Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions, and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories all to create an impact uprising.
So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabbit fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
So let's get started.
Hey Jon.
Hey B. I mean, it's a day that we get to talk about and center one of our core values at We Are For Good. So it's definitely a good day around here. And that value we're talking about is disrupt, grow, adapt, repeat, say it again with me, right friends. I mean, this is really a plan for how do you future proof our strategies for organizations? And this is a replay from a panel we had at the Virtuous, Responsive Nonprofit Summit. But y'all, it was so good, we had to bring it to the podcast to give it the airwaves and really the time and attention that it deserves. Because look, if you're looking for insights of how to future proof, what does that even mean, right? So this rockstar panels, we have got this topic covered. We're going to be talking everything from leveraging tech to building our resilient teams fostering innovation. What does that really look like and mean, to discovering actionable approaches to ensure our nonprofits remain agile and sustainable and impactful, and heck, places we actually want to work and pour into too. So I'm so excited for this one.
undefined gotta pull a quote your favorite quote from Jurassic Park to tee up our panelists. Hold on to your butts, because this conversation and their council is so unbelievably good and helpful. It's a pleasure to introduce Amy Freitag. She's the president of the New York Community Trust, Nelvin Jonson, formerly the development officer at the Bowery Mission, now at Feed the Children. Erin Davison, she's the president and CEO at Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Southwest Louisiana, and my dear friend Brooke Richie Babbage at Bending Arc Consulting, if you are ready to future proof your organization, this is the playbook to get it done. Enjoy friends.
Let's talk about the case for disruption. And Amy, I'm going to go to you first, because I think a lot of people think of these historic organizations as sort of being stuck in the past, and you have done the exact opposite. And I wanted you to talk a little bit about some of the hallmarks of becoming a future proof organization, because you are stewarding this 100 plus year old organization and making it so relevant to the now talk to us about that.
I am so excited to be here, and you know, I love talking about this more than anything. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm super excited to spend time with Nelvin, Erin and Brooke. So grateful for this look. I'm just super honored to be the president of this extraordinary organization, one of the oldest community foundations in the country, one that was carefully constructed by my predecessors to be future proof. And they did that, I think, by being innovative and innovative over 100 years. For example, I don't think we talked about this before news flash, 1931 the first donor advised fund. Yay, yeah. And now look, you know, talk about having a seismic impact on philanthropy. 2 million funds across the country, held by public charities, including 800 community foundations. So you know, that's why, actually, this past week, I've been in Washington, sort of trying to defend the donor advised fund as a great democratizer of philanthropy. Because let's face it, many of those 2 million funds are held by people that could never afford to have a private family philanthropy or private foundation, right? So these are donors, many of whom make really pretty modest contributions. I will say that our average staff donor grant is only $1,500 and maybe the balance is only $50,000 but you know what? They're paying out at 20% 15 to 30% relative to private foundation. So these are people, this, this idea that people are sitting on resources. We don't see that in our donors. We see school teachers, firefighters, cab drivers making funds to put to put their dollars to work in New York City. So, so look, that's just one piece, and what we do it. And here's my thing. And you guys know this, I am a big believer that nobody knows what the heck a community foundation is. So whenever I have an audience like this, people, I'm going to go for it. But right? So we've been holding these donor advised funds, but we've also been holding what we call permanent funds for 100 years. And what's a permanent fund? Those are things that are left to us in a will, right? And what we do is we stitch those various funds, in this case, 2300 funds in New York, and it's eight counties we serve, Westchester to the east end of Long Island, and we stitch those together to create this kind of crazy quilt of generosity that wraps around 12. 4 million workers across the eight counties so, and that's what I think makes us future proof, right? It's particularly those permanent funds. And I may have shared this anecdote with you, but I'm going to do it real quickly. So if you love theater, 100 years ago in New York City and you loved entertainment, there was one entertainer you knew, and his name was David Warfield, and he was the wealthiest entertainer in the world in 1920 fast forward, last decade of his life, he becomes blind, and he is so struck by the loss of vision that he leaves a fund at the New York Community Trust, millions of dollars in 1951 to help people with vision loss and blindness. Fast forward. Today, we've made 10s of millions of dollars of grants in David Warfield's name. We are the largest funder of disability in the region. 90% of our dollars we put on the street every year are because of David Warfield. So if you love your community, you want to leave a permanent fund at the New York Community Trust, or whatever your Community Foundation is, because that makes your nonprofit vision for your city future proof so. And then you know, you won't be surprised to know that no one died 15 years ago to say, You know what you should do, you should fight climate change, or you know what you should do, you should close the Rikers Island. And so that's why we need living donors, donor advice funds, working with those permanent funds to come together to solve the issues we're trying to combat today, and that has real power. If I look at Nelvin, we have made something like 117 donor advised fund grants to the Bowery Mission in the last 25 years, which comes to like, hundreds of 1000s of dollars, right? So it's the power of collective action, and that's what I think makes us so powerful. But man, do we need to do a lot of work, technology, engaging new donors, putting a fresh face on our organization. You'll see all that happening this year, and you know, it's, it's work that needs to be done. So people know who the heck we are. So that's my pitch for future proof. Invest in your local community foundation and make it as permanent as you can.
