 So we are thrilled to have our guest join us to talk to us about pursuing a degree in nonprofit management and we have Christina Mann joining us today. I'm so glad to have you here and I'm excited to jump into this conversation with you. But before we do that, Christina, we of course want to make sure our viewers and listeners know who we are or at least have a reminder of that. So hello to Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I'm Jared Ransom, your nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven Group. We are so extremely honored day in, day out to have the ongoing support from our presenting sponsors, also known as our besties. Over at Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, nonprofit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University, staffing boutique and nonprofit nerd. Julia, I know we do this often, but I like to remind our viewers and listeners that these companies are here for you. They're here for our missions, critical missions around the globe. So lean into them because they want to lean into you and your mission. So fantastic group of leaders and without their support, we wouldn't be able to have such a robust archive where you can find all of our 750 plus plus episodes, including this one, Christina and just a mere few hours. Roku, YouTube, Vimeo, Fire TV, as well as those podcast listeners, queue us up there. I plan later today to take a long walk on the green belt and I'm going to queue up the nonprofit show. So awesome. Well, so really excited, Christina, to have you here, Christina M. Mans, and you are working towards your degree in nonprofit management. So excited to have you. So first of all, welcome. Thank you so much for having me today. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, tell us a little bit about where you are, what you're doing. You know, we just jumped in an elevator together. We're going up to the floor. Tell us, tell us, you know, how you got into this degree. Absolutely. Well, I've been working in the nonprofit space for 25 years. And I like so many of us started by just being in that space and not having any formal training. And so I learned by doing, I learned by observing others. I eventually learned by watching webinars, reading articles, and listening to podcasts and I still do those things and they're exceedingly important for us to continue to do those things and to never stop doing those things. I'm thrilled that I found both of you and the nonprofit Academy and the nonprofit show, because I love your content. It is exceedingly valuable. I love the straightforward program format, and I'm happy to be a part of it. But what I decided was that I was in a season of my life where I could make a change, and that I knew I needed to pivot and I needed to up level. And I currently work in higher ed, and I've worked in private education for many years, often on in different capacities. But last summer, I decided to take my education and professional development super seriously and I started looking at programs. And I live in an area where there are a lot of universities. And I found Drexel University, which happens to be local to my area. They also offered a master's in nonprofit management through the Goodwin College of Professional Studies. They also offer a certificate in nonprofit management. So I pondered whether I should take the certificate program, which would be compressed, and an introduction to a multitude of topics in the area. When I was doing the background information for the full masters, it spoke directly to me, I thought this is for me, I'm doing this so I put into motion the entire application materials and process. And I was thrilled to be accepted into the program. And my first quarter, it's a quarter semester, it's a quarter program. I'll explain that just briefly, it's a two year program, it's online, and we take two courses at a time. And we're all working adults. And then we have two classes worth of homework that we must address each week we get weekly assignments. And there's a learning portal that we submit all our work into each week. The classes have offered live sessions with the professors and our cohorts, which enables us to have that FaceTime, it's virtual, but we have this type of FaceTime together to get to know one another which is nice to have it puts the names to the faces, and helps make it feel more personalized, which I appreciate. So I feel that this is a blessing to me that I'm able to do this. It's an enormous challenge. I bet. Get into that in one of the other slides. But the reason to pursue it was that I felt that doing the webinars and the article reading and the podcast and observing others felt piecemeal to me I felt like it was a la carte and I didn't have the context for how this all works together even though I work in a in a nonprofit and I wanted to move into management. I want my next success story and my next adventure to be in a managerial position. I want to be able to level up in that way and be in a creator's position. And in order to do that well. I have an executive director one day who knows what the future will bring, but in order to do that I really wanted to have the foundation and build up step by step right here's my visual aid step step step. So that I would understand how all the pieces fit together. Well, thank you so much. Very insightful and I, I, I giggle a little bit because I've heard a lot of professionals like yourself say they are working their way through their career by Googling, you know, how to do this how to do that and and I'm just as you know, guilty of that I go in all the time because best practices are changing dynamics are changing workplaces are changing. So I'm really curious to hear more from you about how you and you shared you know you're currently working at an organization. How are you managing your current workload plus this you know, professional environment and and how you kind of merge those to I love hearing that it sounds like your entire cohort Christina is probably doing the same thing. We are, I work full time at an independent liberal arts college, and I'm an academic administrative assistant supporting for departments in the sciences. And so I support the faculty and the students in those areas. A lot of my work is event