 Welcome to the nonprofit show and welcome to 2024. We are really glad you're here with us on this journey. Today, Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, she's in the hot seat. I get to interview Julia and she is here to talk to us about connecting with leaders and all about making a new resolution to do this kind of work. So lots of good things to share with us. Julia, lovely new headshot by the way. Thank you. I had to let my hair go white for a bunch of reasons and it has been the big drama of 2023. And so I had to get new headshots, not an easy thing because I'm a vain woman. I'm just putting it in. It's been great through our four years on this and we're past 950 episodes. And if any of you go back and watch, you will see the transformation of our hair and our makeup and our glasses. Anyway, I'm Jarrett Ransom, nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven Group, honored to be here with you Julia, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. Also extremely honored. And Julia, I'm gonna let you actually share a little bit about our presenting sponsors. You know, it's really fun. Most of these folks have been with us from the very beginning, but this year we've added two new sponsors and we're really excited. But our new sponsors are 180 Management Group and JMT Consulting, which we're gonna talk more about later. But also we are partnered day in and day out with amazing, amazing support from Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, Nonprofit Thought Leader, Staffing Boutique, Your Part-Time Controller, Fundraising Academy at National University, Nonprofit Nerd and Nonprofit Tech Tuck. Jarrett, these are the folks that are like the gas to our engines, right? Yeah, absolutely. And they've helped us to produce nearly 1,000. Yeah, that's right, 1,000. I'm like, that's such a hard number to say, but you can find us, actually go ahead and pull out your phone. You can scan that QR code right now. You can still find us on broadcast and podcast. And you will find all of our previous episodes from our guests, including these master classes that we just referred to. And today is one of those. So Julia C. Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. Welcome to the hot seat. You know, I came into the studio this morning and I'm like, oh, who's going to be on? You know, and I pull up everything. And then I'm like, holy cow, it's me. I'm like, wow, okay, I got to sharpen up. I wish I had had more coffee because, you know, you're a tough get, you're a tough host. And so I want to be sharp. I'm bringing all the curveballs because I know how much Julia, you like them. So let's dive in, talk to us about leaders, leadership and really you're going to kick us off here with why should we connect with leaders? What is that? What are you talking about in this space? So this today, this master class, which we've talked about these concepts, you know, over time, this really emanated from something that was absolutely fascinating late in last fall. I was very, very honored to be a part of a very prestigious situation where I got to interview other nonprofit CEOs from my community that were in line for a major, major award, I mean, significant, like transformational for their career, right? And so I was with four other judges, amazing people. I looked around that table and I was like, wow, why am I here? Cause these people are rock stars. But once I got past that and we started interviewing people over a three day period, I realized that there was a disconnect between all these leaders and we all thought we knew what everyone did. But you know what, Jared? We didn't, there were a lot of holes and these are venerable organizations, well sought after leaders, leaders who are in the public eye, right? People that we all knew. And this was what my lesson was. We thought we knew them, but we really didn't. And so it really bubbled up something inside of my mind that said, you know, with this pandemic and how we pulled back, we haven't had those cocktail moments where we're like, hey, did you hear about this new thing I'm doing? Or we haven't met up at different things, right? So we've probably for the most part done a poor job about telling everybody what we're doing, what we've let go, what we've taken on, just what we're doing. That's a big one. I love that you said like, we haven't had those cocktail moments as often as frequent as we were having them. You know, I'm guilty of this too, Julia, of, oh yeah, I've met so and so, we've known each other for 10, 15, 20 years, right? And I just assume that what they're doing is the same thing they did 10, 15, 20 years ago. But I know that to be false because as I've served as interim CEO, right? And in other positions, I have sunset it programs, I have launched new programs. I know, you know, you see this in our community around the globe and it's really hard to stay up with what's happening. And so connecting with these leaders, do you recommend, here's a curveball, do you recommend that there's like, like how do we get these leaders together? Or should we be doing it one-on-one? You know, Jared, that's a great question. And I think there's that old fashioned line that says preach to the choir. And we're like, oh, they know what I do, or they know what our organization does. And we kind of forget that there's a heck of a lot of things going out there. Let's go back to that number, 1.8 million registered nonprofits in our country. And most of our nonprofits have many things that they do. They might have started out as a food pantry, but now they're a domestic, they have domestic violence shelter services, or maybe they have after-school learning or they have college scholarship programs, whatever, right? And so we have to do a better job about sharing our story with our community. And you know what, Jared, to me, I think we're super focused on just sharing our stories toward donors. Well, and I was gonna ask you, and are we also super focused on, we sent an email on