I mean, I
I'm from Oklahoma, I want to, like, put a fund in New York.
Let's do this, okay, but I love, I love that you talk about this patchwork quilt like I really, I really do believe in this mosaic that y'all have created that is really surrounding with such care and love for the city. So okay, Brooke, I gotta kick it to you, because we're talking about sustainability. I feel like this is one of the things we love to jam about with you, because not just about sustainability of our mission, like we always go back to like sustaining ourselves as leaders. I mean, if we're going to be future proof, we got to take care of ourselves. What is this stir up in you? I mean, you as we kind of lead into this convo.
Absolutely first. I love the question, because, as we've talked about, if you don't, if we don't prioritize sustainability, we're going to burn out. I don't think it's an accident that we are seeing incredible leaders across our sector tap out. Just say, I can't do this anymore. I loved it when I started. I love the mission, and I am, I am done, and I think that is tragic. I think when we have strong nonprofits and social impact organizations that are on the front line of fixing what's broken in our society, our society gets better, and when those leaders can't sustain themselves, our society loses. So this is, as you know, deeply personal for me in the coaching that I do. I was talking to a leader the other day who started crying as she was describing that she'd lost this sense of connection to her mission and why she had started and she was afraid she wasn't even crying because she'd lost it. She was crying because she was afraid she'd never get that back. And so a lot of what I do with the leaders that I work with is around this question of sustainability. And I think the answer is twofold. I think it's both personal and structural. I think it's about making sure that we have the personal resources, that we are honest about the personal resources we need, and that we have them to keep moving forward without feeling like we're grinding. And I think it's about making sure that we invest in the infrastructure around us to support us in doing that. When I talk with the leaders that I coach and support about this sort of duality, this this two parts of sustainability, we talk about things like on the personal side, identifying and leading from your zone of genius, right? Knowing what puts you in that state of flow. I've heard it. Shonda Rhimes calls it being in the hum, right? When you're working hard, right? We know this is hard work, but it, it doesn't feel like a grind. It feels like it's coming from some universal force that you're tapping into, and when you're in that flow, you can sustain yourself, right? So how do you find and lead from that? How do you build your crew, right? Your network of guidance and mentorship and accountability, the people that you can be vulnerable with and fall down in front of, usually, for me, this was other executive directors who understood what I meant when I called and shared a story that only maybe someone else in my role would get right. How do you build that crew to sustain yourself ? At the same time, we talk about with these leaders, organizational resilience, and I don't necessarily mean mission resilience. I mean structural resilience that supports the leader in doing the work. Do you have the right people in the right roles? Right? Do you have the right team? Do you have systems in place? And I am a, you know, Virgo INFJ, as Becky knows total, you know, Trapper Keeper, post it note, girl. So I think a lot about systems and processes, and they're not sexy, but they actually matter, right? When we think about sustaining people and doing their work. Have you arranged the building blocks of your organization in a way that will allow it to be stable? So for me, this question of personal sustainability is both about us as individuals in our roles and organizational I think they're both really key.
I knew you were going to say that. Now everyone knows why we love BRB. And I mean, you are the first person to bring in this concept to me of like sustainable sisterhood and getting your squad around you, because no one needs to go into this work alone. I am so overjoyed to say that BRB is in my sustainable sisterhood and welcome anyone in. You don't have to be a sister to come in, but I think one of the through lines we've heard flow several times already today, and it's like, how do we get back to that center of why we love this work? How do we embrace it differently without losing our humanity and Melvin, I just think you have such a unique purview to this because after 10 years on Wall Street, doing finance, doing sales, you jump back in, you have this desire to really do something that is deeply meaningful in your work. And so I think it gives you a unique lens into what holds the sector back, what keeps us from future proofing. How are we limiting ourselves by not embracing risk, failure, innovation? What are some of the things you've seen as you've kind of come into the sector in the last couple years?
