 Welcome everybody to another episode of the nonprofit show. We are thrilled you're here for as Rita just reminded me a fry. Yay episode Rita Elson and CEO and president of the Dave Thomas Foundation for adoption has been with us her team, and she has been part of this discussion all week. And so we're really excited to have her here for what could be a gut wrenching conversation Rita, because we're putting you in the hot seat and we're asking you questions. And so it's going to be really, I think a valuable time to learn more about how you cope with your leadership and this August responsibility that you've taken on over the year. So let's get into it because there are a lot of really cool things to talk about. Again, we don't do this very often just a handful of weeks per year, where we take an organization and we do what we call, you know, the nonprofit power week. It's a deep dive. And we really move through a lot of different things that the organization and the sector is dealing with. And November is the sacred month for the Dave Thomas Foundation for adoption because it's National Adoption Month. National Adoption Day is the Saturday. And then Rita, you told me another thing that I didn't know about. Talk to us about the Dave Thomas or Wendy's Founders Week. Yeah, this is also Wendy's Founders Week because the first Wendy's restaurant opened 54 years ago on November 15 1969. So they take the advantage of an entire week to celebrate that legacy of their founder Dave Thomas. Wow, amazing. So a lot cooking in this time of the year in many, many ways and that you all would show up and really share with us. It's super powerful. Again, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. Jared Ransom, the nonprofit nerd and CEO of the Raven Group is off today. And she, we kind of had to flip a coin for who would get to do this with you, Rita, because we only do one of us on the ask and answered. And so I won. So that's what I'm on here today. Again, we have the amazing support of our partners and they include Fundraising Academy at National University, Blumerang, your part-time controller, American Nonprofit Academy, Nonprofit Thought Leaders, Staffing Boutique, Nonprofit Nerd and Nonprofit Tech Talk. These are the folks that join us day in and day out. Again, if you've missed any of this week or you want to kind of go back or maybe share some of this content with your board or your team, or you just need to power up and get some new ideas, you can access nearly 1000 episodes that are on all of our channels. They include our app. You can download us on streaming or you can just enjoy a podcast, depending on how you like to consume your content and connect with us. Okay, Rita Louise Sorenen, president and CEO of Dave Thomas Foundation for adoption. Thank you for joining us. You are one of our most favorite partners and guests because you bring to the table so many things. Today we're going to ask you a lot of questions, get your reflection on that. Before we start for the uninitiated, talk to us about the Dave Thomas Foundation in terms of how many years your leadership has been a part of this. So I have been with the Dave Thomas Foundation for adoption for 22 years. And it's been, it's gone by so quickly. I can't believe I even say that I sort of stopped saying it at 20. So I have to think about is it how many more than 20, but 22 years. But I've always been in this world of child welfare child advocacy. So this really became when I joined this position, a way for me to elevate that passion that I had for giving children voices at a national level. Amazing. Now, Mr. Thomas selected you to run the foundation. Is that correct. He had, he had to put, he was, he was at the end stage, I'm sorry to say of his life, but he did have a voice in the final selection. Yes. And so really you have been the person carrying the flag down the field, right? Yeah, yeah, for 22 years. Yes, indeed. I have. I think that's important to note that, and we had a whole episode on this that was riveting. You're almost like a quasi founder syndrome personality because you've had to take the vision and mission view of a founder and then navigate it through a lot of change, a lot of opportunity, right? Yeah, yeah, and evolve the organization in the way that many organizations do, you know, there's that infancy that sort of toddler stage of an organization, then you hit that teenager stage and then where are you going to go and how do you stay relevant. And for an organization that's associated with a founder, Dave Thomas, with a name, how do you make sure that that legacy stays engaged and stays relevant and stays visible and everything that you do. It's an interesting kind of navigation that not every organization has. No, and I would imagine you have a lot of like sacred pressure from a collective view and memory. You've spoken that you also have family members from the, you know, the Thomas family that they have five children. So some of their children, adult children are involved. Are you seeing next gen leaders from them as well? Yeah, we're starting to see that we have two of the daughters sit on our board, including the namesake Wendy sits on our board. They're passionate supporters of the foundation. They've always been passionate supporters. Mrs. Thomas sat on her board on our board while she was alive. So there's always been that deep family engagement but yes, of those five children there are of course children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. So, and many of them work in related businesses or even if they're in separate businesses, we try and stay in touch and hope that at some point those two positions on the board will will of course transition to the next generation as well. Right. Wow. Amazing. You know, it's such a fascinating aspect. And let's move into that because I think this is a question. I know that we get asked a lot. I mean, when I'm out in the community, I get asked this. It comes into the nonprofit show. And the question is how do you recruit board members and what skills are you needing? I remember, I would imagine you have