that, or we put it on our website. So check, check, we're done. Like, it doesn't sound like that's enough. No, no. And I mean, how many emails do you get a day? I get about 250 to 275 on heavy day 300. And these are not all like, you know, come shop the sale at X, Y, Z boutique. These are like nonprofits who, you know, who want to communicate with our team and us that have important things to say just like you, right? I mean, you've got to be in that same ballpark. There's only so much time and so much bandwidth that I have to recognize what I'm seeing, what I'm reading, what I'm scanning, and then apply those connections, right? And that's connection. The connection is big. So who is it we want to connect with, right? Like, who is on this leadership list? Right, and this is the thing. You got to step back, step back. And you've got to say, they need to be people who can influence, impact, connect and collaborate. Okay, so four things. Influence, impact, connect and collaborate. Because you don't know where somebody might be like, oh, holy moly, our nonprofit doesn't do that, but I know a nonprofit who does, right? That can lead you to business or can lead you to grants or can lead you to awards or contracts, right? Or maybe you just do a joint venture, right? You just don't know. But again, if we don't really know what we're doing as well as we should, that's where this falls down. The other piece of this, Jared, that I really think is important is that I think in the nonprofit sector, there are very few organizations within our sector or types within the sector that do a good job of policy and advocacy work. And so I think that these are people who can influence outcome. It's not just about money. And so we have, you just pulled up the slide, we have a lot of different types of people. We have our section leaders. We have just nonprofit leaders, whether we think we're gonna work with them or not or that we have some viability, doesn't matter. Government leaders, every time there is a change in government, you need to have those people on your database. So for example, governors offices will have heads of departments that impact your nonprofit, right? How many of our nonprofits don't even know who those folks are? Absolutely. Until we need them or we read about them or they're leaving office, right? We gotta get on this. Community leaders, this is everybody that you might read about online or in your paper, you might see those folks that are community champions. Media leaders, this is the other thing I think a lot of times in the nonprofit sector we're afraid of getting these people on our databases and communicating with them until we're asked and I'm advising, don't ask. I mean, you need to push out. Don't wait for them to come to you. Don't be afraid of the media. And then board of director leaders, I mean, this is another thing we miss out. Looking at your, if you did nothing, nothing, but do the top 10 to top 25 nonprofits in your community, whether they're in your sector or not, even if you just did it by budget and you've got the board members, board chairs on your database, magic. Because then you can be telling those people what it is you're doing and sharing your success, sharing your needs, communicating. And then, and I'm gonna interject, I've seen board members and we know this, right? If you serve on one board, typically you're serving on another and maybe even multiples, right? Those board members, they are advocates, right? And they're really doing their work in the community. They could be the collaborative person. They could be the one that says, you know what? I just heard from X, Y, and Z organization. I feel like there's some synergies here. Might we consider a conversation? It's so true, Jared. Or we've talked about this with our friends from fundraising academy. And that is like, sometimes you have a donor that comes to you and they want to do something specific, but it's not really a good fit for your organization, right? Okay. What if you said, well, we don't really do this, but this nonprofit over here does. That's free money. That's magic, right? And so I think we've got to be like, less focused in on ourselves and really looking out and saying, what is the ecosystem in our community, in our region of nonprofits, right? And leadership. The other thing that I think is really, really important before we move on, that is we're not putting enough emphasis on school leaders. And I'm saying everything from, depending on how your community does of your state, you know, if you have board or governance agent officials, if you have districts, everything from like the community college presidents, the university presidents, private public institutions, because guess what? These people are educating our future leaders, right? And so if we're communicating about what it is we are seeing or what we're needing or what we're doing, that's gonna be a filter down at best. That to me is a big a-ha, Julia, because I would have only thought of like the school board, you know, like we only wanna do the town city school board not, you know, if we have a community college or if we have a university in our community, what that looks like. So that's fascinating to me to really think broader. Yeah, yeah, because you know, Jared, I think one of the things is that if we're only building what we believe is the impact and connectivity for our own organizations, we're not really gonna move ahead. When we have somebody else deliver a new concept, a new partnership, a new donor, a new advocate, that's when the magic is happening, because we can only do so much ourselves, right? Right, right. And so we wanna kinda start to support and propel this notion of building community support. And that comes to me right directly from leaders. Well, and it makes me think it takes a village. In a lot of ways, it takes a village. But really, you know, nonprofits are here to serve as a solution to a community problem. You've got a couple of more here that I