The Future of Philanthropy

0:03 We'll go ahead and get started thank you so much for joining us today for this incredibly special edition of
0:11 building forward my name is Kristiana Almeida i am the senior project manager here at
0:16 Visionality partners i am joined today by not only the ... absolutely fearless
0:24 ... Emily Barany who is the founder and ceo of Visionality partners but we also
0:29 have an incredible fun smart and like i'm so excited about
0:34 today's panel discussion it's not even going to be funny ... and so we'll get to more about that a little bit later but
0:40 Building Forward has been a series that Emily and i started like probably three months ago now just to kind of take on
0:46 what some of the biggest ... issues in the nonprofit sector but not necessarily
0:51 tactics so we've been talking about pay equity we've been talking about how to invest in programs how to invest in
0:56 people how to streamline your you know your successes return on investment so really trying to
1:02 think big and because the pandemic has been such a disruption and sometimes a
1:08 wonderful disruption to our organizations how do we build forward from here instead of simply going back
1:14 to normal and so with that we're actually going to take a couple of minutes ... to acknowledge the 10-year anniversary of
1:21 Visionality partners ... it started as Emily Barany consulting ... 10 years ago literally i
1:27 think on the 11th was your 10 like your absolute 10-year anniversary and so today on the 13th lucky 13 we are going
1:34 to have an opportunity to really discuss with Emily a couple of the things that she has learned over the years and then
1:40 we're actually going to hand it over to Emily ... to then kind of curate our panel discussion later and oh my gosh
1:47 i'm seeing so many good friends in our audience today this is so exciting um
1:52 so i'm going to kick it off with Emily here so Emily first and foremost flippin congratulations on 10 years everybody
1:59 please like give this woman a little round of applause give her your snaps give her your cheers um
2:05 that's awesome holy crap yeah i feel like this entire month
2:11 you've just been like yeah yeah yeah yeah whatever it's 10 years it's 10 years but you know you are a female
2:17 entrepreneur in a very male dominated industry and i mean that from the standpoint of when we talk about the
2:23 nonprofit sector women do all the work and we've talked about that men tend to do all the leading in the nonprofit sector you are doing a lot of the
2:30 leading in this sector ... especially within a consulting company that we've ... we ran some numbers Emily has hired
2:37 over 20 people in the past 10 years has conducted over 200 interviews ... and is
2:42 now offering her employees health care benefits as of january 1st so like she has just been on this like incredible
2:48 trajectory to not just change how organizations inventor and santa barbara
2:53 county succeed but also change what it means to be a successful internal work culture and to really defy the odds as
3:01 to what being what being a good boss and what a good team looks like as well so
3:06 i want to kind of turn it over a little bit to you and talk about a couple of things that you have learned over the
3:11 past 10 years you recently wrote an article titled 10 things i learned in 10 years which i absolutely loved reading
3:18 and it's going to be up on our website later but kind of talk us through like in terms of early Emily Barany
3:25 consulting to today you know you still have great hair
3:30 congratulations thank you i grew up myself and you're even more intelligent than
3:35 ever but what are one of those things that like has struck you over the past 10 years of like holy crap like this was
3:42 a really important thing that's kind of carried you through a decade well i think honestly the the overarching theme is
3:50 sometimes you just have to leap and so you know it was so interesting because
3:55 both of my parents are entrepreneurs and so the gift that they gave me is was
4:02 ignorance around entrepreneurship and i didn't know that most businesses
4:07 fail within the first year and almost all of them failed within the first five years so i didn't know that it was
4:13 supposed to be hard or scary and you know everyone
4:19 everyone that i talk to who when they learn that i have a business
4:25 the first thing that they say is oh that's so cool you can take vacation whenever you want to which is not true
4:31 ... and but then the second thing that they say is oh that's so risky but it's
4:36 really interesting because i actually feel the opposite ... because you know as a as a business owner i have a set of
4:44 levers that i am empowered to pull to change everything about our business and
4:49 as long as you have your basics locked down which is your projections and your financials and your key performance
4:57 indicators it's not risky at all owning a business because i know exactly what's happening
5:03 every single day in our in our business and if i start to see things go a little sideways
5:09 i know exactly those same levers to pull us back on track and so i actually think
5:14 that owning a business is more secure ... and there are certainly a lot of ways that we can talk about to
5:21 mitigate the risk the the inherent risk but ... i just yeah i just think that being a
5:28 as a business owner sometimes you just have to leap i remember starting my business and figuring
5:33 well if it doesn't work in six months i'll just get a job like i can just kind of get a job and that'll be fine and and
5:41 whatever but i guess what's really scary now is that i'm completely unemployable like i that ship has sailed your girl
5:47 cannot get a job i will be real bad at it and so i guess we just got to keep making
5:53 this work for another 10 years an interesting thing that i want to point out with like the 10-year
5:59 anniversary is actually like the climate in which you started your company so if
6:04 we think back to you know 2011 you know we had that huge economic crash
6:11 in 2008 like the end of 2008 and the economy was still pretty tanked by in
6:16 2011 so like you you talk about just leaping and so why did you just leap when there was no
6:23 like security out there there was no like hope like all the indicators said yeah this is a really bad idea but you
6:29 jumped so why'd you do it i ... graduated college in 2007 not
6:36 a great time to enter the job market and you know, I... I got a
6:42 job with with a company that i really believed in but it was a terrible time to be an employee and i spent four and a
6:49 half years there you know doing my best and they did their best by me but at the end of the four and a half years i was
6:56 still taking out the trash and i hadn't made like really i hadn't made the advances
7:01 in my career that i knew that i was capable of and so i really took a step back and i figured like if anyone i'm
7:08 not gonna let anyone get in my way of making the achievements that i believe i'm capable of and you know if
7:16 other if someone else isn't able to provide those opportunities for me then i'm going to provide them for myself
7:22 that's awesome so i actually kind of want you to start to hop into like the middle to later
7:28 years of visuality like when you're starting to hire more employees you know a lot of people talk about company
7:34 culture as being really important especially right now with the great resignation happening across the country but when you start to think about the
