 Welcome, thanks so much to all of you for joining us today for another episode of the nonprofit show. If you are a regular you know that we like to extend first and foremost our sincerest gratitude and deepest appreciation to these presenting sponsors you see their logos right in front of you on the screen. And just like yesterday today's guest actually comes to us from one of our sponsors bloom ring so thanks so much for for connecting us to today's guest and thanks to all of you for elevating the conversations around our globe as we move into the recovery phase. Thanks to Julia Patrick for having this crazy idea I shouldn't say crazy having this grandiose idea. I'm just saying let's do this for two weeks and see what happens and as you all know we are we are coming up on our 300th episode so so glad to be here. I'm Jarrett ransom, the nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven group and yesterday we talked about mascots today we're talking about something even like cooler or equally cooler. And as we discussed do come to us from bloom ring so thank you so much Steven Shaddock, and welcome, Sarah Olivia are we're so glad to have you join us today, and yeah, welcome. Well, thank you so much for having me here and thank you blue marine for sending you my name I always love the content that Steven gets. So I'm sure this is going to be a fantastic show. It's really cool to have you on and I think that it's really important, especially as we do move towards this recovery, and from so many pandemics, not just the health pandemic social justice, natural, you know the natural environment and the economic situations that our nonprofits have been enduring. So this is really a masterful thing for you to share with us how we can be looking at some of our strategies, and not just as I look at your fire buckets running to the fire with the little bucket of water. Now, like how do we get out of this whirlwind. Take a deep breath, and then look at the bigger picture. And so am I putting too much pressure on you. No, no, we got this covered. But what is the impact method, because we need impact. Yeah, I mean, we're all making an impact right that's why all of us nonprofits around here and I created the impact method before the Coronavirus because the crisis that nonprofits are in actually was already happening to a massive extent. But a lot of nonprofits didn't really see it. They were like, we're fine, we're fine and I was going around being like, you're on a sinking ship and then COVID hit and they're like, Oh my God, we're on a sinking ship. And I'm like, I know, here's the lifesaver. So and a lot of this if anybody's heard Dan Pilata's Ted talk, he sums it up really well. And there's so much like nitty gritty that I kind of found myself getting into right we don't we're always the executive directors the leaders are always feeling overwhelmed right. And I really believe that feeling great and having your job feel okay and actually fun and a little bit easy maybe it goes hand in hand with making a bigger impact and running your nonprofit really well. And I just kept saying to myself there's got to be a better way. There's just got to be a better way I have been an executive director I've been a program director a conference coordinator. I've been the first executive director of a foundation. So I've seen a few things and all that experience when I started working with nonprofits and marketing I was like this is, this is not good and when I started to realize that the large nonprofits had the same problems as the small nonprofits this wasn't just a we're small we're new we don't have a lot of money issue, because the we were a $10 million $15 million operation has the same issues. Yeah, and so I created the impact method I had learned so many things from the for profit industry about how to run businesses better. But what I knew about my nonprofit colleagues was that they were so overwhelmed that unless it was packaged up so it was super easy to learn and implement, they weren't going to do it. They can't read I know there's some if they're any fans of scaling up or the. What's the other name for scaling up the Rockefeller tendencies or practices something like that. It's like a list of tools, but they leave you to put the tools together. And I like that no nonprofits going to do that. They're too busy, putting out those fires too fast. So the impact method is both a list of a set of tools, and it's like a recipe and the method the process for using those tools together and I spent a lot of time figuring out how do we kill as many birds with one stone so that every action we take has the biggest impact. And we'll go in a little later about like what the three pieces of the impact method are and how we really get to that because I think we've got that plans for that. I love it and part of one of the things that you talked about is focusing in on the issues. And that can be really hard talk to us about that. Well, this actually so I said there are three pieces of the impact method and one piece is an organization has to have a process of improvement. You have to have a way of always getting better. And there's three levels at which you have to be good at tackling issues because there's lots of kinds of issues that pop up. And the amazing thing about getting good at finding issues like being really proactive about finding those issues is when you find an issue early, it's usually can be turned into an opportunity. When you wait on an issue for it to come up and whack you in the face. It's never it's never an opportunity emergency emergency. It's a fire. You're like, Oh my God, but that same issue could have been an opportunity. A few weeks or a few months ago, and it is possible to find them so issues could look like roadblocks like we're on our way and this thing came up and now we don't know what to do. It could be tactical they could be our your approach to doing something could be like, ah, we just, you know, wrong approach, or issues can be strategic right we you've got, you need to set a goal that you didn't have before, or you had set a goal that was just, it seemed great at the time, but two months down the road. It's not so good anymore. So, so much about a process of improvement is not just having a way to tackle issues, but a way to find those issues as soon as possible, because you go looking for them. And then truly then right like use them as an opportunity use them to, I've been using the word ideate lately you know like let's ideate some of these possibilities. And, and for those of you that may not be familiar with that term it's