these like legacy issues like we were just talking about with the Dave Thomas Foundation and legacy of that, but it's a new day. Things are changing. What do you do to mitigate the needs that you have with like the history that you need to kind of keep acknowledging? Yeah, yeah. And you know, I have to think back to if you had asked me this question 10 years ago versus this question today because some of this is built into where is an organization in their life cycle. When you're new and when you're growing, you need individual board members who perhaps can be much more sleeves rolled up and their specific skills will help where the staff may have gaps. And typically that's financial or legal or human resources. So where can you find folks that are willing to not only sit on a board and do their fiduciary responsibility oversight of finances, oversight of policy, but help on a daily basis with financial finances with legal issues with HR issues. But as an organization grows as we have and we've been able to attract really qualified talent on the staff, we've filled some of those gaps. And so we begin to look at as a national organization, where can we recruit board members first who are passionate about this issue, who are coming on the board not to fill a resume but to be engaged with a national organization, but can help amplify this mission, amplify through influence, amplify through connectedness to fundraising, amplify through policy. And certainly we still have, we still need financial oversight. So you always need a treasurer that's deeply skilled. And as our budget has grown, we need someone that understands investments as well as just day to day ledger management. You still need a secretary you still need a chair, who is interested in the kind of leadership and position that a national organization needs so really recruiting for leadership capacity that the professional skills that they have but I think their personal passion for mission. And frequently that's lived experience we want to make sure on our board that we have folks who I have either adopted were adopted have fostered have some connection, if not directly to themselves through extended family. I guess to have this but that we have enough of that representation on the board and in fact this last round, we actually brought a person onto the board who, who aged out of foster care is now an attorney, doing incredible things, but aged out of foster care and so that his voice becomes part of our conversation on the board as well. Let me ask a follow up question to this because of so much of us so many things in the nonprofit sector. We are quote unquote aging out you know we have an aging demographic of leadership, and we're always worried about who's coming behind us. You and I were talking about that privately. You know in the green room for a completely different reason but are you struggling with this like the age issue people retiring out and coming up with that next gen talent or do you see that as something down the road. I think we're always looking at that always looking at that no matter where you are in the life cycle you want to make sure that not unlike in your staff you're developing leadership as well. We're developing that on the board and it's not necessarily those folks who have been on for six years or seven years and are ready to turn out. And so, bringing people on with with enough capacity and enough experience to be a valuable asset to the board, but that are young enough in their career that they can see this as a, as a growth position as well as a leadership growth position. It's, we're absolutely always looking at that. It's not difficult, at least in the community that we are because we can attract nationally as a national organization, but I can see for smaller organizations it might be a bit of a challenge how do you, or it might be too heavily weighted toward young people. Because that's the available audience perhaps that they have. So it's just finding that right balance of both skill and age and expertise and experience that is frankly most useful to the staff and to the CEO of the board. Right, right. Who's going to, who's going to work through it. Let's dig deep a little bit more and this kind of is a question that follows. I hear so often from board chairs and CEOs of nonprofits that say, you know, they think that really 80% of their board is their Yay team, but it's 20% that's really engaged and really doing the heavy lifting. And, and that seems to be a generalization and, you know, all different types of nonprofits. Do you follow along in those lines or do you see that or throughout the trajectory of more than two decades of leadership. You've had that up and down with board engagement. I'm excited to share with you that our board engagement is frankly, a lot better than that, that 20%. And I think it's because over the past few years, we've really put a lot of emphasis at the committee level, making sure that and we meet quarterly as a board so we can meet as well. And really, you know, I do annual phone calls with board members certainly a lot more than that but annual check in phone calls to say is this committee working for you. Is this cadence of board meetings working for you, and, and really get that sense of, this is a committee that I want to work on and we've got a lot of committees so it's a lot of work managing those committees, but it's so important because that's where I think the if you're just engaging your board for board meetings, you're losing the opportunity to really help them feel like they're doing something important with an organization so that's one way we engage them. We've also listened to you know post during the pandemic, we were all virtual of course after that people got kind of used to that we wanted to get back together. But we decided you know what we will make at least one meeting a year virtual because that's what people got used to. And we're even talking about do we need to make that two meetings a year because people have to come in from Columbus to Columbus Ohio and we've got people from all around