Oh, so much. Becky, so much. I'm really grateful for this time, and I'm really grateful for this conversation, because I don't think it's one that we can have enough. You know, I think we need to have be having this conversation more. I think we need to be having it more consistently, with more people, with our internal staff, with their donors. But for me, I think the biggest thing that holds our missions and sector back are threefold, at at least. That's what I see. I think it's fear of failure, like you said, a scarcity mindset and tempered vision. And I'm going to touch on all three. But even, even before I started, like, here's the thing, a lot of this is not our fault, so I need us to embrace that first. This is a it's been this way for generations. You know, for so long, the social sector has been held back and held captive, almost by these oppressive rules that hold us back from explosive growth and keep us from fulfilling our the true scale of like what our missions can and should be. And if you haven't heard Dan Pallotta's TED Talk on it, or movie Uncharitable, I'll link it later, but an absolute necessity. Going back to fear of failure, we're so bogged down right with endless tasks that we don't leave any room to think outside the box, to experiment. We're so scared of failure. What if this donor sees us fail? What if this board member doesn't like what we're doing? I wish we could just have, like, big signs everywhere that just says failure is part of the process. You know, it's a detour on the way to something greater. So I think the question we need to ask is, how can we foster a culture where failing is okay if we're all learning from it? And then to touch on scarcity mindset, I have a lot of resources on this, so if you want more, feel free to connect with me offline. But scarcity mindset is it's one that's driven by a fear of that failure, criticism and loss. It believes that there's not enough to go around, not enough funding, not enough volunteers, not enough skills or opportunities, right? But when you compare that to a growth mindset, the growth mindset really believes in the ability to learn, to adapt and to create new resources. Believes there's enough resources and opportunities to go around for everybody to succeed. It fosters partnership and sharing, and it embraces innovation and risk taking. I know I said before it wasn't it wasn't our fault. Things are the way they are. But when we start thinking about tempered vision right now, we have the resources. So now I feel like it is on us. Now we know better, so we can do better. You know, yes, we're strapped down by a million things on our two list. But what if we dedicated like 30 minutes a week to just start thinking about and dreaming about what innovation and dreaming boldly actually looks like for you and for your organization. One of the biggest questions I always ask is like, what if we what if, instead of giving our program teams a bare bones budget to work with and telling them that they can only do what fits inside X. What if we asked them what they really needed to do, the work they really want to do, to not only grow and scale and to depth, you know, because I think the real vision, the one that we want to communicate, the one that's really going to propel our missions forward, starts there. That's the one that's supposed to get communicated to our staff, our boards and our donors. Yeah, there's a famous Chinese proverb that says, the journey of 1000 miles begins with one step right. And I feel like if you care deeply about growing your mission and your impact, you've likely thought about how to make things better. So I think we just need to ask ourselves, like, what is it? What is that holding us back from taking those steps forward?
Y'all, I just feel like it's like we've got the old mindsets, the old things, and y'all are like, one two punch, I'm ready for an uppercut. You know, Erin, as you jump into this conversation, I think you do this really well, that you show up with just this sense of urgency. And I know your mission just calls for that, and you've had some experiences that have pushed that too. But how can we all embrace this mindset that we have this urgency to adapt and evolve? We can't just keep talking, right? We got to get out the door. Yeah.
