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Kayce Strader from Save Nine Consulting joins Zach this week to talk about the life cycle of a non-profit organization. Join them as they discuss what it looks like for an organization to be in each stage of the process and what it takes to move on to the next stage.
Show Notes
Kayce Strader from Save Nine Consulting joins Zach this week to talk about the life cycle of a non-profit organization. Join them as they discuss what it looks like for an organization to be in each stage of the process and what it takes to move on to the next stage.
Reach out to Kayce Strader:
savenineconsulting.com
Purchase the You Can Mentor book:
You Can Mentor: How to Impact Your Community, Fulfill the Great Commission, and Break Generational Curses
youcanmentor.com
Reach out to Kayce Strader:
savenineconsulting.com
Purchase the You Can Mentor book:
You Can Mentor: How to Impact Your Community, Fulfill the Great Commission, and Break Generational Curses
youcanmentor.com
Creators and Guests
What is You Can Mentor: A Christian Youth Mentoring Podcast?
You Can Mentor is a network that equips and encourages mentors and mentoring leaders through resources and relationships to love God, love others, and make disciples in their own community. We want to see Christian mentors thrive.
We want to hear from you! Send any mentoring questions to hello@youcanmentor.com, and we'll answer them on our podcast. We want to help you become the best possible mentor you can be. Also, if you are a mentoring organization, church, or non-profit, connect with us to join our mentoring network or to be spotlighted on our show.
Please find out more at www.youcanmentor.com or find us on social media. You will find more resources on our website to help equip and encourage mentors. We have downloadable resources, cohort opportunities, and an opportunity to build relationships with other Christian mentoring leaders.
You can mentor is a podcast about the power of building relationships with kids from hard places in the name of Jesus. Every episode will help you overcome common mentoring obstacles and give you the confidence you need to invest in the lives of others. You can mentor.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to the You Can Mentor podcast. Zach Garza here, and I am with my friend, Casey Strader from Save 9 Consulting. Casey, say hi.
Speaker 3:Hi, guys.
Speaker 2:Today, we're talking about nonprofit life cycles, which, yes, it's as exciting as it sounds. But I was introduced to Casey gosh. When did we meet Casey? 2000
Speaker 3:Yeah. 2015, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it's been almost 7 years now, and I didn't know what the heck I was doing. And Casey was introduced to me by my uncle, uncle Michael. And uncle Michael is a CEO of a pretty large oil company. And, actually, how I met Casey is I asked him for money.
Speaker 2:You know? Hey, uncle Michael. Could you give us a $1,000 here? 5,000? And he said, Zach, I am not gonna give you money, but what I am gonna do is I'm gonna allow you to hire Casey for whatever you want.
Speaker 2:And so I sat down with Casey over lunch. I think it was in Southlake.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And just from the very get go, like, it it was clear and obvious that you knew what the heck you were talking about. And I mean, she's she's helped us with strategic planning. She's helped run a, retreat for our board. She has taught me about the nonprofit life cycles. I mean, Casey has been instrumental in teaching me a ton about what I know in regards to running a nonprofit.
Speaker 2:So
Speaker 3:No. Thanks.
Speaker 2:You're welcome. You're welcome. So if, you guys wanna learn more, she also does a little bit of coaching, which I will allow her to talk about. But Save Non Consulting is is her deal, and I'll let her share about herself now. So, Casey.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, I appreciate so much that Michael introduced us and we I know Michael through we go to the same church and brought up 4 Runner to me. He was really excited about what 4 Runner was doing and wanted to connect us. And so what my business, has done for about the last 8 years now, I started out with grant writing and I started out helping non profits with grants. But I made a decision from very early on that I was going to be just as honest as I possibly could be with nonprofit organizations.
Speaker 3:So they would come to me and ask me to write a grant and I would tell them, please don't waste your money, like, you're not going to get this grant. They would say, why? And I would say, well, because, you know, a 100% of your board does doesn't give or you don't have a strategic plan or, you know, I would point out these holes in their application and they would say, well, can you help us with that? And so that's really where my business grew from. It started out as grant writing.
Speaker 3:I did my master's in public administration for nonprofit management at UNT And then I helped start a shared space, nonprofit center in Denton. And then when my husband and I started our family and, we had kids at home, I started doing the consulting and I had just absolutely loved it. And the Lord has, blessed my business and helped it be able to grow to meet the needs of, what nonprofits are looking for. And so what I've found is that there are all sorts of these pain points that nonprofits get to and they they can't figure out the next step. And so that's what I've loved helping with is, figuring out what that next step is.
Speaker 3:What is the next step toward being a thriving nonprofit? And then in the meantime, I've also done a certification as, a biblical life coach. So I do that and do that for, staff of nonprofits as well. And then I've done some certifications in the DISC personality analysis. So I do some team building for nonprofit staffs and boards with that as well.