7:40 culture that you have built at Visionality over these past 10 years like what has really struck out to you as being like
7:46 the most important aspects of building a coherent cohesive like loving supportive team
7:53 ... treat people nice and like the delightful human beings
7:58 that they are you know ... our my my first ever employee Llewellyn is here
8:06 with us today and Llewellyn taught me how um
8:13 non-negotiable it is to meet people where they are and give them the tools the individual
8:20 tools that they need to succeed and how easy it is and so it's just so
8:25 fascinating you know talking to other business owners and hearing their reluctance to offer a flexible
8:33 schedule or work from home ... when
8:38 you know the question i always get is well if everyone works from home how do you know that people are working and i'm like will they get their stuff done like
8:45 and like it's quite simple to know that people are working i mean not to mention we use a
8:51 time tracker so i literally know what everyone's doing like with their time but it's like so
8:57 simple to enable work from home to enable flexible schedules and
9:03 that very minor accommodation opens up meaningful employment for a huge swath
9:09 of the population namely parents or caretakers who are mostly women ... to be
9:16 gainfully employed and like it's so simple and, I... I just never understood um
9:24 the real across-the-board reluctance to to lean into that kind of flexibility
9:30 until we came with the pandemic and then guess what we all learned that it was possible
9:36 to work from home and you're able to actually have greater work-life balance and and you know hang with your family a
9:42 little bit more do the laundry when you need to that's i think that that's great i think
9:48 so pandemic had fortunately or unfortunately forced this lesson upon a lot of organizations
9:55 ... so as you're kind of like since we're since we call this building forward ... what lessons would you offer to
10:03 whether non-profit organizations small businesses like as we're coming out of this pandemic and like
10:09 fingers crossed that we're actually coming out of the pandemic this time versus like that psych out that we had over summer um
10:17 what would you offer like as advice like now that they've been forced into work from home for a while some people are
10:22 doing great some people are not what does going back to normal what can going back to normal looks like in the workforce well, I... I think
10:30 my biggest recommendation is to meet your employees where they are you know some internet so like
10:37 specifically with work from home like some of us thrive in a work from home
10:43 environment and some of us don't and so like the whole point of building forward is
10:48 like not just to go back to normal because normal wasn't good for a lot of people so how do we take the lessons
10:54 that we learned and the opportunities that we realized during the pandemic and
11:00 build them in in a ... proactive way into the post-pandemic workforce versus
11:07 a reactive way and so you know a hybrid workforce is a really simple and obvious way to do
11:16 that i think we learned a lot during the pandemic about the importance of
11:21 work-life balance and mental health and emotional well-being and so that is one
11:26 huge thing that we doubled down on as a team you know i believe we already
11:32 had like a really healthy company culture and and support and made space to be humans and to have feelings
11:40 and to have good days and to have bad days but ... during the pandemic you know we started
11:47 putting into our team chat you know hey we call it photosynthesis i'm going out
11:52 for a walk i need some photosynthesis and that is celebrated on the team that you are recognizing
11:58 that you need a break you need a little sunshine you need a little exercise and you're going to take 20 minutes and walk
12:04 around the block ... the other thing that we did that i is possibly my very
12:10 favorite thing about our team is we kick people out of the office now and so
12:15 any member of the team has the authority to kick any other member of the team out of the office and so
12:22 ... and it's like really explain why though explain why we're having lost island
12:28 right so if someone's having a rough day you know like each member of our team has had
12:36 family stuff happened they've had personal stuff happen they've had health stuff happen they've you know we've had
12:42 incredible community things happen that we have all had to like hold on our own shoulders and so when
12:50 one member of the team recognizes that another member is really struggling we put in the team chat hey guess what
12:57 like i'm kicking Emily out of the office today ... because Emily needs a mental health day and then what's so cool is
13:03 the whole rest of the team chimes in and says what can i take off your plate so that
13:09 you can leave the office stress-free today and like that is so beautiful it was so interesting realizing
13:16 that it wasn't enough just to give someone a day off because we all care so much about one another and our and our
13:22 clients and our work is really important but having that secondary conversation of
13:28 what can i take off your plate today so that you are not going to worry about anything you know while you're at the
13:34 beach today it's it's been really cool ... it's expensive to do that you know
13:40 like just because someone's having a rough day doesn't mean their clients don't don't need something done and you know
13:50 a hand so i guess that's to say doing the right thing is often not the easy thing and
13:56 it's often not the cheap thing and you know the most expensive thing in our
14:02 business is turnover and and turnover is this really like
14:07 insidious thing that doesn't show up on your balance sheet you know i can i can tell
14:13 you down to the cent how much we spend on ... on payroll on you know office supplies
14:21 whatever ... but turnover doesn't show up in your balance sheet it's just wasted
14:27 money ... with and we've calculated it to be about 35 000 in real hard expenses
14:33 and what that is is paying Llewellyn to interview ... paying
14:38 someone to onboard that person you know there is a reduction in productivity when you bring someone new on
14:44 ... and and so yeah giving
14:49 people unexpected days off is expensive but it's a lot cheaper than turnover and
14:54 it's a lot cheaper than burnout because by the way if you're burned out you're not doing good work so
15:01 it's actually cheaper for me to give you a day off because tomorrow you're gonna show up and nail it
15:09 i love that and it's true we do kick each other out of the office and it has been an important part of just like our
15:14 work culture and yeah there's days where it's completely unexpected but we've never we've never
15:19 hesitated or faltered with those requests either ... so kind of like circling back into the
15:26 business here and i kind of want to focus on you for for just a few more minutes before we transition into the next aspect of our of our agenda here
15:34 you know as a as a female business owner i want you to kind of like give and you've worked with we which i think
15:40 is another thing i really want to acknowledge as well ... women's economic ventures like that's how you kind of kind of got started into this they've
15:45 been your partner alongside of you for the past 10 years but what do you think are some of the like unique aspects of being a kind of