I mean, you think about our world that we live in is consistently moving at warp speed, and if we don't, again. I mean, I don't think we can all move at warp speed, but if we don't acknowledge that the world is going to evolve and it's going to keep moving, and we have to try to reach those benchmarks and goals in real time with, of course, the assets and the resources we have. And I, I am a jump in first figure it out second type person, and which is probably not healthy but, but that's how I lead my organization and the my team that I have. We all sort of have that sense of urgency. Because one, we mentor youth, and if we're lagging behind in our vision and mission of delivery with our youth, then somebody else is mentoring them, and that's not probably the best situation, depending on if it's positive or negative. So whenever we have to adapt and overcome, we also have to improvise. And you know that's we hear that a lot, adapt, improvise, overcome, and for us, it's just a matter of staying in tune to what we need to do, but also, like Nelvin said, always have in the back of our mind that projection of that future of how are we going to get there? Yes, we're doing a right now, B's tomorrow, but where can I get to E? And how can I connect those dots? And just with technology and social media and all the platforms and then economic strife and struggles in our world, we have to consistently evolve in real time and always understand we don't know everything. We're making decisions as we receive the information. So of course, like we're going to struggle, we're going to stumble in the direction of amazingness, you know, and so for us, with with me, with the you know, urgency that I have every day, it's just knowing that I have to step in first in providing the positive resources and relationships that my kids need, before somebody else jumps in there and doesn't necessarily do it in the best way for us. You know what I'm saying so but with an organization is we all have urgency, because we're all trying to raise the dollar, and everybody is fighting for the same dollar and so to speak, but it's also making sure that your community knows you are an asset and what you do is vital to the well being and the culture of your community, and that sets you apart from those organizations that may feel like I don't know how to navigate this. Maybe I am not essential. We're all essential. I mean, that's why there's 1000s of nonprofits in the nation, and and 1000s more being worked on right now and launching. So we have to consider and stay in that mindset that we've got to be urgent in our message.
I gotta give Erin a little plug here, because and Julie, thank you for dropping her episode, because you live in the urgent. I mean, we had a conversation with Erin. It's a beautiful case study of what happened to Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Southwest Louisiana, after they had four natural disasters hit them. You have to lead with urgency when your building is gone. You have to lead with urgency when you don't have a sense of place. And that your kids are all over the place. And so I think future proofing is such the great antidote to that. And and I want to sort of move into this. How do we move into growth of our cultures, rather than the grind cultures or sustainable cultures? How do we lead into this failure and celebrate the failure? No one I love that you brought that up, and so I want to kick it to you, Brooke, I want you to talk about how leaders can really start to foster this innovation. How do we switch those mindsets? How do we start reclaiming our power just a little bit more and infusing that into the culture and the people who work within our mission?
So I again, love the question, and I'm gonna piggyback off of a lot of what you said, Nelvin, I just loved that you focused on sort of adopting this culture of failure. I think that there are two things that go hand in hand when we're talking about innovation and adaptation. One is forward looking and one is sort of catalytic and releasing, right? So the forward looking is we have to be students of our communities and students of our impact, and continue to sit in a learning stance and a learning mindset. I you know, having done this multiple times, I know how easy it is to craft a strategic plan. We have our priorities, we have our goals, we have our objectives, and it becomes this sort of fixed container that we are, you know, head down, trudging towards and the danger there is that we stop listening and observing, and that's where the adaptation comes from, right? That is what fuels our understanding of what we're getting right, what's working, and, most importantly, where the gaps are that we have not met right. We made assumptions going into our strategic vision or into our strategic priorities, and they hopefully were good, well informed assumptions. And now we have to ask, did we get this right? What did we miss? What are we missing? What are we hearing from the people on the ground that surprises us, right? That we didn't think of every 2,3,4, years in an organization, the communities around us change, the people in our ecosystem change. So it's a new opportunity to learn. Right? Innovation doesn't come from sitting in an office and thinking our own thoughts. It comes from interacting with our donors and constituents, from getting messy and saying, we know we got some things right and we believe we got some things wrong and missed some things. So how do we learn? So that's the first thing, is the learning and the observing, I think, tied to that is the sort of catalytic release. And Nelvin talked really, really eloquently about this. We have to embrace failure organizationally. And I like using the word failure, and I don't, because I think what we actually need to do is talk about growth and innovation adaptation in a way that makes failure one part of that natural process. It isn't a mistake. It is an outgrowth of growth. It is a part of the process we can't grow and innovate and adapt if we don't fail. And I think that the organizations that I work with that are best at this, at adapting and innovating, are the ones that sit with and explore failure from the top down, right, we invite the whole team to feel safe, bringing up ideas, observing things that aren't working, letting their managers and the board know that they tried something that didn't work. And when we do that, we can unemotionally observe and take lessons learned and move forward. And the last thing that I'll actually say about this is I think this embracing a failure is particularly important for the leader, for the executive director, it's important organization wide. But my observation and my experience, both as a leader and a coach, is that it's really hard for leaders to give themselves permission to be vulnerable with their funders and their board, to ask questions, to experiment. They want to look buttoned up, and so they aren't as comfortable saying, I'm going to try this thing. We're going to experiment. I don't know what's going to happen. Here's my educated guess, and I might come back to you in three months and tell you it didn't work. That's how we innovate and adapt, and when we really, organizationally and as a sector, create space for that, then we will continue to grow.