the nation. But no one is really pushing for that they really enjoy I think one feeling connected to a mission to feeling connected to each other. We need to do a little better job of, can we make sure that when they come into town we have more informal gatherings and we haven't done as much of that as we probably should. And so we're looking at that as well or do we have some of those committee meetings the night before, right and so you've got actual working afternoon and then you move into the full board meeting, and you've, you've had more together time than just the two and a half hours of a board meeting so but but I'm really excited to share with you over the years. Our board has it's more like 80% really engaged in 20% that you know for whatever reason they dip in and out. And you know I think the thing that's so interesting about this and we don't talk enough about it but it's really managing the human spirit. Yes. You know and it seems like we're like okay we're all adults here you should be able to do this but it's that's not the case and when I look at highly functioning boards. They take the time to figure out what the human dynamic is. And a lot of that Rita is exactly what you said it is like the social time. So that when they kind of I don't want to say they get it out of their systems but then during the meeting, they're not like hey what about that game last night. Looking at their iPads. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's very interesting. Okay, let's talk about this. And this is a little bit more of a personal question for you. And I've really, especially this week Rita, your subject matter is tough. How do you and your team manage self care. How do you, especially during the pandemic. How do you how did you stave off burnout. Yeah, and again it's it's exactly what you talked about with the board. It's understanding that we're all humans in the same cause right but as humans we need contact and we need contact that's not just an employee or a job assignment or a check in on where are we on this goal. It's so much more than that and so we've really built into our, we have monthly all staff meetings, and we've built into that. Not all of them are subject matter expertise staff meetings we had a sort of mental health care check in with a professional that would talk about how do you deal with the stresses of work. So building into some all staff sessions, just self care, health care, right. But but it's also, look, I try as best as I can and any staff that are watching that be like you forgot mine, but as best as I can, making sure I acknowledge birthdays right, making sure that anniversaries, even if it's just an email thanks for you know the five years with the foundation, making sure that human touches there at the office. And that then saying look it's been a crazy busy week let's close the office early on Friday. Let's go, go home, refresh. I don't want to see emails I don't want to hear phone calls cancel whatever's on your calendar, and making sure that we're flexible enough to acknowledge that weeks are tough and depending on your department it might be tougher than some other department, but that we all are in this very difficult cause of vulnerable children and families. And we're not going to be good if we're not refreshed if we don't have respite time ourselves. And we've built in a lot of making sure that we've got holidays, a robust calendar of holidays a robust calendar of paid leave, robust benefits, all of those things that I would hope help folks feel like at the end of the day. I'm not 24 seven on my job, even though I might be thinking about it 24 seven looks how do you stop thinking about these children, but that I also acknowledge that I've got a family. I've got a life. I've got the support of my place of employment to help me feel good about myself to. And so we try and encourage that as much as possible yesterday. We had a friends giving celebration at the office. We've got, you know, their, their favorite dish. And so we're always looking at that sense of inclusion and belonging in an organization, but it's a fine balance we're not your family. We're a different kind of organization, we're not your family but we want when you're here to feel like you feel connected to each other, and can go to your, your office maintenance. This, this is really tearing me apart can I talk to you about that it's developing that internal trust as well. And here is the hot seat question. Is this a new attitude. I mean, like, and maybe it's 10 years old or five years old or five months old, or did you see this from the beginning of your leadership now I know you started with a much smaller crew. You've experienced explosive growth, but can you put this into perspective of time and leadership. It took a while for me to recognize this look on was the one that came in and said we're all adults, you know, do your job, do it well and let's go home right. That that was the beginning of my sort of leadership career it took an evolution of understanding that this is an important part of people's days. And it's not just about pull yourself up, you know, put up put your big girl panties on and get her done. It's about recognizing all the things that surround us and when I went through my parents passing away in a relatively short period of time, and remembering the kind of support that the staff surrounded me with that I didn't ask for they just knew and did that. That was a bit of that recognition then going through the pandemic when we were all so isolated from each other. It really elevated that notion of, there's a different way to do this gathering of human souls that are working toward a unified cause. Interesting. Well, I appreciate that honesty because you know that's the trajectory of leadership. Yeah, you have different things in your life and the ecosystem of what's going on and then a pandemic and then all the different things. And I think Jared and I always say pandemics because we had, you know, COVID, but then we had civil unrest and we had economic stress and civil discourse a breakdown of