15:53 female business owner ... for for over a decade now just especially with like the
15:58 different movements to kind of like equalize a woman's place at the table ... try to equalize power and just like the
16:04 the dynamics of just like gender and equity and
16:10 all this like evolution and you've been hit there through all of it and so just like how has it felt to like stand
16:16 in all of these different phases of just like the social justice movements ... as a female business owner and what do you
16:21 feel your job or your place is in helping moving some of these forward
16:27 yeah i spent a lot of my early career trying to show up
16:34 professionally ... in a more masculine way ... and so you know
16:40 i like to make a lot of stupid jokes and i like to wear cute dresses and i like
16:45 to have glitter nails and and i ... spent
16:51 a lot of my career hiding those things about me because i was
16:57 almost always the youngest person in the room and often one of the only
17:02 women and so i felt like i had i had to mirror what i was seeing around
17:08 the table and like that's not true that's not authentic and guess what like
17:13 the minute i started being my authentic self
17:19 people who were attracted to my authentic self came to hang out and so it was very interesting because i felt
17:25 like i had to be somebody else to be professional or to be successful but
17:30 that attracted people who in the end weren't excited to to walk some miles
17:36 with me and so actually by being authentic and being unapologetically yourself
17:43 you get to attract people who actually want to hang out with you and now no one needs to be like behind their mask and
17:49 we can just like be silly and be ourselves and have fun and do good work without having to
17:54 pretend so lost your Visionality made a very interesting pivot last year Visionality
18:02 decided that it was no longer going to be politically neutral when it came to social justice issues
18:08 ... can you talk through the decision to step out of that mutual zone and what it
18:15 has done for you as a business owner and the company since then it was terrifying
18:21 it was so terrifying because you know we're we're a consultant right
18:26 so we have many different clients and i again at the beginning of my career
18:32 felt like i had to hide my personal value system
18:38 ... because if you know if i was honest about my personal values system you know
18:44 maybe we would lose a client tonight and i never wanted to lose a client ever ever for any reason
18:49 and you know especially now that we have employees i take keeping my employees gainfully employed
18:55 very seriously so i never wanted to lose a client because that could possibly put one of our team members
19:01 in jeopardy and and honestly thanks to your leadership
19:07 Kristiana i you helped me understand
19:12 that you helped me double down on my belief in abundance there is plenty
19:18 there is so much work out there ... that i don't need to hold on to every single
19:24 client with an iron fist number one but even bigger than that i have zero
19:29 interest in working alongside anybody who doesn't believe that black lives
19:35 matter who doesn't believe that we need to make the table bigger i have no interest in that and so if us being very
19:42 vocal about equity access justice turns people off
19:48 great good go away like i don't want to share space with you because these principles
19:54 are non-negotiable for our whole community to thrive and if you don't agree with that stuff then
20:01 it's okay and like you're gonna go find someone else to do work for you that's really in line with your own personal
20:06 mission vision values and makes space for us to like continue to fill our table with people who just
20:13 like want to help everybody do better okay we're gonna start to close out on
20:20 this so if you were to give your parting thoughts of 10 years what are you most proud of
20:26 my people all of our people um
20:31 people are the most important people are what
20:36 make the world go round like people are what make any organization thrive and like honestly
20:44 you know every one of our employees like my job
20:50 is to recognize someone's like magical unicorn powers and then
20:56 solve all their problems for them and like get the hell out of the way and um
21:01 it's been so cool you know checking my my own ego
21:07 ... at every step of this business as as we grow and recognizing that
21:14 i our clients are better served if i don't do all the work and our clients are better served when i
21:21 hire people who know how to do things that i don't know how to do and our clients are better served when we have
21:27 diversity around the table because we can see things from a bunch of different perspectives and and what i think the
21:35 most important part about that you know our philosophy of Visionality
21:40 you can have really hard conversations and we have had really hard conversations and as long as they come
21:46 from a place of love and kindness you can conquer anything
21:51 you can get over anything and so just having that like respect and care for one another that
21:58 yeah we're gonna have to have hard conversations once in a while that's just life and we
22:04 deeply trust and respect one another so that we make plenty of space for those
22:09 hard conversations and can just keep on walking after them
22:15 Emily thank you so much for sharing all of that this afternoon it's been such a treat to work with you and it's been
22:20 such a treat to be able to share this with everybody today ... i'm gonna hand it off to you for our second half panel
22:28 discussion now which should also be just as much fun and joyful so thank you and
22:33 congratulations again on 10 excellent years of changing the way that organizations succeed girlfriend thank
22:39 you thank you thank you ... so i'm super excited about this panel
22:45 of nonprofit leaders within our community and so i'm gonna do just a very brief introduction of each of them
22:52 and then we're just gonna have like a kind of sassy conversation and i want to encourage everyone to like put your
22:58 questions or comments or feedback in the chat this is like a collective learning environment and so like put all that in
23:05 there i want to hear what you think are we're all here to answer your questions and and all that stuff so first i'd like
23:12 to introduce colette shabram ... colette's strive to help build a better
23:17 world for all people people propelled her 15 years in the nonprofit development arena raising tens of
23:24 millions of dollars for lgbtq plus rights and social justice causes hell
23:29 yeah dude colette is the site health and success program manager at amazon santa barbara
23:36 where she is built and now runs a five pillar program that includes business recruitment community development and pr
23:43 employee engagement university relations and dei ambassadors group
23:49 here for it my friend ... our second panelist is jordan killebrew
23:56 he is the co-founder of juneteenth santa barbara and co-liaison for healing justice
24:02 he's a community organizer among other roles with an an abnormal love of the community especially in the county of
24:08 santa barbara his day job these lucky ducks is at the santa barbara foundation
24:14 and he's their director of communications ... and our third panelist is our very
24:20 own Kristiana Almeida... she is a client focused leader with more than 10 years of experience across a range of