want us to spend some time on before we move forward. So religious faith leaders as well as funding leaders, talk to us about these two categories. So I think in my lifetime, you know, when I was a little girl, we really included religious and faith leaders. I think that was a big part of what we do. And then we've kind of had this more attention to separation of church and state, and we've really tried to, you know, move that apart. And I'm revisiting that mentally, my own self, and saying, look, you know, we don't need to agree or buy in to another faith, but we need to agree and buy in to community support, right? So no matter what that faith construct is, you need to be allowing those voices that are on the front lines of many topics to join you because it's not just, you know, the Methodists are gonna support Methodist organizations and the Catholics are gonna support Catholic organizations. And, you know, all that, I mean, the silos are much broader and different. And we know this, we know this, Jared, from the Giving USA data that keeps showing how Americans are changing their donations to faith-oriented groups, right? So I feel like that's an ecosystem where we can garner a lot of support and we might learn something, right? We might learn something. I've gotta say, you know, I was really shocked. I was leading a strategic planning board meeting and there was, from this community, there was like, you know, someone from the fire team, someone from the police department, there was a faith leader, there was a school district, like they really had like, check, check, check your boxes. But what I was fascinated by this faith leader mentioned in strategic planning, they never expected to be a part of the opioid pandemic or epidemic, which is a crisis, we'll call it a crisis, right? It's both to wear his congregation, like they at their church had, you know, Narcan, they had solutions, right, to the community problem, because that's where the community was coming, whether it was a parent, a grandparent, and to be a part and to witness this conversation, it's like all coming together for me now, Julia, because I swore to them I was in a Hallmark movie. I was like, where is the camera? Because these, like these are all of the main big players of the town, and it's a small town. And you know, Jared, I love that you talked about that because if you can step aside from the faith construct, you know, and we're gonna have Muji Qawajir coming on next week talking about raising money and stewarding the money for a Muslim community foundation, right? I mean, talk about, that's a brave thing for us to do, I think, given in the war in the Middle East, you know, these are the things that we need to kind of break down and look at and say, okay, this is a humanity issue, right? And so no matter what the faith construct is, these are the people like your church, they're on the front lines. Doesn't matter if they're Episcopalian or they're Lutheran, right? I mean, or the LDS or they're, you know, a Jewish temple, you need to be mindful that these people are engaged probably in the same things that you are. And you know, Jared, we don't do that enough. Shame on us. Yeah, I see us really in a silo and this list, I'm gonna pull it up again because it is a fascinating list. You know, pulling together these thought leaders, again, what I'm hearing you say, and again, this aha moment is we stay in our lane too much and maybe it becomes comfortable because of everything that's on our plate and all the responsibilities and our busy schedules and calendars. But when we come together and we keep a finger of the pulse of what is happening in all corners of our community with these leaders, again, because for everyone watching and listening, these are the leaders that should be on that leadership list. So start thinking about this, take a screenshot of this, right? Pull out your phone, whatever you need to do there. It's just fascinating. What about the delivery and the maintenance? So now we know who needs to be on the list, right? Like how do we deliver communications? How do we maintain this leadership list? Who is communicating and who owns the list? Right, so most nonprofits in our country only have donor lists. Let's be honest, right? They look at a prospect or an existing donor and they're like, that's who goes in the database. And we fill the database with even their dog Fluffy's name, right? Their favorite poodle's name, right? I mean, you're not wrong, that is, I'm not correct. No, I mean, hey, listen, I've sat in those board meetings where they deliver the lists and say, okay, who do you know? Or what's the poodle's missing name, right? I mean, yeah, I know that this goes on and that's great. But what I'm saying is that don't overburden yourself with the concept of starting a whole nother database because for a lot of people, this is an arduous process that just seems daunting. My recommendation is to do something as simple as a very, very basic spreadsheet where you get the person's name, where they're from. You can use those symbols that we created to align them to what part of the sector and their email address. And then start sending them information. It might be a press release, it might be a newsletter, it doesn't have to hammer on donations, but it needs to hammer on impact. What we're doing, what we're looking for, where we're gonna be, these are the awards we won. This is the collaboration we're looking for. They don't have to be novels, they don't have to be huge tomes that are too hard to get through. They can be a very simple branded headline and then some points, right? Julia, sorry, I'm interrupting. Besides information, is there a call to action? Are we doing an open call to action, reach out to us? Would love to schedule a call, better yet, would love to do a tour. I was gonna say tour. Okay. Yeah, I was gonna say tour and what I think with this leadership list you could do is you could do tour with a CEO. Because remember who you're sending