Speaker 2:That's so awesome, Casey. Casey helped us do this thing called a logic model, which Mhmm. Whenever she first said, hey, Zach, you guys need to have a logic model. I had no idea what she was talking about.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And essentially what it is is it's a way to show potential funders and just anyone who wants to know more about your nonprofit, the results and, hey, like, here's how much we input, here's our success rate, and that thing has helped us maybe more than anything else that we have ever done. Just show supporters that we are good stewards with their funds. And so if anyone out there wants to advance their fundraising game and they do not have a logic model, I would highly encourage you guys to get one because it is probably raised for us, I mean, tens of 1,000 of dollars. So
Speaker 3:Yeah. I believe it. And I'm so encouraged to hear that. The thing that's awesome about a logic model is it puts all the things that you really believe about what you're doing and why on one piece of paper. And then you can share it and you can share it with anybody who can very quickly understand what you're putting in, what you're doing in terms of your activities and then what you expect that to actually change.
Speaker 3:Because a lot of nonprofits, they stop at this line where they just tell you what they do instead of telling you what they've changed. And crossing over that line and getting to the point where you can effectively measure and communicate, not just what you do but what you change, that's a game changer for fundraising.
Speaker 2:It's awesome. So, Casey, so here is what we're doing. Okay? We are creating a series. It's like 15 podcast episodes long.
Speaker 2:And the goal of it is if there's anyone out there who's leading a a nonprofit or wants to start one, we're gonna give them everything that we believe that they need to know in order to lead or start a nonprofit in the best possible way. And so today, what we're talking about is nonprofit life cycles. And whenever you shared this with me and with our board, I mean, it was just like it was just a game changer because I think for me it helped clearly articulate, hey, we're in stage x. And in stage x, we can assume that these things will happen. And it gave me this sense of, like, comfort.
Speaker 2:It gave me this sense of, like, oh my gosh, I am not alone. And it was just great. So if you could just kinda share with us what are the nonprofit life cycles just from a, like, 50,000 foot view. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So like you said, I think it's important to when you're going through these things, when you're going through these pain points to realize that they're just not unique to you. You know, there's nothing that has that, you know, overtaken your organization that's not common to all organizations. That everybody goes through these things and I think that does help to take away some of the fear and some of the stinging out of it. You know, we're able to talk about it in a way where, it's not just us and we're not broken, it's just something that we're going through. So those nonprofit life cycles from a a high up perspective, it's it's just kind of taking this view of an organization as something that's dynamic, it's always growing, it's always changing, but you always start with this idea.
Speaker 3:So a nonprofit always begins with either a problem or an idea. Somebody like yourself sees something that should be but it isn't yet and so you invent it. It doesn't exist before you do it and you invent it. And the nonprofit field is, just so, open to this. This is where this is where it all starts.
Speaker 3:Somebody sees a problem, they wanna fix it. Somebody has an idea and they just have to make it happen. So that's kind of the first life cycle is you've got this really passionate person who has this burden. They they have to go fix this thing and they gather around the people who are already closest to them and they say, okay, what are we gonna do? How do we do this?
Speaker 3:The second phase is that startup where you start to figure out, okay, so we've gotta have something called board members and we've got to do something called incorporate, you know, you start to figure out a few of the blanks, you you go through some of that very early on formalizing, but then you get into this next stage, which is where you move out of that and you get into a phase of a lot more growth. And that growth, you know, it looks different for every organization in terms of the speed, how quickly that happens. A lot of that depends on how, much you are accomplishing or how attractive, you know, what you're doing is. There are some nonprofits who who serve this very small nation and there are some who, you know, people are just throwing money at you because of this problem that you're solving. So that growth really varies from organization to organization, but usually if that organization stays together, it gets to this place, which is the 4th stage, which is maturity.
Speaker 3:And then in that maturity, you can either circle back and continue to grow or you can move into a 5th stage, which would be decline. And usually that decline ends in some sort of crisis for the organization, and of course not all of them get there. But that is something one of those life cycles in there.
Speaker 2:That's that's all of it. All of it right there. Yeah. So so, like, there's there's 5 life cycles and kinda what I wanna do is I kinda wanna go and we can use my nonprofit and we can kinda just kinda talk through each life cycle and kinda take a deep dive. Right?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So something to point out to
Speaker 3:at the beginning is this is not necessarily unique to nonprofit organizations. I feel like the things that we're gonna talk about and the concepts here, this is also with, you know, church plants or small businesses. There are some common themes here that I think can that can matter to people whether you're at a startup, nonprofit or not.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the first stage, the idea invention stage. Right? Yeah. And so I know for us, some of you guys might have heard our story, but we're a mentoring org and we primarily serve young men who are growing up without father figures present.
Speaker 2:Right? Mhmm. And so some of the descriptors for this stage is someone has a dream. Someone sees an issue, and they ask themselves, can this dream be realized? And most of the time, they they don't have any idea what a 501c3 is.
Speaker 2:They're not thinking about how to fundraise. They see a need and they just wanna go fix it.
Speaker 3:We gotta fix it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so for us, you know, for me, I I was a junior high football coach, and I had 60 kids on on my football team. I had just gone through my own experience with growing up without a father and forgiving him. And I just asked my team one day, hey, who in here comes from a home where there isn't a father figure present? And out of the 60 kids, about 45 of these kids' hands popped up.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And I was like, oh my gosh. There is a need. And and just like the Lord changed my life, I wanna help change their life. So so what was the first thing that I did? I started to spread the news.