I mean, I gotta quote Seth Godin, because I feel like this is such an important piece here. We are uniquely designed as nonprofits to innovate, because we are solving for solution. We're solving for things that we don't have the answers to. So we have to have this posture of trying things and innovating. And so Amy, I gotta kick it to you, because I think this kind of leads to something that we saw really a light from your organization, not just, you know, your collective internally, that's thinking about things differently, but how you're also galvanizing community foundations, which on the surface seems so localized, you're galvanizing across the country in really unique ways to to partner and really. Drive change on bigger issues. What does that look like?
Well, look I I'm just loving this conversation and this idea that none of us have all the answers right, and we're all going to fail, and we can't be afraid as donors either, to take risk and to experiment and one of the one, and also to be responding to the changing world, right? So, yes, our superpowers as community foundations we are hyper place based. There is not an issue in the eight counties we have not focused on and made a grant about that said, when we're called to the task of something like climate change, you can't actually solve that in the eight counties of lower downstate New York. It really is the existential threat that calls us as 800 community foundations across this country to find alignment where we can be stronger together, and our communities can therefore be stronger together. So yes, over this last year, there are about 50 community foundations who have joined cause around this issue of climate and saying to the federal government, look, you've got all those resources up there. We know the folks on the ground we've been making these grants for years, we can tell you exactly how this is going to roll in these eight counties. Trust us, and while we are all hustling to find those resources and get them to our communities. I just want to throw out example to my excellent partners in Pittsburg, Buffalo, Columbus and Indiana, who just landed about $150 million for in the heartland of the good old rust belt is going to be a flourishing with solar resources. So that's some early evidence that I think we're on to something big. And if we can solve for climate in this way, how should we be thinking about affordability? How should we be thinking about housing? How should we be thinking about immigration? Which kind of brings me to my my new passion, which Becky. Becky and Jon haven't really heard, but I've been on this tear because we have certain peers, like, let's say, the state of Michigan, State of Indiana, that have really well built infrastructure for the community foundations to work together. And what we want to do is do that in New York, especially in response to this extraordinary influx of the newest New Yorkers, we've had 180,000 migrants come through the city in the last two years. We are not going to be a welcoming city alone. We are a welcoming state. We are a welcoming country. So how can we leverage those relationships with our community foundations all across New York, many of whom are struggling for labor, for for their social basic social services. We have 30,000 unfilled agricultural jobs in New York state alone. So how can we, as a network, help these folks get on to a great life in America? And then finally, I'm going to bring it all the way down to our little donor event, which we had two weeks ago here in New York City. You know, I think about the incredible diversity of New York City, and we want our Community Foundation to be as reflective of that as possible. And we had this incredible meeting of a group of Muslim donors who have been working on a donor advised fund at the New York Community Trust that we've been proud to host since 2016 and we've never had a chance to sit together and talk about common goals and common purposes. But if there's ever a moment of tension and need in our in our in our Jewish communities and our Islamic communities. This is a moment, and I'm going to tell you talk about Jon and Becky always talk about like filling your bucket sitting in a room full of these folks who have been giving, not just through their donor advised fund at the New York Community Trust, but literally making millions of dollars of cash payments available to folks coming right off the busses, coming into Port Authority, helping people on their way. It was an inspiring night of generosity that I cannot even fully express, and so I just feel like we need to think about community at multiple scales to make sure that we really maximize the potential of what community philanthropy can really be in all of our communities across the United States.
Okay, applause all around for that, and I even want to pause enough to just compliment you. Thank you. Tyler producer is on it, but Amy, I do want to compliment you, because that right there is already shifting the power dynamic when an 100 year old Community Foundation flips the script entirely. And I know you've been doing this with listening sessions, not just with your Muslim partners, but I mean even Gen Z, you ask questions, this is an active listening exercise where people can give you the feedback you need to create the programs and the funding that grow the community. We know this as nonprofiteers, that the solutions to all of our issues are on the front line. And secondly, thank you for the exhale about what's going on with the refugee crisis in New York City. I've been really personally worried about that. Thank you for that. And I want to go in to Erin, because Aaron, I just think you had a season. And I just I am. Thrown by this story of these four natural disasters, you were down to $200,000 in your budget, constantly adapting, and now you are thriving. You've had a MacKenzie Scott gift, which is only reflective of brilliant organizations. Yes, get on. We all cried on that one. But I want to talk about the component of resilience, because failure is hard and adaptation is hard. Innovation is hard. How do you build that resilience within your teams, especially you, who your team, your org, was knocked down multiple times and you kept pivoting. You are a thriving organization. Now. Teach us your ways.