management and event organization and working in logistics and making sure faculty have what they need to do their best, best work. I work in supporting processes and work, collaborative across departments, managing meetings, I work with when they do faculty searches, organizing meeting and logistics for the people who we need to bring to the campus for or on the other end of things, supporting the faculty reappointment process. And I also help to organize a, a summer research cohort and I do all of the registrations for them. So a lot of detail and travel arrangements for field trips and that type of work so I wanted to paint you a little bit of a picture of what I'm doing all day. And it's not eight to five. It's like it's all the time. Right. This is an interesting question. I am nine to five. And I do. I am, I do set a boundary with that. Oh, you do. Good. Yeah, I set a boundary with that come five o'clock or sometimes I have to work till 515 or 530. I'm at a point not to answer those emails if they come in after five o'clock, because I'm not, I'm not on, I'm not on the clock. I'm not on duty. Of course, I still care all the time. I care very much. And, you know, I, I put everything I've got into it when, you know, while I'm there, sometimes there's a special project on the that that leads into the weekends and I'm there for it. I will do whatever it takes to be successful in the completing the task. But here's what happens. I have a commute. Six o'clock suppertime by by seven. It's homework time. So from seven to nine minimum, I am reading. I am writing and I am responding to my peers. Wow. Sometimes I go till 10 sometimes I go till 1030. But to be honest, at my age, it's really tough to have a fresh brain after say 930pm, because I have been up since six a.m. and I've been doing all these other things. And you're, it's just, it's proven. We are not able to absorb information as well when we're when we become tired. And we're not going to be as creative at those hours. So my threshold is 233pm. And then my eyes start to get a little blurry, you know, so I can definitely empathize with this. It sounds like you're really managing quite well the schoolwork as well as your work time, but it sounds like it has to be quite regimented, right. And so I love that you say, you know, I honor my boundaries, I honor this time. It doesn't mean that we stop caring, but you're really managing the course rigor and the time it sounds quite well. I, I have to because there's, like I said, there's only so many hours in the day, right. And you have to find a way to be balanced to I have to plan rest time. I have to plan downtime and frankly time away from screens. It's such a screen based life we're living. And for our my own wellness. I have to actually make sure that I say, no, that's it. It's time to go to bed. It's time to get off screens, or it's time to take that walk time to get that fresh air. And so I, you know, I also involve I'm going to pivot a little bit and I'm going to go right into the managing the rigor and the time is that I'm also a founding board member of a startup nonprofit. And we are in the, in the early stages, I'm working with the founder. And I'm really excited about that work, but it's so serendipitous to be taking this coursework now because I'm able to directly apply the best practices and knowledge that I'm gaining directly into what, what I would say is our manuals. Is our manuals for our boards communications practices, all of the things that we need to do to be successful. So I'm very excited about that. But the rigor is there, make no mistake about it. Yeah. Sometimes I have 10 articles to read. Sometimes I have to write a two to three page paper sometimes it's a seven to 10 page paper luckily that's not all the time. I make sure that I'm responding to my peers every time and that that peer response is so important. And it's really where a lot of learning happens. I feel like what's also kind of wonderful about the rigor and the grad student environment is that the, the professors are accommodating if you have a big project do at work or if life happens so to speak. If you're just not going to make a deadline, you just communicate that to them and they will accommodate that I have been able to turn in all of my assignments on time and I feel very proud of myself about this. Yeah, you should. Sometimes it, you know, it has gone right down to the wire, and I did it I've been trying umph it and so I'm trying very hard to stay within the frameworks that they've, that they've developed for this. And the, and the professors also say we don't want to give you more than you can handle we know it's a lot. So there's acknowledgement there there's good communication about that. But after returning to college after a 30 year hiatus. It is a challenge. It's, it's, if I was doing this in my 20s, I would have a different energy level. Like you said past, you said 3330 but like past 930 it would be different. There's no, there's no all nighters being pulled. There's no hordes of caffeine being consumed that just doesn't work for me so Like during your day. Do you ever say like okay during your regular your nine to five. Are you having to read articles during lunch or are you kind of pivoting a little bit, or are you really segmenting that off and off hours. I am it's lunch and learns all every lunch is a lunch and learn. Okay, okay. I'm just curious about that because there's so much to pack in, and if you don't give some breaks. Find time for the nonprofit show. I'm honored. How does this work. Maybe we can be an assignment through your degree program if you can talk to your professors about that. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes, and I'm happy to integrate in any way that I can. Well, it's so needed we talk often about 1.8 registered nonprofits in the US, you know that number fluctuates. But the other thing that you know we see often and I'm really curious Christina if this was kind of the impetus for you going back to school is, you know, I remember. Um, excuse me and the economy crisis of 2008 910. A lot of people went back, you know, to further their education. And I think we saw that trend as well starting in March of 2020. Was that part of you wanting to get back into, you know, kind of the the coursework. I wouldn't say directly. I had some other life circumstances happening and so it was just closing the chapters closing the book and I needed to start a new book. So yeah, it was just it was time. It was time and I knew that I wasn't satisfied with the way things were just as they were. And I want and I, I was already so interested in these topics and already doing all this learning on my own. I felt like how can I how can I genuinely expect someone to hire me as a program manager or a donor relations coordinator or or write a fundraising professional on being on the fundraising team. Without having the background, I mean, sure, I could have jumped right in and said, Oh, I'm going to get my CFRE training. I'm just going to go straight for that. But you know what, I'm not positive that is my calling yet. So again, maybe it is. And I think that there's a lot of really interesting points about being a fundraiser and I think I would really enjoy connecting with all kinds of really interesting people and connecting them with the mission. It's a great experience. But again, I felt like I was was jumping in would be jumping in from the side. I just wanted the entire story of the entire framework at my, you know, within me to draw upon to say, Okay, now this is where I know I need to go. I want it's also helping me to forge the path. From your perspective, and I think it's really intelligent. And I also think it's probably a gift due to the season of your life and where you are. And being that you you have this this journey that you're on and the things that you that you're seeing. I'm really curious as to what is it that you're learning that's new and maybe even surprising because you you're in the you're in the trenches, especially with this new nonprofit in your work. What are you, what are your like, aha moments. Sure, sure. So the curriculum, like I had mentioned before, it's two courses at a time. And we have to take slate of required courses. And we'll we take a slate of electives. And interestingly, in my first quarter I ended up taking an elective that wasn't in the framework of the nonprofit management group. It was in the MBA group. And it just worked out that way with registration. And so a course and leading in dynamic environments was the name of the course so a leadership course for for business people. Yeah. And in that course I have to give you this context because it leads right into the big surprise. And of course, I had not been exposed to concepts and theories of leadership in a way that this was in the way that this was presented. It was just case case studies and reports about leader behavior, follower behavior subordinate behavior, how the environment affects how a leader behaves and how a subordinate will respond it was fascinating and I learned a lot about that. So here I am taking the nonprofit leadership class. And I am so fascinated by this material is has been independent survey data reports that survey survey samples of people in nonprofits, and it's has a emphasis on post coven activities, and how coven effects, what how they're looking and what their plans are. How is their programs changing. How is it affected your hiring practices, where your pain points what are the pain points that people are expressing. How do we retain retain good workers, all of those important topics are in these reports. So one of the biggest surprises I've had content wise is how important data. Important role data plays in how we do our work in nonprofits. So when I told my current professor about, I actually said to him. So I don't understand how this relates to leadership, I didn't wasn't making the connections right away, because the Lord words leadership weren't really in the data. And he said, here's the surprise. He said, I have it in my notes here, the role of the leader is to define reality. And that's the reality of your organization in the greater world, given your circumstances. And it makes perfect sense. So, you know, you people will act a certain way over time, they're going to change over time, but will the leader change with the circumstances over time is the leader looking at trends to discover what they need to be planning for next year. And then that so that was a big surprise to me is that we need to be making decisions, whether we are the executive director, or the director of events or the marketing communications director. Wherever we are in the organization, we should be gathering as much information as we can, and also help us know what's coming next. I think it's difficult to know, but I was in, I'm actually enlightened and encouraged to see that people are actually conducting the surveys, they're actually writing these reports and we can access them. And I don't know if I would have come across that by my former way of learning about this. Yeah, that is very tell on telling is not the right word but very interesting data here as you know Christina on the nonprofit show really sinking our teeth into that. And so it's, I'm fascinated knowing that that came into conversation in your coursework, you know, learning that having these aha moments. What are you seeing for the future, your future I mean now I feel like you have intentionally gone into this to say hey open my mind wide open, open the possibilities wide open. So what are you seeing your future in the sector. Well, I feel like, because I'm in the position of being able to be very intentional about my path right with this learning and personal development as well. It all comes together. I listened to a lot of Mel Robbins and Marie for Leo I love those types of people authors that have talked about how we need to work with other people and be tuned with ourselves and one really important thing that I've learned about is self assessment. That's another really important insight that I've had is that leaders and nonprofits need to be assessing how we're doing how does who the person I am today going to adapt to what's what's going to be happening around the corner right. So I feel like I have multiple choices here. I feel like I, I, in the right place this is where I belong. I like mission based work. We don't get into this work to earn personal millions, we get into this work to meet a need, and we can do that by unlocking the millions of the