 Welcome and thank you for joining us for another episode of the nonprofit show. Today is a special episode because it is a nonprofit thought leader episode and we have Sabrina Walker Hernandez with us today. Sabrina is the CEO of Supporting World Hope and she is going to share with us the secrets of successful leaders. So make sure you stay with us for the entirety because Sabrina has a lot of wisdom to share with us. But before we dive into the conversation, we of course want to make sure that you know who we are as well. Julia Patrick joins us. She is the CEO of the American nonprofit Academy and the mastermind behind the nonprofit show. So thank you to Julia for creating this wonderful opportunity for all of us. I'm Julia Bransom, your nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven Group, and I am grateful to serve alongside Julia as the co-host of the nonprofit show going on 400 episodes strong and are really excited to continue these thought leader conversations because of our sponsors. We are so grateful and have a deep appreciation for each and every one of these companies. They exist to help you do more good and they really do have this base, this solid core to help you move your mission forward in your communities to help solve your community issues. So if you have not checked them out, make sure you do. They're phenomenal companies, phenomenal leaders, and one of them, Bloomerang is also a sponsor for Sabrina coming up with her summit that we're going to hear a little bit more about. So let's do jump into this conversation. Sabrina, welcome and thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having me here I always love sitting down talking to you lovely ladies you know we all have opinions and you allow me to voice mine. You know what, I think that's why we were so attracted to you as a thought leader, because this is the thing. I'm really frightening to somehow sometimes tell the hard truth, and we don't all have to agree. But I think we need to hear some of these messages, and it's really hard. But one of the things that I loved about you before I ever even met you was I loved the name of your business, supporting world hope because to me when I heard that. It would be a frame that I put around my imaginary picture of you. And I thought supporting world hope was like the coolest thing, because at the end of the day, we hope better things. And that's why we're going to get invested in the nonprofit sector, I think Jared, I don't know about you but I mean, to me it's like really a basic direction that we all take. And I also was attracted to that name it's, you know it's very grandiose I remember my mom would say like you want to save the world and I'm like, yeah, I do, we have world hope and I'm so glad that there are more of us out there. You know, Sabrina, it's always a compliment but I love meeting fellow nerds. That's always wonderful. Well, let's dive into this. You know, truly, what are the secrets of successful leaders and I'm curious if we can start by truly, you know, with this s word stewardship, how do you define stewardship and what does that mean for us as organizational leaders. Well, I define stewardship as for me, I look at the fundraising process and stewardship is a major part of the fundraising process for me is 15% of the fundraising process is how you really recognize and thank your donors and share the impact of your nonprofit with them. And nonprofits, we often do not so good of a job with stewardship. I don't know why because we are the world people we are the heart people, but we don't necessarily do a great job with stewardship we don't do a great job and telling my donors thank you. And sometimes, I think it's a mindset thing. I think you think okay I got the gift. Now, I'm not going to bother them anymore and so I'm not going to communicate you know, and I'll just wait and from the donor and it's like you got my money, and then you didn't you didn't do you didn't tell me what happened with it you didn't share I may got to thank you card and it was a stock card not a personalized card. And, and then you're going to come back to me like 12 months later and asked me to reinvest. I think we need to be more intentional around stewardship, it really will make a difference and donor retention. I've never heard that statistic of 15%. So that, and I saw Julia do it too because we love. Yeah, we love numbers and I have a feeling this question will come up on one of our Friday ask and answers, which things like this typically do. So 15% is really that focus on stewardship, and you're saying that organizations do way less than that. And I will be the first to say is a lesson that I've learned the hard way as well. You know, you get the gift like I said you get that gift, and you're so busy right and that you're sending in that nonprofit seat, and the gift comes in and if you don't have a system in place to acknowledge that gift. You will forget and it'll be a month and then you'll sit there you go well now is it too late to say thank you. It's a little embarrassing and then you kind of put it off and then before you realize it is six months down the road you never said thank you never shared any impact you never. And the donor, you want to lose the donor because you haven't shared a thank you, you know, here's another statistic for you 85% of first time givers do not give a repeat gift because they were not thanked. Oh, 85% of first time givers will not give again because they were not properly