that. I mean, there have been a lot of things that have been going on during this swirl and so recognizing that is phenomenal. This is a more modern management question and that is what with a dispersed workforce and work from home. How do you navigate leadership you mentioned when you were with us earlier in the week that you did have some job openings and some of them would allow from a remote, you know, piece. What does this look like for you. Yeah, and says also been an evolution, because we were a full full office in pre pandemic. We had the capacity based on the need of the organization. We had the capacity to do a remote position but we only had one person that did that over all the years pre pandemic. So it's been something that we've had to learn very well because we also have an office now where we say, three days in the office two days work from home, you can pick which days, you know, we try and get everybody together for all staff meetings but otherwise you choose which days and so figuring out how to make sure that everyone feels included if they're on a zoom call and other people are in the room. You've got to have the right technology so that people don't feel like they're separated from from the event right because we give the capacity for them to be at home. I think, making sure that their, their unit leaders their managers understand the complexities of this dynamic of some of my staff working from home and some of my staff are here and I need you now and then you're not available or whatever that might be. I'm making sure that management has the appropriate kind of support and training as well. But it's been a real, it's been a real learning for me because I have a really close colleague who is pushing and has always pushed and does some national research and work on. Let everyone work from home. That's the state of the art and he has pushed us and pushed us and I've pushed back because personally for this kind of cause. There's value in this learning from each other face to face. We can we can learn from a distance but learning and sharing from each other face to face is critical so it's been a tug and pull for me of of of. Is it really the way of the world that we can all work remotely or is there value intrinsic value in this community of work that we have that can be face to face. It's your catcher's made up because this is a curveball. So you mentioned this this person and I think you said it's a he do you think this is a male to female issue. I think that's an excellent point. My knee jerk says yes. Yeah, me too. Yeah. Yeah. Because I know even with Jared and I and we're we work together every day. We do not see each other every day. We are not in the same social swim. We live in different parts of the community. It's so funny and we're doing the same work. We're but yet even we'll be like we just need to get together. Now I'm going to call out. I'm going to call out our executive producer and pace our executive producer who's a man. He doesn't come to those like lunches or he he's like, is there a problem is there something we need to talk about. No, okay, you girls go have lunch. It's a very interesting. I don't know it's it's a gender issue for me. And I think perhaps women are raised. I don't know I don't want to make any generalizations here they're going to get me in trouble but we're just more comfortable working in tribes in groups right then then perhaps men are because they're from a social early age they're socialized to be independent be strong do it you know do it on your own. Yeah, it's it's very interesting and so I just like I said that just struck me when you said he is pushing you in a certain way. Yeah, that's it's a fascinating topic and I don't know if we will ever really if we want to I don't think we'll be able to understand it for probably like another decade when a whole slew of researchers look back on what happened and what the results were from this this work from the pandemic, you know, and it merged with this explosive growth of the use of technology if we didn't have the technology in front of us. I don't think we'd be where we are today. We didn't use zoom phone calls before the pandemic even though they were available we use that silly thing in the middle of the table the conference call right. It never works. Right, right. Oh yeah, technology and and and as there are younger generations coming up that are just 24 seven glued to technology. It'll be interesting to see how this develops. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, we have one question. We have time for one more question. And this is like, I'm sorry that this is that the end because this is a huge question but how is the Dave Thomas Foundation moving the needle for adoption and creating change. I mean, you've seen something move forward that I can't imagine your founder Dave Thomas would have ever envisioned. Where do you stand on this like when you report back to your board or your community or stakeholders. Are you like, ahead of where you thought you would be kind of where you where you think you should be I mean what does that look like to you. That's a great question and it's one I really want to think about but I do believe that we're ahead of where we thought we would be the creation of the Wendy's wonderful kids program really put us on a trajectory that said, if we're going to solve this issue of foster care without families, we have to infuse ourselves, but it takes resources, it takes advocacy, and it takes collaboration, and all of those at the same time, and at a national scale, we've been able to do that now in 17 states with a goal of 28 states by the end of all 50 states by the end of 2028. But in doing that what we're doing is embedding a best practice that we know at an evidence level gets these children into permanency and so that alone I think is changing as this program becomes embedded and it simply becomes business as usual, as opposed to what was there for these children. That has made significant change. We still have a ways to go. There's still myths and misperceptions and strongly held