Speaker 2:And I started to tell parents. I started to tell my friends, hey, there's all these kids here who have this, you know, common issue and what can we do about it?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it was like developing a vision, developing early support, identifying key supporters, whether that's people to hop on our board. It's just I I kinda created a team, right, to help me solve this issue.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So tell me what what some of the obstacles that you might find yourself in if you are in this first stage.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So that first stage, like you said, it always starts with that light bulb moment. You know, for you it was seeing 45 hands go up. For somebody else, it might have to do with animals. It might have to do with sharing the gospel in a closed country.
Speaker 3:Like, but there's always some kind of light bulb moment where you walk away thinking, okay, I I have to do something. And typically, what will happen then is you start to talk about that and just sort of naturally gather around you the people who say, yeah, we've got to do something about that. Like you said, it becomes this team when you get people around you who are either because they are so convinced by your own, like, old moment or they've had one or they just really love you. Because that's something that can happen as well. You can have this team around you that's around you not so much because maybe they are invested in mentoring, but they're invested in you.
Speaker 3:And so that's that's part of what can happen at the beginning is you get this really tight knit team. And, so there's a couple of obstacles to answer your question there. One is that that can be such an exciting time if you've ever been part of a, church plan. There can be something that's so exciting about being in something that's new and something that's different than this, like, established thing that there can almost creep in this fear of it getting too formal or this fear of it getting bigger or a fear of it changing from this very, like, exciting grassroots, you know, it's just us against the world. And there can be a little bit of resistance there to outside support.
Speaker 3:If it seems that that outside support is going to, you know, really change it or make it too official or, you know, too formal. So those are some things that can pop up there. But a theme that I'm gonna point out as we talk through all these cycles is is this idea of trust. And so what happens, especially right here at the beginning, is you have this very, very, very high degree of trust because this is a team of people that you know. The reason that they are around you supporting this idea is because they were already around you when you started talking about this.
Speaker 3:So typically what we see is when people, you know, start up a non profit is those first couple board members that 1st year, it's their closest friends or, you know, people that they work really closely with. It's people that they know really well. So we're talking about a super high degree of trust for that inner circle right at the beginning. And that can be really exciting, that can feel very affirming, that can feel so inclusive to the people who are in, but it can lead to the sphere of, well, if if we change, you know, if we grow, how will we do that and keep it this, you know, this type of feeling?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So for me, my people who I asked to be on my board was my college roommate, my current roommate, and a teacher who tied down the hall for me. And, like Yeah. I mean, all people who, for all intents and purposes, didn't care a lick about mentoring, but they cared a ton about me.
Speaker 3:They care about you. And, like And they probably hadn't been to, like, board source courses on how to be fair before.
Speaker 2:Exactly. I'm pretty sure that we met once in, like, maybe 2 years. But but and I think that this is what's so cool is, like, for every stage, it's like you need different people with different skill sets to help move the ball forward. And so Yeah. Like, during that season, those guys encouraged me.
Speaker 2:I mean, they they supported me as a person. But then as we started to get into the 2nd stage, which is the startup phase, I kinda had to ask those guys to step off and surround myself with people who could who could get me from stage 1 to stage 2 and then help prepare me to go from stage 2 to stage 3.
Speaker 3:Right. Absolutely. I've had the privilege of talking to just a couple of nonprofits at the stage where they were pre formalized. So, like, they've had this light bulb moment, they're running around telling everybody their story and somehow I've gotten connected to them before they have chosen board members. And it's been really cool to say, okay, time out.
Speaker 3:Like, you have this incredible burden. You've got to do something about it right away, but let's slow down enough to really evaluate who those first board members are going to be. And if we can take out some of those growing pains going from 1 to 2 or 2 to 3, then let's do that. And so let's talk about what kind of board members you need to have around you to get through those first couple of phases. Because the easiest, fastest on ramp is ex roommate, current roommate, teacher down the hall or 2nd cousin, 3rd cousin, you know, workout buddy.
Speaker 3:But if they don't have a passion beyond supporting you, like, if they don't have a passion for the mission of the organization, then maybe they can support you in other ways and let's find some people who really really care not just about you but about what you're doing. And at the couple times that I've been able to do that, I think it's I think for the organizations there's been a really big impact because, I mean you tell me if I'm wrong, but were those difficult conversations to ask those people to step back and let someone else come on.
Speaker 2:Most definitely. Hey man, sorry about this, but I gotta find someone else.
Speaker 3:Yeah, That's just really hard and you don't wanna do it because they've been so supportive of you, but you also see that long term. It's not best for them or the organization because their care is for you, you know not necessarily for the mission, which is not wrong, but I think if we can start out with people who are connected not to the personality but to the mission, then we can cut out some of those kind of painful points along the way.
Speaker 2:Yeah. For sure. So as as we started to head into the second stage, which is the startup phase. Yeah. I have the need.