24:27 marketing communications and fundraising functions helping nonprofits higher education and tech startups succeed in
24:33 launching exciting initiatives that make money honey
24:40 did i miss anything from your very illustrious ... uh resumes that you'd like to toss in
24:47 there ... i want
24:54 i want y'all jordan what we were talking about in the
24:59 beginning of this like really hit my heart so i'm gonna put you on the spot i want you to talk to me about imposter
25:06 syndrome okay well hi everyone again Visionality
25:11 congratulations on 10 years and thank you for having us this is a wonderful forum ... and when you all reached out to
25:18 ask about the future of philanthropy i was like i have so many things to say i don't know how we're going to do it in 30 minutes ... and am i the right person
25:25 to talk about that but anyways and that goes into imposter syndrome right ... we were talking about why i wear tie
25:32 and what were what i was saying is i get treated differently the truth is when i walk into a board room and i'm wearing a
25:39 tie and a suit i get treated differently i'm a black guy i'm queer i have a scar on my face ... if i showed up differently
25:46 there might be different stereotypes that already precede me and so i've noticed that in different settings ... i
25:54 am treated differently and treated ... with respect and a part of it is also the imposter syndrome of that when i put
25:59 on a tie granted my mom is from the east coast and she's like you always wear a tie like you always need to be
26:06 structured and where's your suit and why is it not dry cleaned every other week ... i also live in santa barbara so it's
26:12 like it's it's it's that's not really a priority for most folks but the imposter syndrome is important to notify ... and
26:20 recognize because i have to remind myself that i am worthy i am
26:26 ... capable willing able to do the work i have been doing the work and doing that
26:32 for quite some time ... and i'm worthy it's it's you know i used to
26:38 i came across a picture and i'll be briefed of my ceiling i used to put post-it
26:44 notes on my ceiling and they used to have different messages so that when i wake up i would see these messages that
26:50 you're worthy you ... continue to build on what you're doing stay focused just
26:56 positive messages to really combat that imposter syndrome ... that i'm currently feeling being on the zoom ... because
27:03 it's it's it's something that happens every every day but when you build tools into your work day and into your life
27:10 you can easily combat them and think positively and remind yourself that you are worthy thank you
27:16 how did that hit you as someone who has you know obviously risen
27:22 in the ranks and nonprofit land up to being an executive director and now within your role at amazon like how does
27:30 that wash over you sure yeah i mean i think ... we could probably round robin you
27:37 know for an hour just kind of talking about different instances where we're walking into rooms and we're the only
27:44 ism ... and and how that and how that hits right um
27:50 and how that kind of like makes us feel ... i started i was i started being an
27:56 executive director at age 31 ... so i was a queer
28:02 ... you know young 30s executive director um
28:07 and i remember ... one of my first meetings with one of our like major donors at the organization that i was running ... sat
28:15 down with him i was really prepared and you know really ready to go it taken a couple of weeks to like
28:20 actually like get this meeting with him and he's a big important donor and um
28:25 the first question he asked me was ... how many men were on my staff
28:32 and i just thought wow this is so interesting like you know i've been gone from santa barbara for a while i went
28:39 and worked with human rights campaign and then came back ... to work at pacific pride foundation ... we'd had a history
28:45 together ... he didn't want to know like you know my ideas about that you know what we're doing next with the
28:51 organization or even ketchup it was just like you know name how many men work for you and it was like
28:58 such a a wake-up call for how am i going to be walking into these new spaces you
29:05 know with this title or with future titles ... and and how can i continue to
29:10 make ... make space for others but also like really understand how people
29:18 are gonna see me ... so that was something that i thought of when jordan was talking
29:24 yeah Kristiana what do you think about this whole conversation as it relates to like internal
29:30 culture you know you have a very an interesting lens to kind of shifting in and out of like
29:37 micro organizations like ours and like really ginormous organizations like the american red cross like what is what do
29:44 you think about all this i think that it there are some legacy organizations and
29:50 i use the term legacy organization that they've been around for a while that have
29:56 but these issues exist across the spectrum i think the needle is harder to move the
30:02 larger the organization unless there is that fire within the board and senior
30:07 leadership to do it one of the big disconnects that i feel like i've seen over the years has been
30:14 this like very interesting desire of like whether it's the frontline fundraiser or
30:19 the program manager and just like all the ideas and the interest on creating like diversity and equity or just having
30:27 these like more inclusive conversations ... and how the boards and the execs tend to go like
30:34 but we're doing fine like you know we're doing we're that's not our problem we never have
30:39 that we're really we're we're good people i promise we're good people
30:44 yes glory i'm just challenged jordan in the chat
30:50 to be his most authentic self which is no tie here for you which would be
30:56 something completely honest but and so yeah so i think the scope of
31:03 working with like large to small organizations with the small organizations it's easier to get more people at the table and to get that
31:09 consensus like the larger and in the the more
31:14 space between your oldest and youngest like like organization individuals like it tends to be a little harder to find
31:20 where that middle is for those conversations to happen ... but i think it's really important for
31:27 those frontline managers for those program managers to keep pushing their executives to keep pushing their boards
31:33 especially their boards to have these conversations and to point out the blind spots because they all have those little
31:39 blind spots and it's okay to say that they're that the blind spots are there and to like show them what the world
31:45 looks like without those blinders on ... but i think it's their conversations that should still be happening i think
31:51 so many people are just afraid to present it based on where they are on the organizational food chain ... but
31:57 they're really really important conversations to be having you know nonetheless and to keep pushing don't
32:03 just start it but keep you know having that accountability to it well and the foundation of being able to have those
32:09 tough conversations again is like trust and risk mutual trust and respect like with those two foundations you can
32:15 really have a lot of really tough conversations
32:21 yeah and i think if you're asking your board and your executives to have these conversations so that your staff feels