kind of brainstorming you know everything goes on the table everything goes on the flip chart. And then we get to parse out later, if it's a yay or an eight or even if it's like a right now or not right now. Yeah, I love that I like to think about very similar word dialogue right you have to get in a room with people who have information about the issue at hand, and you got to talk it out and understand, you know half the battle is just understanding what the real issue is getting to the bottom of the issue. I had a client recently who was saying, we've got some DEI issue and my employee left, and because they were all uncomfortable and a board members all sensitive. And so I started probing in the real issue was how they addressed issues, because they attempted to address this issue without the executive director in an email thread. And so I said the issue is, you need everybody in your organization to know that when there's an issue you have a meeting, you know, in person or face to face over zoom, you have to dialogue about it and you can't dialogue in an email thread. This isn't really a diversity equity and inclusion issue. This is a team communication issue in your approach to it. And that's actually an easy a lot easier issue to solve. You know, that leads me into then having you talked about understanding efficiencies, because that's a prime example, you know, thinking that one tool is going to be the the Yeah, the tool and so this is a really interesting part of this discussion. Yeah, you know, I think I love efficiency like I used to always want to say I want to make nonprofits effective and efficient. It just didn't sound really sexy to anybody they all want to like to make an impact. But I get excited. I think that's totally sexy. So you're clearly my people and one of the ways we do this is by assuming they're going to be issues and going after them and looking for to create systems and processes that create efficiencies and, you know, if anybody's hearing the word systems and processes and going, Oh, we don't want those. You've been experienced a bad system or process a good system of process should bring peace of mind. It should lighten your load. It should make everything better, more consistent right. There are plenty of bad processes out there for sure. But in the impact method I focused a lot on efficiencies right because I had to do a lot of work really well, really fast. And one of the ways is by doing all three pieces of the impact method at once which are so we talked about a process of action. You have to have a truly actionable strategy we can go into that but you have to have both. You have to know your big goals and you have to have that tied down to like what are you doing today so you're not completely overwhelmed. You have the biggest goals on the planet. Be hags, you know, go hang out over there, because the nonprofit world of be hags is like beyond be hags I call them. And just for those that are like what the heck is a be had that sounds horrible. The big Harry audacious goal. Yeah, that's a that's a Jim Collins one right I think. Yeah, so beyond big Harry audacious goal I call the mission impossible so the overwhelm is going to be real if we're doing our jobs right unless we have a way to tackle the day to day and the third thing we need is a great. MMO your modus operandi, your way of being it's who your organization is right that has to do with your mission, and how you tie yourself together cult with culture or beliefs have we call it the heart of the brand and the impact method. Again I'm always refining I'm like how can we take this set of tools about self identification and tackle them in the best order with the bed though you know the least number of tools that we needed to get the job done and it's also how your team is structured how your leadership is structured how your people work together, and that is the number one area where nonprofits I see are inefficient. Always say money's our biggest problem, and every nonprofit I look at it's always how their organ their mo is usually where they have the most efficiency to pull out. I love that okay. No, yeah. I'm like I'm like stuttering just a little bit, because I don't know if we've ever had a guest actually say that. No, and I love that you did. I just like truth bomb right like it's not that we need. Yes we need more money we could always do with you know with more money, but there's so much more to that right and you just, you just said it so awesome. I'm like, Oh wow okay that is like up your jaw right now I know. I'm like, I gotta get to this next slide and I'm still just like stunned at the previous slide so put this into the framework and talk to us about that because what you said is a total mindset shift. Yeah, so many ways. What is the framework then. So I'll talk about the framework and I'll say if you're listening going but we need we need we need more money we just need to fix the money problem is that this is this framework is all about the foundation and most I rarely meet a nonprofit that just some nonprofits do they've got their great and they just need a little fundraising training and they're good but most organizations who are really struggling with money problems. They have a foundation issue and as soon as they fix the foundation, the money just starts coming in. You know, my clients can be all the time and I say, I'm not specifically addressing fundraising but time and time again I run this year long coaching program where clients learn the impact method they implement it and we do a full year of coaching. Usually around month six money just starts coming in like doubling at a client like she reached out to a community foundation that was super competitive during the middle of coven and not only did she get this really competitive grant but they gave her twice which she asked for, like, why, why, because, and this was someone who was like a one person organization that was about to fall apart six months before, because they had their act together internally and they knew how to present it externally as well when you have your act together internally it just starts to show right you don't even have to be that amazing at presenting yourself. So the three pieces to the framework are having a process of improvement and actionable strategy and a modus operandi. So I'll tell you about the pieces of each. So what is a process of improvement look like on the ground. It's literally meetings. It's that we follow there are three types of meetings and the impact method one that happens every two months so we put it in the calendar that's the