Speaker 2:I have what I think is the solution. I have a team. And then I'm just like, how the heck are we gonna make this happen? Let me
Speaker 3:do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. What are we gonna do? Right? And, like, people started talking to me about 501c3. I I had no idea what that was.
Speaker 2:They started talking to me about how to fundraise. I am you know, you have to have policies and procedures and da da da da. You have to have an agenda. I was like, what's an agenda? I had no clue what it and so but it's like we had to figure out how to operate this thing.
Speaker 2:Like, we had an idea. Okay. Now let's do something about it. Yeah. And we had so much energy, so much passion, but just we had no clue what we were doing in regards to, you know, governance or systems or management.
Speaker 2:So yeah. So for us, it it was just like, okay. I don't like to be formal. I don't like to have all of these things, but I know that I need it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:How are we gonna make this happen?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I feel like there is always a wall that a founder hits in this startup stage, which is where you dream about mentoring on a huge scale and then all of a sudden you're not mentoring at all. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Like you were really, really, really excited about solving this problem and then all of a sudden you get moved to this middle position where you are now working really, really hard on a lot of things that don't really feel connected to mentoring, but they are creating a platform where way more people can mentor than ever before. So I feel like there's always a wall that founders hit when they get into this governance policy structure systems area where they're no longer directly 1 on 1 solving the problem and they are instead investing tons and time and of and tons of time and energy into what is not necessarily their calling, but are the obstacles that are in the way. And they haven't yet seen that come to fruition either. Like, I know there was a stage there where you were spending so much time on stuff in the office, you know, it it wasn't mentoring, but at the same time, it wasn't yet this fully fledged nonprofit where there were tons of people mentoring either. So it almost feels like some steps backwards, you know, like I used to be really connected to all these kids and I was helping them and now I spend all my time reading these books about how to make this system work or I'm working on this strategic plan and I don't know why.
Speaker 3:You know, there's that disconnect there for a little while in the startup stage and I think that can it's so important that you do have all that energy and passion because it kind of carries you through and you get over that wall. But if you don't have somebody speaking into that and telling you, hey, this is common. Like, this is what happens to all founders and it's not because you're doing it wrong. It's just that this part takes a while and it's an investment. You might not see the return on that for a little while but you will.
Speaker 3:Like when you have mentors, consultants, people being able to speak into you, I think it helps get over that wall of going from this big light bulb moment to, okay, now I'm an executive director. And that wasn't necessarily my aim.
Speaker 2:Right. Like, oh my gosh. Now I have to fundraise. And, like, now I don't see any of any of our kids anymore. And so, like, here, like, for us, this is where we hired our very first part time staff member.
Speaker 2:Right?
Speaker 3:Was that easy for you?
Speaker 2:No. Because I was giving up what I was created to do. Right? I was like, oh my gosh. Like, I wanna mentor all of the kids.
Speaker 2:I don't wanna teach this guy how to mentor. So so so how how do or how have you seen founders get over that wall that that they have to go from doing the thing that they started it for to now they're teaching others how to do it?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Now they're building. And I see it as like going from being a 1 on 1 person to being the builder of this building where the thing happens. Right? So instead of mentoring 1 on 1, now you're spending all your time working on a as a analogy, like an air conditioning system in a building where now the mentors and the mentees will come because the building's better, but it doesn't really seem like, you know, you're doing that much.
Speaker 3:So I think things, that I've seen in the past that really help is connecting to older mentors who have done this. People that not necessarily older, but more experienced people who say, yeah, I've been there. But I think another thing that's important, there's a big fear there of relinquishing any ownership. And I think part of having a vision to get where you're going to go is seeing with humility, we can't get there if I own everything. Like I have to be able to relinquish some of this control and I have to be able to share it among people that I've gathered around who I trust.
Speaker 3:And one thing that that can do that I think is really valuable is it can free you up to give a small percentage of your time to staying connected. I don't know if we, if you remember this, but I remember one time we were talking and I asked you when the last time it was that you mentored a kid. And and I said, if you can free up an hour a week so that you can do that, I think that that would have, you know, huge returns. Mhmm. So what that requires is giving up some control of something because you could do something with 80 hours a week, I'm sure.
Speaker 3:But relinquishing that long enough to stay connected to why you're doing what you're doing, I think is very important.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Hey. Can you just kinda share with us what is founders syndrome?
Speaker 3:It can it can mean a couple different things. When I think of founders syndrome, I think of the person who, really sees the nonprofit as an extension of themselves, like as their baby, like we talked about. And it's something that they cannot let go. It's almost like being a helicopter parent over the organization. Like you can't let it grow and change because you want to be connected to every single ounce of it.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:And as long as you require that total control the way you had at the light bulb moment, then it's never going to be able to really grow and take on a life of its own outside of you. And so what you can see sometimes happen is you have a founder who's maybe still on the board and maybe it's 10 or 20 years later and this founder is still trying to kinda micromanage around the board, around the staff, around every part of the organization. But then you also this can work in some other ways. You can have board members who are so loyal to that founder that it's hard for them to speak up, to disagree, to to take that organization in a new direction. So it can it can affect everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Why I asked that is because we're about to talk about the 3rd stage. Right? And that's the stage of growth. And Yeah.