32:26 seen so that your clients feel seen like i don't think that that's that's not a bad place at all that's not a that's not
32:32 a bad opportunity but like your staff does not feel seen they cannot show up as their authentic selves or we're
32:38 placing a filter on the clients that we serve that's convenient to us like what's wrong with having our staff and
32:45 our clients and anybody in the organization actually show up as who they are i think it's just going to make our
32:50 organization stronger, I... I completely agree i i've often said and
32:57 i you know good internal communication begats great external communication good internal work culture
33:03 means that you're having great external culture which kind of ties into a brand of an organization when you think about
33:10 it like a brand is building trust a band is how do you feel about a certain organization and this is something that
33:16 as we move into the future philanthropy is going to be ever more present is how does this organization make me feel how
33:23 how does it ar are they transparent are they using data and sharing that data in
33:28 their storytelling et cetera and how do how do they display themselves that's also authentic genuine and true
33:36 and helping to hopefully solve community problems hopefully you know ... working towards
33:43 collaboration those are just my two cents on on that because what you all are talking about is really building a
33:49 brand but a brand that is transparent and that people feel comfortable with and internally and externally yeah
33:54 integrated yeah an integrated brand so colette talk to me about how that shows
34:01 up in your work we like to say a Visionality that you're that your priorities show up in your budget
34:07 and so i'm really curious like with speaking about like those
34:13 huge organizations like what is that like for you ... yeah so i i
34:20 just loved ... jordan you kind of like calling that out and that sort of like
34:25 authenticity and i think we'll get into this like a little bit later on too but
34:31 ... i know that this this is something that has like really evolved ... in the
34:36 past let's say decade ... with philanthropy and with organizations
34:43 ... you know both where your money's going and being held ... you know accountable to where those funds truly
34:50 are going and how they're like impacting people ... and also you know who's who's giving that money ... so
34:57 budget is the that's the big indicator right ... and i think it's it's
35:03 interesting working at at amazon it is not just the other side of the coin it's
35:08 like the complete opposite side of the coin for me ... one of the things that i've really
35:15 learned ... you know when i was on sort of like the asking side
35:20 ... of philanthropy and was really like you know i will come and tell you why
35:26 ... our organization you know is deserving ... of this funding and and like start
35:32 building partnerships with ... you know corporate entities specifically ... but this is for individuals as well um
35:40 you know i kind of started with the conclusion which is you should fund this
35:45 and here's why right ... and ... the role i have right now is like
35:50 working backwards from that it's sort of like it you know there is ... so much need
35:58 there is not an infi colette does not own an infinite amount of budget
36:03 ... i've worked hard to to control some of it but you know everybody has to make
36:09 decisions on ... where to fund need and so to kind of start with the opposite uh
36:16 end of things it's like very interesting ... and really kind of like working backwards from
36:22 ... you know how do we make impact ... one of the things that i started doing i
36:28 know ... jordan reference data ... so i built ... tenants on how we would
36:35 ... review and ... you know kind of like intake our requests for the community
36:42 development side of of the work that i do ... to make sure that we're kind of like um
36:49 going through and and analyzing everybody's situations in in uh
36:57 both the same and different ways so it allows us to be flexible with ... what is emergent ... and what is
37:05 you know kind of the drum beat of philanthropy ... in the county ... and
37:11 then it also allows us to be fair and equitable on how we review ... these
37:16 kinds of requests so ... part of my approach i love that so much
37:22 there is a really deeply outdated belief that overhead is bad in non-profit land
37:31 and and Kristiana you have some feelings about this talk to me
37:38 talk us through how talk us through the opportunity that we have
37:43 to educate our board and our donors and our community about what overhead means
37:50 and reframe not reframe dispel the belief that in order to be a
37:56 good non-profit you must have no overhead rip it apart
38:06 i always use this analogy i've been using this analogy since i was a wee baby fundraiser like
38:12 very long time ago so let's pretend that i we invented a machine that cures
38:17 cancer this machine cures cancer we've got this donors always want to pay for the
38:24 machine that cures cancer however the machine does not run itself
38:31 you need to have staff to run the machine oh you need to have power to turn the damn thing on that's overhead
38:38 so you cannot cure cancer with this machine unless there is somebody running it unless there is somebody maintaining
38:44 it unless there is electricity to turn it on every single day and so when when donors talk about overhead and never
38:51 worry about overhead you know i get frustrated because i also says when
38:56 people are afraid of overhead that they actually don't believe that the people executing the mission are worth a dollar
39:02 and that pisses me the f off to no to the nth degree and i will say that all
39:07 day every day because the collect of the world the jordans of the world the k's
39:12 of the world high k you know these are all people that execute these missions and so for any organization that claims
39:19 like oh my gosh it's our people that make our mission so powerful the people that work for us that is how we do our
39:25 good work but we don't want to pay the money let's not give them so because it's overhead and so i think we need to
39:31 really just flip that overhead conversation i love covering overhead i love giving unrestricted gifts that is
39:37 my jam because it's just i know that those are actually the most powerful gifts for organizations to use because
39:43 they have the most flexibility to do what they need to do with it whether it's making sure somebody's health care is covered whether it's making sure that
39:49 they're paying their electricity bill whether it's making sure that they're getting the technology upgrade that they've been doing for that they've been
39:55 needing forever and so when we talk about overhead and donors fears of overhead and board spheres of overhead
40:02 and i think guidestar has unfortunately done a terrible job of forcing nonprofits into this starvation mode
40:09 because of these damn scores that they give based on overhead so your programs that are very like
40:16 thought based and i'm using this like very like so instead of widget-based like we gave out x number of widgets
40:22 versus we have brought together these thought leaders to solve this big world problem
40:27 solving the big world problem has immense overhead but executing on a widget basis has a low overhead so it's
40:34 just this like absolutely arbitrary like like piece of information that actually does
