mean, the development team has got to buy into these, reinforcing those words. I can see how on an institution, it can really become that guiding light for moving everybody in the same direction. It's really in the same way. Such a great analogy is a guiding light. This is gonna be your flashlight in the dark. Especially when times get rough, like we just went through a pandemic year, a lot of organizations have found out what they really believe in. And it's important. I want organizations, especially nonprofits, to know what they're about and to be really proud of it. You know what keeps you there? Right. And I would say to Stephanie, the organizations have found out in individuals because over the course of the last year, I have never received more phone calls and cries from help. I'm gonna say from young professionals, mostly, saying I do not align with the values of my nonprofit. I stand for something different. Or I stand for more. Or I stand for willing to be more bold. And I would say between the like, I was receiving most phone calls from like 25 to 40. And a lot of these professionals were really questioning if they were working in alignment with an organization that they have been so passionate and committed to. But this last 18 months, as we've all witnessed, it has given us all time to reflect and to really realign, maybe, with what's most important. Yeah, COVID had some very powerful lessons for us, both personally and organizationally. Yeah. I would say, you know, pandemic's plural because we had such a heavy year, the global virus, the political divide and the social injustice. And that was heavy, heavy. And we're all still, I believe, we're all still feeling, you know, those changes as Julie and I constantly refer to it now as the recovery phase. We are moving into the recovery phase, although, you know, there are still shortages in our world, it's just... It's worse. I know. I have a question, Stephanie, because as Jared's, you know, leading to the notion of moving forward in recovery and really looking at everything from our work from home strategies to how we deal with our campuses and in our office space, would this be a good time to kind of start again and reevaluate everybody and try and figure out where we are? Because I would imagine if you asked those questions, you know, six, 12, 24 months ago and then you asked them now, you're gonna get different responses. I would say that anytime is great to identify your values. It doesn't matter that it's after a pandemic. I'm gonna say, of course, it's a great time to do it, but really anytime, this is the heart of your business. This is the core of what your business is. And nonprofit employees, they like working with heart. They want to work with heart. They want to be inspired. And your values are the number one predictor of their engagement. So let's do right by our people. Let's do right, I know on your last interview and you talked to Lisa McEwen, we talked about people are coming into this sector. People are wanting to contribute to this, to the nonprofit world. Let's do right by them. Let's give them heart. Let's give them values that they can attach to and unify around and do the best job that they can. Wow. Well, thank you. It's very clear you're passionate on this topic. I'm so glad that we could get you in to talk more about ways to align and engage with your employees and your entire organization. So Stephanie, thank you. Thank you so much for coming on, sharing your time, sharing your passion and your wisdom with us on this topic. We're so appreciative. If anyone has questions, your email is up there. It is now again. Was up there, it's back up there now. And of course, all of these episodes you can find archived on many of our platforms. Thanks to Julia Patrick, again, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I'm Jarrett Ransom, self-professed nonprofit nerd and CEO of the Raven Group. And also want to thank our presenting sponsors. They are the ones that continue these conversations. They allow us to show up each and every day to continue to be of service to all of you. But the thing is, and I like to say this, they like us, but they love you. They love the work that you do. They believe in your missions. They're here, as I said earlier, to elevate and to support you to do more good. So please do find them online, give them a like, some love and definitely follow them. And of course, their voices are on the show as well. Julia, what's this slide about? So we have some exciting news, Jarrett. Next month, we are going to be launching a new show, Yes Calls Crazy, called Fundraising Events TV. It's going to be a show just dedicated to all things event-oriented. So from golf to gallows, if you're having them in ballrooms or barns, it doesn't matter. There's a very specific type of our business and our activities that we do in the nonprofit world around events. And this pandemic and these pandemics have shaken this all up. So we think it's about time to have a dedicated program to this. It's going to be twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Jason Champion is going to be co-hosting it. It's going to be a lot of fun. And so you'll be hearing more about it. How about that? That was great. How's that for a teaser, huh? Well, it's been another great, great episode. We're so appreciative, Stephanie. I love how you've recentered us and given us some new ways to look at something that we know in the heart of hearts is really at the core of how and why we're successful. And so it's been a joy and a pleasure to chat with you. Jared, wow, tomorrow. Friday. What can happen tomorrow? First of all, I can't believe it's Friday. I know, today's Friday Eve. Even the news stations are saying that now. Love it. I think they heard it from the nonprofit show. I'm sure they heard it from the nonprofit show. Tomorrow is our Ask and Answer episode. So check us out. It's a lot of fun. And as we end every show, we want to remind you to stay well so you can do well. See you back here tomorrow, everyone. Thanks so much. Thanks, Stephanie.