Speaker 2:I know for me, I had a real issue with letting go. I mean, I was so hard to, you know, hand off hand off this thing that I created. And but I had to learn how to delegate. And I had to learn how to hire capable people who had a great heart, who were talented, and just let them go. And, like, yes, in the startup phase, like, I had a board and they they helped me tremendously.
Speaker 2:Like, they were my first, you know, they were kind of my first staff even though, you know, it was 100% volunteer. I mean, they helped put together policies and procedures and things like that. But then we got our first staff member. And what really propelled us into this third stage was my board drilling into me. Zach, you need to hire well, you need to equip them, and you have to let go of control.
Speaker 2:You have to learn how to delegate. So why don't you just kinda talk to us a tad bit more in-depth about the 3rd stage, which is Yeah. Growth.
Speaker 3:So that growth phase, that's where we go from saying how do we make this work to how do we make this really viable? How do we make this thrive? Because now you've seen you can make it work, you can survive. But this is going from surviving to thriving. So this is going from, we can have a little banquet that gets us enough money to have like a part time admin to, okay, we can begin to multiply our impact.
Speaker 3:And this is where your mission and programs really start to take hold. They start to make an impact in the community and what you might see sometimes is that the demand for your services starts to outstrip what you can easily supply. So then it becomes this big question of how do we grow? How do we grow sustainably? And I I love that your board did that for you because this requires everybody to have that growth mindset, not just the board, not just the staff who come on, but the founder who says, okay, if we're really gonna grow, I can't just multiply my time my time times 3 or times 4.
Speaker 3:Like, I have to start to divide the things that I am personally overseeing, responsible for, and, you know, the things that I am touching. And I have to start to distribute that amongst a a more formalized staff and more formalized processes.
Speaker 2:Well, and like, I know for us, whenever we first started, I mean, we had a couple people on staff, 2, 4, and all of them had like 5 jobs. Right? Like, okay, you're you're admin, but you're also, you know, volunteer coordinator, but you're also program director and you're also fundraiser. And it's like, whenever you start to hit this stage, it's like, 1, for us, I think our budget went from 200 to about 4 to 600. But also what happened is we were able to hire more people to kinda specialize.
Speaker 2:Right? Okay. Now you're going from having 5 jobs to having 2 jobs. Mhmm. And we were, like, really able to create a strategic plan.
Speaker 2:And out of those goals, out of the things that we said that we had a desire to accomplish, we could create job descriptions. And we could hire not people that I liked, but I could hire people who fit that role super well. Mhmm. And whenever we got those, I mean, it was just a game changer.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It is once you get there. But what you pointed out in the meantime probably represented several pain points along the way.
Speaker 2:Oh, for sure.
Speaker 3:Where you where you go from having a couple of people who do 5 jobs to a bunch more staff. You don't know that you need those more staff until those couple of people say I quit or I hate this or you've got to hire more people. There are these pain points all along the way. So when we talk about growing pains, there are things that are typically just, they're just unavoidable. You don't know what to, what pot on the stove to pay attention to first till it boils over.
Speaker 3:And then it's like, oh, well that's our biggest problem now, let's do that one. In the growth phase, I think you have that. You've got 10 pots on the stove. They're all cooking. You can't keep them all perfectly adjusted at all times.
Speaker 3:And so, what happens is you have staff start to burn out. Okay. Well, how do we address that? How do we keep them engaged in the mission when not just you are now removed from the actual today mentoring, but a lot of your staff are too. And so much of the time in the growth phase, your staff comes from your volunteers.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Because you know that they're there and you know that they love what you're doing. So you hire them on and they're super pumped about that. And then 2 weeks later they say, all I do is look at excel. Like, what what did I do?
Speaker 3:Like, what when was the last time that I helped somebody? You know, and so, I think a big part of the founder's job in the growth phase is to keep everyone connected to the purpose and how their work impacts your the change that you're creating in the community. I think that's a big, a big part of the founder's job is to keep that momentum there. And then like you said, you start to formalize a lot of things, you get a strategic plan, but that was probably painful. You probably needed one before you had it.
Speaker 3:Right? And so you probably needed one really badly before you had it and then it's figuring out how to do it and then how to make one that works for you. And then when you start to formalize a strategic plan, you start to ask questions that you didn't have to ask before. And then you have some board members who say, wait, that's that's what we do. That's how we do that.
Speaker 3:Well, I was here because I thought we did it this way. And so, as you start to formalize things, you have to automatically narrow down the scope, of what you're doing, why you're doing it, who you're serving, just so that you can stay focused. And I think that that's something that can be it can be kind of a painful, messy process for a lot of non profits.
Speaker 2:Well, and, I mean, if you've remembered this stage for me, it was I mean, I for 3 to 4 years, I was in I mean, I was in the thick of it. Just trying to figure it out. I had to figure out how to handle my board. Mhmm. I had to figure out how to take care of my staff.
Speaker 2:I had to figure out how to hire. I had to figure out how to set culture. And so, I mean, I'm a former teacher and now No.