really hard part, you got to put that meeting in the calendar. Every two months we call it a cycle a 60 day cycle, and that's our strategic cycle. So every two months we're actually building out the strategy, the strategic plan we call it an impact strategy and we actually write it out like a mind map. So what I learned building strategies is that the way you write it and the way you review it. We need different views to access the information and if you write it out in a big fancy like PDF or a long document. You can't take all the information in at a glance but if you write it as a mind map with everything radiating out from the mission. So brains can take that information in really quickly, and you can't have mission creep if you have to physically draw the line about how one thing is affecting the other. And eliminates this conversation of who likes it or whether or not it's a good idea. We only want it we want to be focused on driving that mission forward. Every two months we have a meeting. It has the same agenda every time, and it's designed to pull out strategic issues and move ourselves a little farther into the future. I'm a huge believer that it different goals have their own natural timelines, some goals have really short timelines, some have really long timelines like if you replaced your roof on your building with a 30 year roof. We've got that goal right now to be changing that roof in 30 years, but you might have a goal that, you know, should be completed in a month or two so we're doing an iterative planning and we're getting rid of that whole strategic planning cycle. One thing that happens here that's a big shift that's needed is shifting the ownership of strategic planning from the board into the hands of the executive director and the staff who are all feeding information in it. Love it. Now, I wanted to ask when you meet, you know, this, this cycle, who's meeting who's who's in this conversation who's in the dialogue. Great question. It kind of depends. My goal is to get organizations to the point where at least all of the leadership staff, if not all of the staff are able to participate. And so it depends on the size of the organization. So it's hard to have deep dialogue with more than seven people in the room. A team can get really good at it and maybe have a dozen people dialoguing once they've gotten really comfortable with it. If the organization is much bigger than that, then you can kind of have smaller dialogues repeat the process in a few different lower levels and then that information is feeding up. I say up but I don't, we don't part of the MO piece is we don't organize in hierarchies of who's in charge of who really encourage nonprofits to organize in terms of what are the core functions that need to be attended to. What are the outcomes that make that function work. Who's going to own those outcomes, not tasks, and some outcomes some kind of functions naturally affect a whole bunch of other functions so usually build it sideways and to the right or left you know so an executive is making decisions around, you know, probably big vision and direction and, and that's probably going to affect everybody when they make them. You might have someone who's making programmatic decisions like this program's working this program's not we need to change this program we need to change this program that those decisions aren't going to affect everything else, whoever's making decisions around money. It's going to affect a lot of people so that there's just this natural effect effect, I guess, decisions in place so yeah. Yeah, we don't have a lot of time left which is like, shocking because we have. I'm so intrigued with so many things that you've said to Julia, right. I know, I know because I think I just knocked over my whole computer here. I think that I'm going to be asking questions or formulating questions, you know, all day for you after this show. One of the things I'd love to get into is talking about the investment of time and money, and all of this because one of the things that I think, and again I'm so drawn to your comments. We've been in this burning building mentality, and to pull back and say, we're going to take a deep breath. We're going to think about this, and we might be really uncomfortable and we might have to embrace fear, but we're going to do things differently. Yeah, how on earth. Do you do that when so many organizations are used to the board event is Eric Ryan what it was talk about that one. Okay, we're going to work hard for a weekend and then we're going to be good. Doesn't quite work though does it. Shock. Yeah. So you got to invest, you have to invest time and money. A lot of nonprofits are afraid to invest time and money, especially money, then they end up actually wasting more money than they would have if they just spent the money in the first place. So what is a big topic, but I'll give people like a few, a few nuggets. First of all, one way to start getting out of this problem is to start thinking of your expenses into in two categories, income generating expenses, and your actual expenses. And I can tell you that the only fleshing money down the toilet expenses that there really are are like payroll taxes, insurance, and that's basically any money that is going into Oh, and then there's a third category of impact generating expenses. So those are the ones that are helping you make your mission come true. Those are super important. And that your revenue generating expenses are things like if you're spending on fundraising, if you're spending on improving the infrastructure of your organization, if you're spending money on making it more efficient on making your team come together. These are all income generating expenses and just sometimes by changing the way we call things like who wants to cut an income generating expense. That doesn't sound so good. Right, because that's what's generating the income. So we want to actually spend more on income generating expenses. One big area where organizations waste a lot of money is keeping bad fit employees. That's one way to dump a lot of money down the toilet. It's hard though to know what to do and you don't really have a clear sense of who you are as an organization and what a good fit employee is. And if I want to be really bold, as much as I want your board not to be dysfunctional because that draws everything to a halt. I don't think it makes sense to spend a lot of money on board development beyond preventing them from mucking things up, because most of the work of the organization happens in the people who are doing the day to day work. And