personal millions of others that already have been very successful. And that connects with our mission and we need the technical skills to be able to communicate with those people in order to have partnership with them so we can solve more problems, we're in the problem solving business. So I feel like that's where you know the context of where my heart is, and I have a lot of choices that I can make with this work so I've been basically in the education area I feel like I could stay in higher ed. The new nonprofit startup is a job training program so that's an educational program and other organizations that I personally support are working with youth and job skills training and mentorship I'm really into that. Being able to work with people who may be in a disadvantaged position in society have had a rough go of it so far, but where we can step in and provide real skills and fellowship and community with them and let their voices be heard and that's the kind of work that lights me up. So I see myself working maybe in an events management that is a donor cultivation activity. I could see myself working with alumni relations connecting with people in from a specific community and really again working with the events portion or working and just connecting with them on a personal level maybe in just those fundraising activities, and being a partner with them and maybe building that institution up in the for the future. And I also am interested in exploring foundation work. I'm intrigued by this. I was really learning a lot about that during COVID because community foundations were providing so much help. Yeah, and they and the rules were changing. Yeah, because of the situation that we were in not saying the situation is over but you know what I'm saying at that time, constant change, it was caught that we're in a place of constant change so community foundations were there. Giving other established foundations private private family foundations found themselves in a situation where they could give unrestricted gifts, and they were loosening some rules or changing some perspectives by what was happening. And I feel like I could enjoy being an environment where you're connecting your your found the foundation is connecting with the people that you're granting to. And I could love, you know, assisting the cohorts of grantees that you would sign on with and helping them reach their goals. I think that would be so exciting and worthy of my time. Well, Christina we don't have a lot of time left we you know these conversations go by so fast but I'm so mesmerized. Is this something that was on your list like five years ago 10 years ago two years ago like when did this really become this is what I'm going to commit to do. I would say that I realized I don't I don't think it was something that I committed to back then is saying this is my path because I've still been I was in other situations where I wasn't sure and I of course I have family to so I was entrenched in raising the kids and all the other things. So I feel like I have had enough experiences being involved in volunteer work in other community organizations that I was I was in it and didn't even realize it right like we're involved in so many things. Over our lives, and then go back to yeah you know what I was on the parish council that's a nonprofit organization and I was on the board. Wow, look at that, or I was, I was in toast masters international for 11 years which is a public speaking and leadership training program I was on the executive committee of toast masters for many years that's a nonprofit organization a membership driven so there's a lot of interesting experiences that kind of have have always been there throughout my life and now I'm like I said throughout the presentation I, I just wanted to have brick by brick. I wanted to see how this whole house is built, and then figure out where I can best serve others. Well, it is to be honest, it's a true accomplishment testament to being of service having that commitment. Christina going you know going back to school at any time I think for me is always like, you know really daunting but I love hearing the story from you. As you, you know work towards this higher education degree in nonprofits I think you've, you've probably touched on this for so many of our viewers and listeners that have also had this, you know, in their heart or in their mind to say I think this is of interest to me too. So I really appreciate you coming here and one being you know being an avid listener of the nonprofit show but then also allowing us to have you here to share this insight from your perspective and wish you all the best I think it's fantastic. I thank you so much for this opportunity, I hope it's been inspiring for others, and just keep learning everyone. I'm Julia Patrick's here so glad to be alongside with you I'm Jarrett ransom your nonprofit nerd. As we sign off we also want to give gratitude to our amazing presenting sponsors, blooming American nonprofit Academy where you can get a lot more about education as well. Your part time controller nonprofit thought leader fundraising Academy at National University, staffing boutique as well as the nonprofit nerd and again our guest today so grateful Christina means to have you here and you know to really dedicate your life your career to so many missions and to providing those solutions which we definitely, definitely and desperately need those two words but hey, so glad for all of you to join us today on President's Day many of you probably have the day off but this is also in our archive you can access at any time so a higher education and getting back to school for your nonprofit degree is something of interest to you, I hope that you will take the inspiring words from Christina today. It's been wonderful I really love having this conversation and, and I think we need to revisit this when you are finishing up your journey and education and see where you land and I think it's going to be great it's a wonderful thing for all of us to be doing this and we certainly as Jared said we wish you well as we end every episode we'd like to remind ourselves our viewers, especially Christina man. Well, you can do well everyone have a great day and we'll see you back here tomorrow. Thank you ladies.