Speaker 3:It's not. Like, rewind 3 years from one of those points. Did you have anything to do with that? Like, did you have any idea that 45 kids raising their hands meant that you would have to figure out how to resolve conflict under
Speaker 2:the staff. Yeah. Like, okay, Zach. Like, congratulations. You have a passion.
Speaker 2:You have a heart. Now go run a staff meeting. And I'm just like, what? Like, what the heck are you talking about? Like, this is not what I signed up for.
Speaker 3:Go go create an agenda. Go figure out liability insurance.
Speaker 2:Go email that. Liability insurance. Yeah. Drive me crazy.
Speaker 3:So so what I'm saying is this growth phase, there's a lot of growth that happens, but all of that growth pretty much is born out of something not fitting before. You know, you think I'm a little kid, I know our daughter, it's like, oh, you have so many shoes and then one morning she wakes up and it's like, you have zero shoes. Like, all of a sudden, none of them fit and you've gotta go start from ground 0 and okay, you need tennis shoes, you need this, you need that. It's the same way in the nonprofit. It's like you look around, you've kind of hit this cool plateau.
Speaker 3:You're like, man, we're really doing it. And then the next day you show up and nothing fits and you've got to figure out how to get through that next phase of growth. And I wanna come back to that idea of trust that we talked about before. When you're in that very first phase, there is such a high degree of trust. What happens in the growth phase is as you add people, you end up a lot of times with the kind of people who have been there and the people who are new.
Speaker 3:Right? And so you have these varying levels of trust. Trust from people to the ED, trust from the board to the staff, like you have all of these dynamic levels of trust and as an ED, you've gotta navigate that. So you've got board members maybe who have been here for 4 or 5 years who feel like they've put in the blood and sweat and tears and then you have a new board member who's really excited who says, well, why do we do it this way? Like we should be doing it this way.
Speaker 3:Okay. Well, you've got a really different trust dynamic there and then you may have staff who have been there since they wore 7 halves and now you have staff members coming on who are coming into a much more large established formal organization. You're gonna have really different levels of of trust there. And so I think managing trust is kind of one of those biggest hidden responsibilities in an AD in this space.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Yeah. And I mean, 2 of my favorite books, the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni and the Speed of Trust by Stephen Covey. I mean, just, I don't know if there's anything that's more important than trust.
Speaker 3:So Yeah, absolutely. And Lencioni is one of my favorite authors in this area. And and I think when you talk about this growth phase and these pain points, a lot of times what you see coming out are those dysfunctions. Okay. Well, as our staff team has doubled, how are we doing at accountability now?
Speaker 3:How committed are people? You know, you start to look at those 5 assumptions and I recommend that book to anyone. I love that book. It all starts with trust. That's his, you know, foundational issue and that's the first place that you see things starting to starting to crack in that growth phase.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I also know and we did a podcast on this previously, but this is also where you kinda go from a founding board to board that's focused on how to govern. And so if you guys wanna learn more about that, then check out the episode on that. Either it's before or it's about to come out. I don't know the order, but it's all good.
Speaker 2:Alright. So let's talk about the 4th stage, the maturity stage, the oh my gosh. Are we gonna make it for the long haul? Like, how can we sustain? How can we maintain?
Speaker 2:How can we continue to provide relevant high quality services?
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Yeah. This one is so important. This is kind of the dream spot. This is where everybody wants to get to.
Speaker 3:But I think that there are, you know, there's some parts of the growth phase that are always gonna be included here, like, places where you're always going to be trying to figure out how to grow. This is a phase, growth phase, amaturity phases where I think tools like the logic model can be so important because we're starting to not just formalize what you're putting in and how you're doing it, but you're also starting to formalize why. Like what are our really, like, bedrock underpinning theories about why we're doing it this way instead of this way? Or why we use this curriculum instead of this curriculum? And when we talk about maintaining our edge, how well are we doing at measuring our impact in the community?
Speaker 3:And something that I think is important across these two phases going from the growth phase to the, maturity stage is that if you aren't measuring earlier on, then you lose that opportunity for a baseline. When you lose some of those opportunities for measuring longer term impact, if you wait until you're later on in this maturity phase, you may have a lot of track record behind you that you just didn't record because you weren't, you know, measuring. And so, that's why I encourage even really young nonprofits to use tools like the logic model. So that they are actively measuring what are we changing? How is it impacting our clients, our constituents, the people connected to them, the community?
Speaker 3:And then how is that changing year after year? And one thing that I'll say about that, there can be a lot of fear around that. There can be more fear, I think though implementing that into a maturity stage. And I talked to a non profit one time out of Dallas, it was a missions organization And I was working with them and they were, I mean, well into this maturity phase. They were very established nonprofit.
Speaker 3:And I was introducing to them the idea of the logic model and they were mostly on board, but there was one lady who's really, really quiet. And a couple hours in, she raised her hand and she said, excuse me, I'm really sorry to have to say this but what if we don't wanna know? And I said, well, help me out with that. What don't you wanna know? And she said, what if we don't wanna know how well it's working?