Yeah. for I mean, we were all very affected by the pandemic, which was our first natural disaster, and then two major hurricanes, ice storm, flood and some tornadoes within 18 months. I mean, that's a doozy. And it's, I'm not like, I mean, it's, it's funny to say it, because, oh my God, who, who experiences that, you know, but for us, it was just a matter. For me, it was a matter of, again, putting people first, you know, and and that that was just my kids, my youth, my littles, my staff, my board, my parents, my mentors. And so it literally all of the preparations that we have as organizations, disaster preparedness, or, you know, what have you, literally went out the window in March of 2020, like those were very archaic within 24 hours, I didn't even look at it. I was like, This is not real. And so basically it was just mobilization, having conversations with my board, having conversations with my staff. I mean, figuring out zoom like, you know, I never had zoom before, so I had to figure that out. And then our mentoring mission is one to one, and it's in person that is 120 years of a mentoring legacy. How can you pivot within 24 hours to not in person mentoring? We had to figure that out as a federation, as well as an affiliate, but also all the other things that were going on, the building destruction and everything that went along with it, I literally was making those decisions minute to minute based on what's the best decision I can make. How can I ensure my kids are healthy, my staff is healthy? I was worried about them. We were displaced in two different offices. My littles were displaced and all over the country with disaster in their homes. Schools were shut down, and I can't and I couldn't control all of that, was way beyond my pay grade, but what I could control was how I reacted as a leader, even though, inside, in private, I was just panicking, anxiety, everything as a leader, but I knew that I had to have an outlook of we can get through this. We got this. We're a team. We're a family, minute by minute, day by day, because I knew if my staff and my board saw me panicking, then it's like the chicken little in the in the sky. And as leaders, we can't we can't do that. We can't allow that unless it's a just a moment of a breakdown. And my staff and my board saw some of those moments of me, because I get I am human, and like Nelvin said, you know, give ourselves grace and and the failure with BRB, it's like, you know, we have to. We're human. We're not perfect, but the resiliency and Jon, you Becky, we had talked about this on when we were visiting y'all, I don't know where that came from. I'm gonna be honest,
Real talk, yes.
Real talk with everybody. And we're all on this because we're all visiting these last couple of days to gain knowledge and connection. And I don't know, it just came from somewhere deep inside my belly that came back from when I was a kid that says, Don't tell me no and failure is not an option in my book. So I'm just gonna have the little duck feet under the water paddling everywhere, and I'm gonna look kind of calm while I'm freaking out under the water. But that's what we do as nonprofits. And everybody has their own disasters. You lose a major funder. What if one of your only industries in your small region goes under, and you just lost $500,000 a year in funding and you think, oh my gosh, how can I recoup that? You can, take some innovation, takes a lot of transparent conversations, but I immediately start working with my donors in March of 2020, having those conversations of y'all, this is real. This is what we need. We're going to continue to thrive. We're going to continue to mentor. We don't know how we're going to mentor our youth. We're figuring that in real time, but just trust that we're going to continue for. Because, again, we are essential in the lives of our youth. And that was the consistent mantra with my team, my community, my funders, everything that we did was ensuring that front and center, our kids matter, and we are going to have them thrive. And then I just figured it out as I went. So just know you're okay. If you don't know what you're doing every day, it's okay.
Yeah. I mean, Erin, thank you for that. I think it definitely stacks with we're talking about sustainability. You got to have people around you. And I hope, if you don't have people around you, I hope that this conference is introducing you to people in the chat or come to the We Are For Good community. Nelson, I mean, we're starting to wrap up, and we got to save time for one good things, but I want to hear how you're using the power of community around your work. Because I think even if you feel like you're at the bottom of your bucket, you've got people, you have assets, you have opportunity. And y'all at the Bowery mission are innovating, still, by tapping people in a unique way with this, you know, associate board that you've brought into, gotta tap Julie confer over here, representing our producer who's now joined the this board. How are you leaning into these new relationships to add community, to bring new vibrance to mission?