thanked. Yes. It is simple. I you know it's a simple way. They say the best. The common practice or best practice. I don't know if you'd like to use that word best practice but a best practices that a donor receives a thank you within 24 to 48 hours, and people kind of get overwhelmed by like how do I'm how am I supposed to do that right. And so I had a very simple system, very practical system and I want to share this with people, because I want them to steal it. At the end. Yes, please still it you know, at the board meetings, I will put a script together a thank you script right. I passed that thank you script out with an ink pen, and I will pass out our note cards, and I will have each board member write a thank you note. They didn't address it to anyone. They just wrote that script out and sign their name, and then I will collect those and I will put them on my desk. And when a when a when a gift came through, I would just add the name, sign my name as a CEO, put in an envelope and mail it out. And I did that for every board meeting. Now, from the board members perspective is it. Why do we have to do this every board meeting, probably, but they, they're been a part of the fundraising process because they're doing stewardship, and that's very key again as 15% of that process. And so that's what I would do to kind of minimize the pressure. Right. That was one way. And because I was in youth services. Now, I know that's an advantage banning youth service. I get that. The other thing that I would do is I would have the kids write thank you cards as well with all the misspellings with everything. I didn't try to you writing writing. Yeah, all of that I did not try. Somebody said you're going to send that out miss spell. I said it just proves we need more education. Yes, we're going to send that out. Right. So I would have a stock of those two. So I'm curious if you can talk a little bit more than about the board and how they play a role in the success of the leadership. And I'm curious if you have, you know, some ideas maybe of where our board is falling short. So I think our board falls short some very clear things that I wanted to talk about around this topic. One is I we it's a privilege to serve on the board. Yes, so let's start there first coming in with the mentality that it is a privilege. You're on this board to, you know, provide the community with a needed program or access to a needed service. So it's not a burden to serve on a board is a privilege. And that's one. But when you are invited to serve on the board. One of the biggest fails, I think is a lot of people check their business hat at the door. It's some things that board members will do in a nonprofit that it would never allow to have done in their business. And I don't understand it because a nonprofit is a business. It is a not for profit business and it's you still run it like a business if you want it to be successful. You would not check your business hat at the door is certain things like you would never you know, let's say you would never scale back on marketing in your for profit business, because you understand that in order to bring in revenue, you invest in marketing right, or you would never tell a non of your for profit, you know, about the client experience or the customer experience you would try to make that as as fluid as possible, because that that's what's going to bring continued business back to your to your organization to your business. And so don't check that business hat at the door. So and a lot of board members think well, I don't need board education or, you know, it's a nonprofit I got this, but if you ask them three questions. The three questions that I asked are, what is your nonprofit operating budget, even within $25,000. Can you tell me that. Another one I always ask is, what are what are the top three funding sources for the nonprofit. Okay, and then the third one I asked is, what are the top programs for the nonprofit most board members can't answer those. And that just shows that they need the education around what the nonprofit is and run, you would not go into your business not knowing who your top clients were, you would not go into your business not knowing what your budget, you know, is. It's just not what you wouldn't, you wouldn't do it right. And so it's the same concept with the nonprofit is amazing, because at the end of the day, you are, as a board member, responsible for that nonprofit. Yeah. And I almost think it's almost like something is almost you could do this almost like part of the mission moment, where you have a mission moment that is generally more emotional storytelling to help build engagement, but you could turn it into like a fast fact, you know, fast fact for the meeting is we get our top three funding, you know, sources are this or because I agree with you I think that on so many things but just that basic knowledge of where the organization is working and how they're doing it. I agree I think board members fall short on that. Yeah, they tend to fall short on it and then you know, maybe it's through no fault of their own sometimes CEO kind of holds that information close to that. But if I am a board member and I am responsible for this organization, then you need to know those things and you need to be you. It's okay to ask questions when you're in a board meeting as well. You know, a lot of people get in the board meetings and it's just the CEO that's talking. Well, that's not a sign of a good board, you