Speaker 3:Because we've been doing it this way for so long. What if we find out that this wasn't the best of it because they weren't measuring their impact. They were just saying what they did. They weren't talking about what they changed. And it ended up being a great conversation among their staff and they talked about how well, okay.
Speaker 3:Even if we've done it this way for a long time, I don't wanna, you know, they were personally saying like, I don't wanna keep going if we don't know that this isn't working. And so I think this maturity stage, it's important to be open to that measuring that continual improvement and not to get into a place where you just kinda sit back and let things go on autopilot.
Speaker 2:Yeah. One of my favorite quotes is it's by CS Lewis, but I'm I, you know, I I don't know exactly what it says, but it's something along the lines. There. It basically says, like, you're always either going forward or backwards. Like, you are never stagnant.
Speaker 2:And so I think during this stage, like, it is so important to ask those, okay, is there a better way? How can we get better? How can we continue to grow? Because if you do get stagnant, eventually, it'll be bad. And so I know for me, like, I mean, I'm totally against surveys and picking up a bunch of data.
Speaker 2:And, like, whenever I first started, I was like, I don't wanna do this. Like, this is hard work. I am in it for the heart. Like, I just wanna help kids. But what I learned is surveys and obtaining success rates and all of that stuff, like, that can help prove that you are a good steward.
Speaker 2:That can help prove that what you are, you know, pouring your time into is actually making a difference. And it shows you, hey, you know, in these 6 areas, we're killing it. But in these 2 areas, we could be doing better. In this one area, we're doing terrible.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. And we're gonna be transparent with you and we're gonna tell you.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 3:And I think that one thing that helps so much, this is growth and maturity, like you said a second ago, like, I care about the heart. There are those donors who will give because they hear one story about 1 boy. But then there are donors who say, okay, but times how many. Right? They wanna know not just that one boy was helped in that way, but but how many and how sustainable is this?
Speaker 3:How replicable is this? And then when you talk about major growth, you're talking about going to foundations.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Right.
Speaker 3:You're talking about going to trusts, where they don't want one story of what happened to one boy. They wanna know the total impact of all that is being invested. And so, when you wanna talk about, you know, cooking with gas, it's going from people who donate the $200 a year, $500 a year, $5,000 a year to foundations who come in and say, well, what would you do with $250,000? What would you do with a 1,000,000? And that's not to discredit the people who have given and sustained you and are still giving because that's so important.
Speaker 3:But you also look at, okay, if we really, really, really wanna grow and we want to sustain ourselves in this maturity phase, how do we go to, you know, those those larger gifts, those endowments, those those big grant requests and how do we make ourselves qualified for those?
Speaker 2:For sure. I know for me, most of the time when people give a large gift, which, you know, I consider to be 20,000 or above, they typically have a background in how to operate a business or something like
Speaker 3:that.
Speaker 2:And they always wanna know, Zach, how are you sustaining this? How are you creating a nonprofit that will outlast you? How are you going to scale it? And how can you ensure that you guys are gonna continue to improve. Right.
Speaker 2:Right. And they wanna know, like, hey, I wanna see your strategic plan. I wanna see your, you know, logic model because they wanna know that you are putting time into those things.
Speaker 3:Right. And I think it's the difference in a donor who gives because their heart was touched and a donor who gives because they truly see it as an investment. Mhmm. And what levels are very different. And we need both of those, they're both important.
Speaker 3:But I think what you, you know, what you've described and what I see most often is when you get to the level of donor who recognizes, okay, this is a significant amount of money. This is not something that I am just going to donate and forget. This is an investment because I care about x, y, and z problems and I wanna see them solved. Right. And they wanna go out and find the best solution creators.
Speaker 3:So, I think that things like a logic model, your strategic plan, how well you're doing in this growth phase into maturity is showing how worthy of an investment you are for these larger amounts to actually create the change that you and that donor want to see.
Speaker 2:Right. And I think in this stage, I mean, as an executive director, you're spending a bunch of time with your board. You're trying to figure out how to best operate and how to best, you know, lead this nonprofit in in to success. And we just talked about how sometimes there's a temptation just to get comfortable. Right?
Speaker 2:But also there's there is this temptation to rely too heavily on the executive and on the founder. So can can you just kinda talk about that talk about the danger of relying too much on the executive director or how the founder can separate personal identity from the nonprofit?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think this is critical to do. It's impossible to do at that first phase. Right? Because that's the reason that this is happening is the founder has had this light bulb moment and they have to make this happen and it's their personal connections.
Speaker 3:But I almost think about it in terms of circles, you know, when you're a really young non profit, the people you're connected to are the people you are connected to already as a person. It's not the nonprofit's connections, it's your connections. But as that nonprofit grows, it sort of grows out of that inner circle that is your personality and your connections, and it takes on a life of its own. The problem is when that is all based on the founder's personality or the founder's charisma or, you know, just who the founder is. If the founder is not constantly pointing back to the mission and also elevating some of those other board members and staff members.