40:40 not give insight into what the organization is doing and i'm always mad at you know the guide stars and the
40:46 charity navigators of the world for creating this system that does not actually give an accurate representation
40:51 of like what like jordan was talking about and like colette was talking about what's the outcome it does not most
40:57 organizations do not share what the outcome or the impact is they just give you like a chunked out piece of data
41:04 that has no that has like no reference or like way to understand it and unfortunately that has become the
41:10 industry standard i'm going to go step off my box now well and apparently harder missions are more expensive and
41:18 so you know if as you put like challenge over challenge over challenge over
41:23 challenge and you are trying to impact like the hardest populations that costs
41:29 more per impact and that is just like the opposite approach where we should really
41:35 be celebrating these organizations who are doing the hardest lifts
41:43 you know one thing that kind of strikes me every time we talk about that word
41:48 that doesn't even need to to get uttered again because it's it's a meaningless word
41:53 whoever invented it we shouldn't be talking about it ... but really what it comes down to is like
42:00 trust and control so do you trust where your money is going
42:06 and do you allow the skilled professionals that do this all of the time
42:11 to take that investment and go and use it for good
42:16 what is the good the good could be making sure that they pay their rent so that they you know have a location for a
42:24 center to serve their clients whatever it is but like if you don't trust that the organization
42:31 is going to ... steward your gift i think you need to ask why and should
42:37 you even be partnering with that organization ... i think one of the things you know
42:43 that we can look at in this like kind of future of philanthropy space ... is really these more authentic partnerships
42:51 ... you know how can we like create ... like a bigger and better ... collaborations uh
42:59 than we've seen you know in the past couple of decades and i think that ... i think that trust is is a big component
43:06 of that i want to talk for a minute to like i'm as we're talking about the future of
43:11 philanthropy i'm really excited about kind of shifting or turning upside down our
43:19 whole nonprofit model which i'm gonna be a little spicy
43:24 here i believe is classist and sexist and racist which is
43:30 ... rich people who are on the boards
43:36 and then nonprofits pay not very well which then
43:43 means that in order to hold that non-profit job you either need to live on
43:50 the edge in an uncomfortable way or you need to be married or ha or have some
43:55 kind of other financial support and that it has always been fascinating to me
44:00 looking at like not only looking at what the gap is between your highest paid employee and your lowest paid employee
44:07 but what's that gap when you look at the board like who's the highest wage earner on the board and what's the
44:14 difference between them and your frontline worker who's really carrying out the mission vision values on a
44:20 day-to-day basis what do you all think about it
44:33 i can tell you it's you first there's a lot there um
44:38 and [Music] there is a divide i mean i i'll speak personally for myself
44:44 ... i've gone into a lot of very white spaces a lot of very
44:50 wide privilege spaces and i back to the worthy part have not felt worthy i've not felt x y and z but i've
44:58 also been able at least with the organization i work with to vocalize that been been like something's not
45:03 right here and we were able to go through a strategic plan to do better and continue to do better um
45:09 the trend that and i hope that we can encourage non-profits and boards is to
45:16 start diversifying your boards in a myriad of ways like ... one thing is boards i hope will not require a fee
45:25 essentially like oh let's let's you know you can join our board but also you have to pay
45:30 x amount of dollars at the end of this this this year, I... I would also hope that
45:35 we can diversify in age like why can't we have programs where an older let's say an older board member can mentor a
45:42 younger board member and bring them along in the process so that they can learn what it is to be on board what is
45:47 this what is governance what is all this other stuff ... there there's there's so much opportunity there i think you know
45:53 one low-hanging fruit is if your board does not reflect the community you serve like
45:59 what's going on there what's happening there like we really need to talk about that and when it comes to staff i think
46:06 it's just we need in our region to pay these amazing staff members more um
46:12 because a lot of the work that our beautiful nonprofits do is they build relationships they build
46:18 relationships and those relationships are key and if you don't pay your staff and then they leave that relationship's
46:24 gone and then it takes time to rebuild that relationship and try and get the work done in honor of the mission so
46:30 it's just it's just so important to to do this and i see stanley going off in the chat so yes yes
46:38 everybody we all need to get together soon
46:43 deal just super quickly i agree i think we could have a whole other conversation
46:49 about that ... but your ... board members can also just be your
46:55 donors so i think really make sure that your board members are there to fully
47:00 serve as board members and if they're just there for you know that 10k gift at the end of the
47:06 year they should be a donor of yours not a decision maker so that's an easy way to
47:12 sort of you know thinking and dismiss and open up a seat to somebody else um
47:18 and then i also think you know like value of work right like if you have people that have expertise in
47:24 fundraising that have big networks of ... you know people that might give 25
47:31 each but there are they know a bunch of friends like that is a board you know that could be a board member as well so
47:38 making sure that you are looking at ... you know the diversity of the type of
47:43 talent that you can invite into your board kind of helps you sort of open up
47:50 what your board could look like ... so yeah i uh
47:56 so take a step back you know we are all thought leaders in non-profit land and
48:04 so if you had to choose one thing that becomes reality in the
48:10 future of philanthropy what would it be
48:17 oh ... release of ego
48:22 i just i feel like that you know when i talk about relationships and i talk about you know
48:29 our social sector and different personalities working with different personalities
48:35 it can get in the way of what is true and good and that's trying to help those folks that are you know maybe the most
48:42 vulnerable or may need the most support and i see
48:48 personally and i'm speaking from my heart it's just there are so many organizations that do really great but how can we do better
48:55 when we come together and work with each other ... how can we think creatively ... but at the same time that also means
49:02 that we need more resources so folks have the time to you know perhaps look
49:07 up out of their silos and be like hey oh you're doing that over there cool how can we collaborate and uplift each other
49:13 ... so it's it's a larger system of that ... where resources need to be plentiful