this to and you can see like, do you want a tour with the CEO or let's have a round table or let's have a brown bag lunch or we're gonna offer donuts and coffee and we're gonna talk about this topic or whatever. I mean, it really goes as far as you want to and how you wanna engage. I mean, I know that there are many communities that have CEO forums and mastermind groups. And I mean, this is the sort of thing that you can engage in and build some camaraderie, opportunities to do things that you might not have ever even dreamt of, right? That somebody else can bring to you. No, I think it's fascinating, and I'm a little overwhelmed if I'm being honest because here in our community, we have 33,000 registered nonprofits. How in the heck, Julia Patrick? Do we stay in touch with all 33,000? Do you recommend that we stay kind of mission aligned or is it we're casting the net far and wide and we wanna include, for that example, all 33,000 because you just never know what might come about. Right, so the reality is in our community and I'm gonna push back a little bit on you is that when you go in our community, in our state to the Secretary of State, you see over 45,000 registered and there's a something that's tracked every day. Now, some of these people, they're formed at their kitchen table and they're not a go and just see necessarily. But the reality is for most folks, they're gonna have tens of thousands. So you wanna start with the people that impact your organization first, right? Your sector, things of that nature, people that you are already working with, collaborating with who know you or should know you. So if it's education, we wanna focus on kind of like the educational organizations. If it's homelessness, hunger, we wanna focus on the similar, okay. So you wanna start there. And then you want to set some limits and some measurements. And so this is what I think is a fabulous thing to do with volunteers because this can be done at home. This can be somebody that might be, you know, their abilities challenged. They're not gonna be able to go out and dig holes in on your property, right? But this is the thing, Jarrett. For me, I think you need to say, this is our baseline number. And if you started, great, you'll have a baseline number. If you haven't, you can say within the first two quarters of 2024, we wanna have 100 contacts. That's fantastic. We wanna have 500, whatever that number is, make it realistic. And I can imagine you wanna ask the team, right? Like your colleagues or C-suite others, you know, programmers to provide contacts for that list as well as your board members. Like who else should be on this list, right? Exactly. And I think the thing of it is, Jarrett, and we said this at the very beginning, you need to start with this is not for asking money. This is for asking influence and connectivity. So not just who has the deep pockets, because that's what we all do. That's what we all think about, right? And that's not where this goes because it will build your business faster than you ever dreamt. Well, you are knocking my socks off because I know we have talked about leadership list in the past, you know, contacting these leaders regularly, but there is just so much to think about. And as we kick off the new year, right, Julia, like there's so much goodness when it comes to this. So I hope everyone watching and listening is really taking advantage of building this list, getting the information from you. This is why we turn the tables on each other, my friend, because you've been in the sector for a long time. I've been in the sector a long time. We are, I feel so, I'll speak for myself. I feel so blessed and honored to be able to talk to leaders from around the globe. And yet here we are with so much of our own lived experience. We don't get to share often when we have another guest on. So we might be doing a little more of this in 2024. So if this is something that you enjoy or there's a topic that you know we've talked about before and you want us to dig deeper. I know Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, would love to hear from you. Do check out the American Nonprofit Academy website. Julia, tell us, because I know a lot of people come to us for the show, but your website has an enormous amount of resources on there. It does. I mean, we house the shows and connectivity to the shows. We have a lot of information. We have worksheets. Yeah, it's a lot. And we're here to support our industry and this is something that my team and I share a passion for and so yeah, absolutely. It's fantastic. Thank you. Well, Julia Patrick, thank you, my friend and my co-host to be here today in the hot seat. Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy and I'm Jarrett Ransom, nonprofit married CEO of the Raven Group where I just got to turn the table on Julia. And I ask you again, Julia, if you wanna honor our sponsors and take us off for today. I do. Thank you so much for, you know, I marvel at what you do. I love your energy every day. And you and I, when the few times that we get to get, we're together, IRL in real life, I love your energy and we always have so much to talk about. So this has been really a lot of fun. So I say- And it goes fast. It goes really fast. And I also say thank you to our amazing sponsors and partners, Blumerang American Nonprofit Academy, Nonprofit Thought Leaders, Staffing Boutique, your part-time controller, 180 Management Group, Fundraising Academy at National University, JMT Consulting, Nonprofit Nerd and Nonprofit Tech Talk. These are the folks literally that are with us day in and day out, moving through the end of our third year, moving into our fourth year, nearly 1,000 shows. So it's an amazing thing. But more importantly, you know, Jarrett and I came up with this little mantra at the very beginning and it means something new and different every day I say it, which is super kooky, but it's really true. And it goes like this, to stay well, so you can do well. Thanks, Jarrett.