Speaker 3:I think that that's key to keeping it from becoming all about that founder. So that as that circle grows and the connection there, you know, there's more connections, there's more money, there's more impact, there's more all of these things that that is not the founder's circle growing as well in terms of reputation or standing. That the founder is at times taking that step back, elevating other staff members, putting the spotlight on other board members, but especially keeping the focus on the mission and what that mission is accomplishing. So keep coming back to, you know, your, performance measurement. And instead of it always being about the founder sharing, well, here are the stories that I connected with or here's what I did.
Speaker 3:It's pointing to the organization as a whole and showing how it's grown far outside of what the founder ever could have done herself or himself.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's awesome. And if you don't do what we're talking about, you know, if you do get comfortable with the status quo and if you just kinda kinda chill, then you do unfortunately go from the 4th stage, which in a perfect world, we wanna continuously be in that 4th stage. Like, we wanna continuously be finding out ways that we can start to grow and then mature and then grow and mature, grow and and but if you don't do that, then you go into the 5th stage, which is Yeah. Decline.
Speaker 3:Yeah. The decline stage. And what's interesting is I think you can almost, like, shorten the loop and get into decline at any phase along the way. If you lose sight of the mission, if you get too discouraged in all of the hard uphill work that you're gonna have to do as a start up, There are some founders who they lose all their zeal and all their vision in the weeds. They either don't have the support they need or they just can't sustain building that organization.
Speaker 3:So I think you can enter into a decline phase, you know, 2 through 4. But I think what often happens is you see, a mature and pretty thriving organization settle back into that status quo and they get to some kind of critical point, where they get back to that, you know, those pain points are starting to come back up. And it could be that you have, you know, you go back to Lencioni, you may have people who lose focus on the results and they start to focus more on status and ego. And that can happen so often at an established nonprofit. You have people who no longer are committed.
Speaker 3:They don't hold each other accountable anymore. You have communication breaking down. And then I think what can happen a lot of times is, you know, we, we live in a fallen world. We have conflict. We heard each other.
Speaker 3:And if you have people who have worked together for a very long time and they haven't worked through conflict and they haven't worked through communication, you start to have this list of wrongs. Right? You have these these things that where you have ever widening kind of breaches among people if they're not resolved. And so I think that's something that can feed into a decline stage. And unfortunately, you know, at that point, you either address it, you figure out how to turn it around, or it's a a closing kind of situation.
Speaker 2:Yeah. There's a lot there, Casey. That's so good. I just I don't know why, but I just love talking about non profit life cycles. I mean I know.
Speaker 3:Well, I think one thing that is so reassuring about it is it's like you can see yourself and you can see okay. Like, I'm not alone. And there's, you know, so many other organizations who have gone through this and that's honestly one of the most kind of encouraging things I feel like I can ever say when I'm talking with Eds. You and I've had this conversation a couple of times where I say, like, you're not doing it wrong. Like, just because things might be there might be some pain points or just because this feels like too tight right now, you're not doing it wrong.
Speaker 3:And just seeing the relief in an ed's eyes because they're they're pouring their heart and soul out there working so hard that I think there can be so much encouragement when the road is not smooth. And I think just telling someone the road is supposed to be rocky and it's rocky for everyone just sort of takes the takes the trauma out of walking up it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. For sure. Kind of for us, I mean, I I just handed over our our nonprofit to the guy who is my number 2, Steven. Yeah. And I mean, we've been in this transition, period for about 6 weeks now.
Speaker 2:And for the first 2, 3, 4 weeks, I was freaking out because I was just, like, trying to give him all the information. Like, Steven, you need to do this and this and this and this and this. Yeah. And finally, it just hit me. I was like, man, he he's gonna have all of these things, all these, you know, I created, like, you know, a bunch of lists.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But at the end of the day, he's gotta figure it out on his own. And I can help him. I can mentor him. I can, you know, help try to guide him, but he's gonna lead in a totally different way than me.
Speaker 2:And there's just some things that you won't know until you experience.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:And so, like, I can, like, you know, I can have all the books, I can have all of the podcasts, but at the end of the day, the best teacher is experience.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Absolutely. And I think it comes back to that idea of trust, you know, full circle back around again. It's, like, do you trust that this person is going to persevere and and figure it out and handle the organization well, even if he doesn't have every single detail that he has a heart for the mission and that he's going to, you know, continue in the work, but that he's not going to be you. And and trust in a in a greater way, trust in the Lord.
Speaker 3:That the Lord has a heart for this organization and that he wants it to continue. And that the the, you know, and I think this is kinda comes back to a core issue for founders is did this work because of me or did this work because of God? And if it were because of God, it's gonna keep working and I can move on to what I've been called to do and I can do so with freedom because I can trust not only the people around me, but especially in the Lord and that he will continue the good work that he can do.
Speaker 2:That's a great word, Casey. Alright. If you guys would like to connect further with Casey, which I strongly encourage you to do, you can find her at save9consulting.com. Yeah? That's it.
Speaker 3:No question mark at the end.
Speaker 2:Save 9 Consulting. Go get wisdom from Casey. She's amazing. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to speaking with you soon.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Of course. If you guys missed everything today, you missed out, but remember this, you can mentor and lead a nonprofit.