know, you know, it's a red flag, it's a red flag, you need to be engaged as a board member you need to know what's going on. I don't. And it's a boring meeting, first of all, that's just so boring to sit there and and listen to a talking head. Tell you, and you're regurgitating, you know, problem, you're regurgitating information that has happened. I would love for boards to embrace that. You know, instead of being strategic and visionary, and focusing their board meetings on the goals that's a part of the strategic plan, I would, you know, if we have an hour, hour and a half, this is what I say for productive meeting, I want 45 minutes of that meeting to talk about, you know, what are our strategic goals and where we had it I want the board meeting to be designed around that, not necessarily oh this is a committee report and this is what we did and that's not effective use of a person's time. Yeah, so really using their business mindset right so so engage them with their business hat on so that they don't check it out the door and have them what I'm hearing you say Sabrina is really tapping into their own thought leadership on where they can help to see the organization and maybe go and grow. We all know it's been some trying times over these last couple of years, and we are still facing some unknowns. So there's a lot, there's a lot to talk about in these, you know, board conversations. And recently, actually the attendance of board, you know, leaders decline so whether it's an in person meeting or a hybrid right because there's still a lot of meetings being done simply virtually or maybe some are having this hybrid. I'm seeing some organizations in particular with their board leadership fail merely by the lack of attendance. Are you seeing that I see that I say I see COVID as a blessing and a curse. Okay, the blessing is when COVID or the pandemic first hit boards were a little bit more engaged with like how are we going to do this how are we going to navigate this they understand the impact it was going to have on the budget. They might have they understood the impact that it may have on program, especially if people came to your facility so they actually came together to talk about those things, which I think all board meetings should be like that, but I digress. And now they feel like, Okay, we've, we've gone through that we can step back again. We need to keep that same engagement because you just tackled a huge problem. Now imagine if you take that same energy on the next, let's say not pandemic but the next strategic goal one in your strategic plan and take that same energy of tackling that. Then you're going to advance the organization, but to your question about attendance. Yes, but I think that it's about accountability as well. So if people, you know, this is a little thing I was taught about, you know, people board members who start to get disengaged as a process right. So hopefully, you know, the board chair, which I say the board chair is the gatekeeper to the board, and the CEO is the gatekeeper to the staff. So I think the CEO, you know, has a conversation with the board chair and say, you know, attendance is beginning to be an issue, and identify those that attendance is an issue and the board chair, perhaps picks up the phone and have an informal conversation with that with that board member to say, are you still interested, you still want to be a part of this and, you know, just reiterate that is important for attendance, because without attendance you don't have quorum. And without quorum you can't get minutes pass and not in just minutes that's just basic, you can't get you maybe grant approvals pass, you can't get your budget approved is a lot of things that come with active participation. One of the things that we did in our board packet, which is another tip that some might want to use is we included a roster at the beginning of every board packet, and it had, you know, every board member name going across and then down the side and all the board meeting dates, and we put a for absent people for present. And so everybody got to see everyone's engagement, but not only that, we're very strategic about using our bylaws, and you know, making them aware that the bylaw says if you miss three consecutive meetings that the board can vote you off. Now that works, but you also get those board members. I always had them that will miss two meetings, and then they'll come back for the third one. So you have to be aware of that too, but the conversation starts with the board chair, talking to those people and making sure you know they still want to be a part of this and, and realizing their importance to the process. You said to what you said Sabrina it's not accountability and so truly having the board chair and what I find to be true is that peer to peer, right through the board chair really holding the rest of the members accountable. So let's move into the accountability when it comes to like building our own talents and skills and I'm curious if you can share with us how that relates to the organization and I'm curious if it relates to the staff, as well as the board equally. I think it relates to the staff and well as well as the board, equally, because you. Again, if you want a dynamic board, you have to invest in their education as well, whether that's them, you know, attending some webinars, whether that's attending on national conferences, whatever it is, I know with my organization. I mean, I had like a $2.5 million