belief systems about vulnerable children and families and people tend to judge and give blame to them, rather than saying they're in difficult circumstances and it's our responsibility to surround them and help them through the system so we still have a ways to go, but I'm so proud of the work of the teams on the Wendy's wonderful kids program and how far that has come, although it started in 2004. It's really been the last eight years that have elevated and move that trajectory significantly. Amazing. You know, that's a new program. When you think about what's gone on, I mean, and to have something, you know, so, so vast, not just in a community, but across a nation. That's, that's amazing. Yeah, I would have thought that it was actually part of how things were started. No, no, that's really that's amazing. Well, again, this has just been a riveting week. Rita El-Sornan, president and CEO of the Dave Thomas Foundation for adoption. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for what you do. I think that you and spark so much empathy and creative approach and modern approach to leadership for so many of us in the nonprofit sector, whether we deal with child advocacy or these issues of adoption and foster care. I think there's so much to be learned from you and your team members. And so we have been thrilled to be able to partner with you and have you come in and very, very honestly share, you know, your work and your attitudes. And that has been a real gift because I think a lot of times people want to come on to the nonprofit show and just, you know, really act like they don't have problems and that they're woohoo. And I think it's been very genuine to see your team members express, you know, what their journeys have been like and how they've navigated it and how they continue to move forward. So it's really been a remarkable week. And so I want to briefly before we leave, again, we've been shouting out the Dave Thomas Foundation.org website every day because it is an amazing tool, beautifully done, amazingly cultivated to respond to whatever it is the visitor needs. But I really want you to touch on a home for the holidays because you have the 25th anniversary of this amazing program coming up, right? It is. And we were just in Los Angeles last week for the taping. It's been, again, part of the brainchild of Dave Thomas when he had access to all the media and stations, right? But set up this show to draw people in with amazing musical talent this year, C.C. Winans and Gavin DeGraw and others that I'm going to forget names of musical talent. But interspersed with that are these so compelling stories of families brought together through foster care adoption. The idea, it's not a fundraiser. It's not a national fundraiser. It's an awareness razor. And the idea is to say, look, this family adopted through foster care, you can probably think about it too. So it's on December 22 at eight o'clock Eastern time. It's the fact that a major network station has had 25 years of a primetime special during the holidays is incredible. So I encourage people to just tune in for that, for just the feel good nature of it alone and the musical talent is astounding. I love it. And I think it's really a wonderful way to share your story and connect during a certain time of year. Bravo to you. 25 years of anything, my friend is a lot. And so in media, this is like 250 years. Dog ears, right? Yeah. You know, we've had on, like I said, this amazing team, Rita El-Sornan, but we've had Jill Krumbacher. She talked about some fascinating things. And she's one of the rare leaders in our country that heads up not only marketing but development. It's really brilliant to hear her and see how she looks at these things. So I would really encourage you to talk to take a look at that. Julian Nichols visited us and kicked off the week and she spoke about how we can and we need to change attitudes and what are the myths that we need to break? And how do we look at that through the communications lens? And then Melinda Hagerty, who is a remarkable human being, general counsel to Wendy's, but really has an incredible backstory that she honestly shared with us and really helped us to understand how she navigates her work. And so again, it's been an amazing opportunity to hear from very different voices. Again, we have the support of our partners who don't dictate what it is that we're going to talk about. And they include Fundraising Academy at National University, Bloomerang, Your Part-Time Controller, American Non-Profit Academy, Non-Profit Thought Leader, Staffing Boutique, Non-Profit Nerd, and Non-Profit Tech Talk. You know, these folks have really stood by and said, yeah, we want to hear what the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption has to say, because these are powerful times and powerful messages. And so thank you to them that have stood by us as we explore this Non-Profit Power Week of the Dave Thomas Foundation. Alright, Rita, it's been fabulous. Thank you so much. And I know you have a very busy month in November. So thank you for taking this time. It's always an honor. It's always a privilege. I adore the work that you do and that you would include us for whatever part is just amazing to me. So thank you for that. Oh my gosh, it's great. You know, for those of you looking and watching at this, Rita really does stand by with what she says, because we've been communicating. And I'm trying to get her to my state to show up with some of her team members and so that we can pull together, you know, an opportunity to not only engage her with leaders from my community and my state and my region, political leaders, advocacy fundraisers. So yeah, the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, they don't just look good. They act good too. Thank you, my friend. Enjoy the holidays. Best of luck with all the heavy lifts you have going on. I say this to you directly, Rita Elsornen, to stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here Monday. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Rita, and thank you for your team's guidance.