49:19 ... for that to happen but it is that would be my hope ... I... I just feel
49:25 like ego gets in the way but if we can have resources to help our our workers
49:30 help our our sector ... i think and, I... I see i see it happening ... where a lot of
49:37 ... efforts to come together ... i think we can just do better by by the people that need it most
49:42 love it i've been a big fan of this concept of
49:48 the democratization of philanthropy ... and what i mean by that is that i
49:54 feel like organizations really create exclusivity around a hierarchy of ability to donate ... so
50:02 the more you're able to donate the more exclusive you are to the organization's inner circle
50:08 ... and i always tell this story of my great aunt mary like she basically lived you know she she worked for the the
50:15 catholic church for a very long time so she was also like on the very low low
50:20 earner spectrum she lived in low income housing as a senior ... but she always gave five dollars like a month to her
50:26 favorite cat organization she always had the meanest cat so i don't know how that like panned out correctly
50:31 ... but she always gave five dollars to a cat organization every every single
50:36 month she found that money she couldn't always afford groceries she was in low income housing but she still like really
50:41 believed in always giving back and i'm always i've just been struck over the years how
50:47 philanthropy almost has become a hobby for the elite instead of an
50:52 opportunity to show how communities can really invest in solutions together and how we own that solution together and
50:59 the power that we can do the power of change that we can make together without just the select few
51:06 and so i just love ... and yeah the state of san marcos the foothill campaign jordan exactly was
51:12 that exact kind of like example that came to mind for me this year ... by the way to say the san marcos
51:18 or the foothills forever campaign just got a recognition for afp's ... a special recognition for afp's national
51:23 philanthropy day so we're very happy to acknowledge them for that but yeah i think there's just like this really great opportunity and this is what i
51:30 would love for the future of philanthropy is for philanthropy we need to be for everybody and for everybody to feel that they are just as important as
51:37 you know the five dollar donor is just as important as the 20 000 donor and they get the same access and they get
51:43 the same opportunities to touch the mission and feel connected to the mission ... and so that that's that
51:50 that's what i would really hope for in the future
51:55 what's your one wish colette um
52:00 you know i was thinking it similar where that everybody felt equally welcome to
52:07 participate ... you know we started this conversation talking about
52:12 ... you know jordan had to take his tie off to get more comfortable and you know Emily is walking around
52:18 trying to be more masculine and you know to to her gender expression and like
52:24 ... you know how can we create rooms
52:31 virtual rooms physical rooms metaphorical rooms um
52:37 that that people are feeling like welcome and and want to want to come in
52:43 and support ... and that can be that five dollar donor or that no money donor who wants to use
52:50 other skills and that are very valuable and and help ... or even if you don't
52:56 have like a skill that you know that you want to use just showing up sometimes
53:02 and you know holding a sign or holding a hand of somebody who's holding a sign is just as important as
53:10 the people that are on you know the microphone speaking so ... making sure that people feel welcome and included in
53:18 the process ... would be my would be my wish
53:23 love that i love that everyone who's here with us put some
53:28 questions for our panelists in the chat we have a really incredible
53:34 wealth of knowledge and innovation ... alongside of us so so put those
53:41 things in the chat um
53:47 thank you thank you jeff my friend jeff green um
53:54 yeah and i think jeff's like jeff is always very insightful and he knows that um
54:00 and i'm very grateful for his presence here today i think one of the interesting parts about this comment like the good news is that grassroots
54:06 progressive foundations like have been have been building this genera this alternative for
54:11 for generations and you know you're right they have however like they don't get a seat at the table to share that and i
54:17 think that that's one of the things that i think would actually behoove the industry in general
54:23 is to allow these small organizations to seat at the table but going but instead of going like oh you're just a volunteer
54:29 run organization like or you're only a four-year-old organization like you don't you don't know how to you don't
54:34 actually know how to do this or this is the way it's always been done so until you're starting to do it this way you're not actually a mature organization um
54:42 and i yeah i would agree with that i think like there is a lot of innovation especially not the the startup nonprofit
54:49 sector for sure ... and it would be curious to see like how we can actually get those larger organizations to sit
54:55 down with those smaller organizations to listen for a while, I... I mean i love that
55:00 i with juneteenth with healing justice with the work that we've been doing equity for sb we've been working for six
55:07 years and it wasn't until george floyd died and had been it was murdered sorry
55:13 murdered and all of a sudden my phone is getting blown up about well jordan you do all this work you do all this work and it's
55:20 like where where were you where were you two three years ago and so i think there is an opportunity and
55:26 unfortunately it had to be through not just george floyd's murder but a series of murders ... on top of a
55:33 pandemic for us to get to a point where people are like oh it's all interconnected oh we actually need to
55:39 look at systemic racism and oh we need to uplift these small organizations because the work that they do and the
55:45 work that i see my friends do is is amazing and tiresome and they are
55:50 exhausted and they need that support i just had to say that ... so not so bad so
55:57 we have one question in the chat what's the most unexpected challenge you faced while being involved in causes that give
56:03 back to people
56:10 internal fighting ... was probably the most unexpected
56:18 challenge ... i have many examples of that i probably won't even use an example i'll just go generic
56:24 ... but that is to say ... you know when you think you're all on
56:29 the same team either with donors board members staff members and you're all driving toward a cause ... that you
56:36 believe in ... and then there's you know ... internal um
56:42 dynamics that keep you from that deliverable ... that has been
56:48 quite unexpected ... for me in my my years especially in lgbtq plus uh
56:55 causes ... just because there are so many different people
57:00 ... that you're serving when you're when you're serving people
57:06 i'm currently reading samantha powers memoir ... and she had said something that really
57:12 is kind of struck working working in this sector and she was like just because we're not on just because we're
57:17 on the same team does not mean we are of kindred spirit and it was like yep nope that's that's exactly what
57:24 it is like we might be on the same team like we might be all trying to make the world a you know a better place like within our own realms but like man we