budget. So we invested about $35,000 a year in in development for the staff and for the board. There was just certain things that we knew that didn't matter that our staff was going to attend. For us, we call them regional conferences, or national conference. And we also had, if they had a particular issue, like some people just don't play well in a sandbox with others, you know, we will look for a training that would help them, you know, with conflict residents. You cannot expect people to change their behaviors or increase their skillset if you don't provide them with training. And so we, it was very important to do that. It really made a huge impact with our board because sometimes, and I guess that's with any board and staff, sometimes you can get so caught up in your local dynamics and your local problems and think that you're so unique. And this is, you know, only you're struggling with this. And, you know, how many times have I heard, Yeah, you know, I'm not profit is very unique. No, no, no, you're not. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You just feel unique because you're you haven't gotten out there you need to get involved with, you know, go to a national conference go and surround yourself because what will happen is your you need to discover that, you know, this or the organization has the same issue and this is how they dealt with it, or, you know, we're not as unique as we thought, you know, they're still struggles. Even, let's say you get to a $10 million budget or you're at a $250,000 budget or $25,000 budget. The struggles are still the same, just at a different, different level. I've been to conference where the $10 million, you know, organization talk about, you know, they're struggling how poor they are and I'm looking at them like, you do realize you have a $10 million budget, you know, and I'm coming in here and like some more zeros than others. Right. But they talk about the same struggles. They talk about, you know, engaging their board they talk about, you know, donor relations they talk about the lack of fundraising. So if when you get out and get into those, those atmospheres you realize that you're not, you're not alone your organization is not alone. And one of the things that I really am going to encourage CEOs to do is to educate themselves around the nonprofit spectrum, because if you do that, then you will be able to, you know, engage your board more you will be able to interact and grab the best from them and grab the best from the from your staff as well because sometimes we do things because this is the way they've always been done. And that's, that's not good enough. It really especially if you're trying to address, you know, world issues, that's just not good enough you need to get out and you need to see how other people are doing it, you need to how are you going to advance your board, if you are stuck in a limited mindset. So one of the things you said before we dove into this really robust episode and conversation Sabrina is you talked about this pyramid and there are three key issues or three key areas that every organization, regardless of size, truly struggles with. And when we talk about getting out of our own local space I know you have a summit coming up later this month, and you are talking about these three main areas what were those the three main areas are a board that's the foundation you've got to have a good board you got to have a strong board. And then you have fundraising and you have marketing, and that is going to be the perfect pyramid for your organization, regardless of the size of it, you got to start with the base with the board you got to, you've got to market, and you have to fundraise and mark all of these things assist each other. You know, if you have a great board, they are on it with the fundraising they're marketing they're been ambassadors out there, they're been advocates for your organization. They are not afraid to fundraise people what I have learned over the course of time is fundraising becomes easier. When people think or have the perception that you are successful organization, and how do you get that perception of success is you market your organization, you are out there you're in the, you know, the newspaper people go people people don't use read the newspaper anymore. Yes, they do the donors read the newspapers the donors that you want, read newspapers Okay, so getting into the newspaper being in television, getting on the radio, getting proclamations at your city council government those are all free and easy to do. And then that builds and lands to you know fundraising is so much easier to ask for money when people say oh yeah I did see y'all in a newspaper. Oh yeah I did see you, you know, you did this interview, and they feel more confident and investing in your organization. People want to be a part of a winning team right and I think Julia might have said that before but people really do want to be a part of a winning team. I would love we don't have much time but I would love for you to share about your building a thriving nonprofit summit it's coming up in three days. So if you could close us out Sabrina with telling us a little bit about this, what we can expect where we can register all the goods. Yeah, girl three days, that's the first time that's been, you know, it's October the 26 through the 29th, and basically it's going to start at 10am in the morning and in at 115. And I'm very excited because we I try to do 10am to catch all