that's where you really need to invest the money. And the board needs to be watching and saying, Okay, everything makes sense to us logically and pulling the emergency break if it doesn't. But they're not the ones doing the day to day work. And so they've got diminishing returns on what you might invest at the board level. I feel like you need a toilet behind you to like a little node sitting next to your bucket. I was looking I was like, Is it there and maybe I'm just not finding Waldo a toilet seat back there. Oh my God. Well really interesting. I would love to talk about the aspect of institutional change. So the timing of this. If we're looking at really shaking things up and getting a new vocabulary and new structure, the framework that can be really uncomfortable. How do we help navigate our team during that time that's fraught with, you know, I want to say almost use fear or maybe lack of confidence is a better way. Yeah. So, you know, there's a number of takes on institutional change I even have managing transitions it's down there you probably can't see a famous book on change. I think one of the best things we can do is, if we get get those results fast. If you dip your toe into the world of coaches they're always talking about get your clients a big win right away. Right. And it's the same for your team. If your team start getting a result that they want fast, they're gonna be like okay I'm in for more. I had an executive director who she was a full time nurse and running her nonprofit and between the two she worked seven days a week, and like eight weeks into doing the impact method she got a whole day back just to herself. So she was in right she's like okay I have a day to like go out in the garden or like right like I'm seeing that truly is positive reinforcement. Yeah, you've got to see some results right away is one thing. You know, and I think some some teams do run into I think I like to work on their MO first and specifically the heart of the brand because if you don't really know who you are as an organization as though your organization was a person if you don't know what you stand for, then you can't figure out who on your team is aligned with you, because you could have a bunch of people who are not aligned. And if they're not aligned, no matter what you try to change they're going to be uncomfortable because they're really already uncomfortable So I get that right I totally drinking the Kool-Aid on that. I would foresee honestly Sarah some organizations say no no no we know who we are we don't need to spend time there we certainly don't need to spend money there we need to go to this step first so what do you say to those people. I say let's let's do a double check. We can do a double check in an hour and a half. And you know we can we can get on a zoom call and an hour and a half I can walk you through this process and if you're like nailed it nailed it nailed it nailed it I'll be like awesome you do know who you are you're good to go. But I put money on that if you're having money problems or people problems or any kind of problems chances of you not having it as much as you thought. But you know to spend a couple hundred bucks and to just do a double check. That's what I would say we're just going to we're just going to check and make sure and I like to draw people this picture of how a nonprofit works it's like a little diagram they draw. And I show them with arrows and circles how your understanding who you are is literally this linchpin that if you have that right it affects your fundraising it affects your programming. It affects your team and it affects your systems and processes it affects whether or not you have the right board and whether or not you get grants. So it's worth checking because if it's wrong, nothing else is going to work that well. Wow. Well you have been great I mean you've totally shaken up some processes and thoughts that I've kind of fallen into and and just held this is truisms. Here's Sarah's information check her out. She's got a great website, and I love your energy. I think that it's a wonderful thing to have this outside voice that can come in and kind of help us through again going back to your fire buckets. You know, getting us outside of that immediate problem that is in such a swirl that we can't pivot that we can't look for new things. And so what a pleasure it's been to have you join us today. If you mention the fire buckets I'll give everybody a final going away present. My digital fire bucket in which you may put the fires that are distracting you and let them burn themselves out because they probably don't really need your attention. So, for me, absolutely. Okay, I love that. That is great. Thank you. Yeah, that's fabulous. Well again I'm Julia Patrick CEO of the American nonprofit Academy I've been joined today by my trusted sidekick Jared ransom the nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven group. And again we want to thank our presenting sponsors. You allow us to have these conversations to bring new ideas and new approaches to our beloved sector. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We also want to announce that we're launching a new program. Crazy, but we are a second program, just about fundraising events. This is going to be co hosted by myself, who I've been on the rubber chicken circuit since age what for with Jason champion so it's going to be very fun very different. So we'll be talking more and more about that as we move forward and we hope you can join us for that. Jared. Wow, this week has blown by. I can't believe it is Friday Eve. So tomorrow, join us for the ask and answer episode. We've got so many amazing questions and of course if you have any questions for Sarah or any of our other guests do send those to us we can't get them on tomorrow but we will get them on for a future ask and answer. Yeah, it's a we have some doozy questions. And what's really fun for for most of you who don't know the insider secret to ransom the nonprofit nerd does not see these questions before we air. So that means I do not prepare right I'm always prepared to wing it. I do use my 20 plus years of experience but I'm in the hot seat. And yeah, I answer them just like in the moment. It's really fun and we almost had a little bit of a duke them out last week. So sometimes there's a part there are fireworks which makes it even more fun. But as we say thank you to our wonderful guests Sarah today and to our beloved sector. We want to remind everyone to stay well. So you can do well. Thanks everybody and we'll see you back here tomorrow. Thank you Sarah.