57:31 all seem to have very different approaches and opinions on the on the right way to do that and are not necessarily willing
57:38 to ... to open to open ourselves up to seeing
57:43 our colleagues perspectives of ways that they may do it differently too
57:49 and i think there's you know beauty in diversity of thought and ... you know how
57:55 you're coming to the table and and different like approaches for solving ... you know the world's problems certainly
58:02 ... but it's i think that's it's like the internal ... fighting that creates the the challenges
58:09 to deliverables ... that to me was like you know probably the most unexpected thing
58:15 yeah a really really wise colleague of mine who left the earth for his next mission far
58:22 too soon his name is tony skinner and he always said that every time he enters a
58:28 room his job is to focus on the 70 that everyone agrees on and and focus on
58:34 that and build on that because there's always seventy percent
58:39 ... okay one final question ... it's a it's a real softball so just
58:45 get ready for this ... how do we try and shift the culture of the organization to still include the wide range of board
58:52 members but still put their foot down to make them check their egos and stop the elitist attitudes but without losing the
58:58 members who are usually the wealthiest
59:06 everyone's just laughing drop them hard
59:12 what are we doing to collect's point earlier let them just become donors versus board members i think that's a great i think it's an
59:18 amazing strategy because like there is i think board members need to be there
59:24 to advise consent and support so if they're if your board members aren't
59:29 actually like volunteering to execute your mission they don't know about your mission
59:34 therefore they can't actually adequately advise on it and support it ... and i always have this philosophy of
59:40 those closest to the problem or closest to the solution and so that being our staff members
59:45 are closest to the problem that the organization is solving therefore they are closest and more likely to have a
59:50 viable reasonable solution ... and i think that there, I... I feel like with board members and unfortunately we
59:57 this goes really heavily into like white fragility and all the lessons that we've gotten out of white fragility recently
1:00:03 is they don't want to feel attacked they're like they're wrong but i think that there's an opportunity to just have a that hard conversation with your board
1:00:09 of like this is what we as an organization need from our board members in order for us as team members to be
1:00:16 successful are you willing to do this and if not that's totally fine we would love to have you in this like supportive
1:00:22 donor role ... but this is just what we think we need in this next chapter to be successful
1:00:30 i'd say just really quickly ... democratize your
1:00:36 organization's role roles and functions so everybody's goal shouldn't be to be a
1:00:43 board member and you shouldn't feel the most important if you're a board member you
1:00:49 know how can you engage the rest of your community the rest of your supporters
1:00:56 the staff your future staff your potential staff ... you know slice down
1:01:02 all of the different definitions of who's in your organization and in your community
1:01:08 ... you know your board is helping you with vision ... financials ... and accountability but
1:01:15 that doesn't mean that they hold all of the power of your organization
1:01:20 and so then it gets more appealing to do other things right to be fun and be a donor and still have fun be included
1:01:29 yeah and one thing that we're we're doing again as a result of the you know murders of
1:01:35 george floyd at the santa barbara foundation we actually took a moment and said we need to do some internal work so
1:01:41 we created a diversity equity inclusion access task force which i'm a co-chair along with the board member but it's
1:01:48 nine board members nine staff members all over the place it's and i say all over the place in like
1:01:54 different areas and different aspects of our organization but the conversations
1:01:59 that we've had and the honesty that we've had has broken down barriers where staff members have just been like listen
1:02:05 let's talk and it's pushed us to actually do our own external audit
1:02:11 how do we land as a 93 year old organization in santa barbara county
1:02:17 in diversity equity inclusion and access more to come on that but essentially there, I... I think if there is if you have
1:02:24 leadership that's willing and open ... which can be a privilege for some organizations to have those
1:02:30 conversations and back and support you ... I... I i guess
1:02:36 push for it ... i never want to put people in a place where they fall in safe but it is a scary moment
1:02:41 and some of those conversations are really really hard but they're also educational and i see
1:02:46 ourselves as nonprofits ... as that gateway to help educate it's not our job
1:02:52 but we definitely should be helping to educate ... these board members
1:02:57 well and numerous i love what you said and i think the way to move a conversation from unsafe to vulnerable
1:03:06 is trust right and it sounds like that's really what y'all are building at the santa barbara foundation is like making
1:03:13 a trusted space to be vulnerable check your egos at the door and
1:03:18 you know all in service to doing your mission vision values better and like in
1:03:24 a more integrated fashion my friends we have come to the end
1:03:30 final parting thoughts words of wisdom ... etc
1:03:37 colette what you got for us ... i will say ... happy anniversary congratulations on
1:03:45 a decade that's incredible ... thank you for having me ... and to
1:03:51 everybody who participated like thank you for your interest in philanthropy in
1:03:57 the space of making the world a better place ... and and in ... you know local
1:04:04 solutions to big problems yeah ... i'll go next i mean there's so
1:04:11 much we could talk for hours on this this topic is always fascinating to me ... but again echo um
1:04:17 collects gratitude and also i saw i saw a quick comment about board and like my
1:04:23 board a board member has a friend that they wanted to join ... if you are able please ... invest in the time on
1:04:29 onboarding board members ... I... I think that that's a key element of you know
1:04:34 take the time get to know them build that relationship if you have that capacity ... because i think that will
1:04:41 help pay off in the end ... but those are those are my parting words among many i have a whole sheet of things
1:04:48 next time and i would part with just the idea um
1:04:55 that i know so many people on this call today a thank you so much for your time and effort and energy to be here today
1:05:01 but also i just want to make sure that like to remind you that you are you are in the good fight you are doing the good
1:05:07 work there are days where it's going to be hard there are months where it's going to be really hard but i also just
1:05:13 want to make sure that you know that you are making the world a better place you individually are making a difference and
1:05:18 you individually are incredibly powerful you are loved and you deserve the space
1:05:24 that you want to take up and so continue to do that
1:05:29 i love that all right y'all thank you friends