the coasts and all the timelines you know. But I'm very excited because each day. Again, we're bringing in a specialist that is going to talk about board that's going to talk about fundraising and that's going to talk about marketing, and then we're going to end the day with a panel discussion, and the panel discussions are going to be great they're going to be lessons from the field, which is going to be Tuesday through Thursday and basically what I've done is identify some successful CEOs in the field who are, you know, knocking it out of the park right now around fundraising around marketing and around the do's and don'ts of board, you know, dealing with the board. So it's not me saying, you know, three years ago when I was a CEO. This is what I did is people who are actually engaged and being successful now. And then on the last day, because of the pandemic and because we don't restill, you know people think we're out of this but we're not. So there's still some things that are being impacted and we have to decide as an industry, you know, are we going to go back to, I don't I want I love in person events, I do. But I think that there's some room for hybrid events I think that nonprofits have found out, you know, some who did it very well, raise more money online than they did in an in person event, but seems to me like they're all still racing to go in person which makes no sense. So anyway, Jared, you're going to be talking on that panel. Give us some pointers around that and I know that's, that's a huge topic of conversation that I would love to have because I'm like why is why is everybody rushing back to these in person events it was less costly to do online event and you raised more but sometimes again we do things because that's the way we've always done. So, yeah, so well I am looking forward to nerding out on that panel. There are several guests at the summit that you have lined up that have also been guest here at the nonprofit show. So we are thrilled to see these leaders again to continue to be of service throughout the nation. So this is a wonderful educational opportunity for CEOs for board members for staff so when you are looking to build your own talents and skills and maybe get out of your little bubble. I hope that you will join me at the summit Sabrina this has been fantastic you are a breath of fresh air we are so grateful that you joined us today as the nonprofit thought leader. If you enjoyed Sabrina and all of her expertise, please check her out supporting world hope.com is her website she's a fantastic consultant here in our sector and we are so grateful to have you on here for today show. Thank you. It's been great. I love your website I think it has some really interesting connecting points. It definitely will get you through to the conference, which tell me what the cost of being a participant is. It's called the initial cost of the conference is free, but you can upgrade to a paid a VIP backstage pass which is $97. And what that $97 is going to get you is access to the zoom room. You have lifetime access to all the recordings you're going to get transcript, you're going to get a grant writing class with one of my very good friends Felipe Salinas who writes million dollar grants and he worked for the university, you'll get a post training with me I'll be talking about creating a culture of philanthropy. You're also going to get access to some membership, some discounts, Jared is doing something so it's like a swag bag worth $5,400 of items. It's $97. So the return on that is quite large. Sabrina was very generous and asking, you know, if there was anything that we would be willing to share so I think it's phenomenal I wish you the best I know I have a very small role in the summit but I'm looking forward to that and grateful for the invitation. Thank you so much for accepting the invitation. And I'm going to put you on the spot right now, make sure you don't be on there. I'm just telling you. I will, I will, you know, I wouldn't have done it in a heartbeat but I'm telling you I have another speaking gig that that during that time and so it's just been crazy. Wow, I always always always love Sabrina. I love your energy I learned something new. Of course I have eyeglass envy. Yes. I'm just witnessing to that. Here's Sabrina's information she truly is a thought leader and we hope that you reach out. Hey, this has been another great opportunity for my dear co host Jared ransom and myself to learn and to be inspired and we hope you found that today with us on another episode of the nonprofit show. Again we want to thank all of our sponsors who've been here through thick and thin getting these messages out and supporting the work of the 1.8 million nonprofits across this country it is an amazing amazing thing. Hey, building a thriving nonprofit summit. Don't miss this opportunity. It's going to be really exciting. And I think that you're going to be inspired to really tackle some of the big issues. This is a critical time in the nonprofit sector. We are at the coming up with the finish line. And so we need to finish strong and then start back out strong January one. So, wow. Thank you so much Sabrina. Thank you. Thank you for having me thank you for always being inclusive and I just really appreciate the both of you. Well thank you it's been wonderful as we like to remind everyone every day. Stay well. So you can do well. We'll see you back here today tomorrow and we'll see you at the summit. Yes, thanks everyone.