Yeah. First of all, we're so happy to have Julie on the associate force. Julie, thanks for being a part. Shout out to Julie. Yeah, Jon, like one big way of cultivating growth comes back to people, you know, and it's not just the people we serve, but the people running in and alongside your organization. You know. I love this sector so much, the social sector, so much, but I think it's one of the most underutilized tools in nonprofits belt. You know, people want to do more. They need a way to do that. The associate board is one of my favorite parts of working here Bowery Mission's associate board is a community of just passionate young professionals who are committed to making a change in the communities that they work in, you know, these are people in their 20s and 30s who already work 40, 50, 60, 80 hour weeks, you know. But they're so committed to change, they're so committed to the city that they still want to make giving back a part of their life, you know, and it's so important because there's such a focus on impact and such a focus on empowering the next generation, bringing them closer to us and letting them be a part of that change now, and I'll share real quick through our associate boards, structure and culture of creating the biggest net impact. It goes deeper than just what one individual can contribute. We constantly see them engaging their corporate teams, their colleagues, their friends, their family, and just for put into perspective, a group of 50 people in the last few years have volunteered over multiple 1000s of hours, just by themselves, you know. And last year alone, they've created an incredible net impact of close to $500,000 for our organization.
We call that impact uprising right there. It starts one to one, human to human, community by community, one idea at a time. And which makes me want to lift Allison's question is like, do we have some future proofing resources? That's not just a question for the panelists. They don't have all the answers. We don't have all the answers, but the collective, the community can source these answers. So if you have any of these resources, any of these tips, please drop them in the chat, because we are rounding out into our one good thing. We end all of our conversations with this. And I want to start Amy with you. Like, tell us what is one good thing somebody could take away from this conversation today, and what's vibing with you.
I wish I could just, like, give a, like, a virtual hug to everybody in this room, because I'm just loving these people, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna make that my one good thing. I think ultimately, we are people business, right? And now this might seem a little ironic, saying this in a virtual room where we've all come together people we couldn't have otherwise all gotten together without a huge carbon footprint and a lot of wasted money, blah, blah, blah. So this is awesome, but when we can be in in person with one another, I'm just coming off three days with my colleague, Community Foundation leaders, fighting for our deaths in Washington and the community was so powerful. Of being together and just being side by side and fighting the good fight together, I just I'm loving the I'm loving the people in person together. So when we can, let's reach out and touch one another in the most sort of appropriate way. But the idea that we can, we can because we are a people business and philanthropy is this joyful thing, and we should be engaged in that in a really human way with one another. That's my one good thing.
Brilliant tone setting there, Brooke, I want to go to you next.
My one good thing is energy. I think that you know. There's just, even though we are virtual, this incredible energy, like, I'm feeling that sort of buzz you get when you're just, like, I could talk to you guys for another five hours and, you know, building on what you were saying. Amy, we're energetic beings, and when we can be in community, when we can vibe with one another and hear good ideas and and celebrate what we're all doing. I think that energy fuels us, you know, and when we talk about sustainability, that's what we need, is positive energy
You guys are 100% bringing that and you Julie for dropping the link to the we are for good community. If you don't have community, if you are feeling alone, come into ours. It is such an incredible group of heartwired humans, just like these four individuals who want to be the change in the world. Drop your linkedins. Let's all connect with each other. The interconnectivity of how the impact uprising grows is based on our ability to lean in. Can connect So Erin, I want to bring it to you. What have you got? One good thing,
Oh, you know, that's so hard. One good thing from today is it the conversations that we had and hearing these three amazing panelists that I was totally fangirling, reading everything about them before I got on here, is just it solidifies that sometimes I feel so alone and isolated in this role, because I feel like again, I have to, you know, as a leader, like you are the leader. You can't make the mistakes. You can't you know you have to the expectation. And it really allowed me when I sit back and I'm in these conversations, whether I'm a panelist or I'm a viewer, is that, y'all, I'm not alone in that, you know, like and it just makes me feel better as a leader, because I am my worst critic as a leader, and I'm always thinking about everybody else but myself and and, of course, That's what leadership is but I also need to understand when I give my staff grace or my board members grace, I need to always give myself the same grace, and that is so humbling. And so when I look at these people, and I'm I'm reading the chat, and I've been all over the chat today and looking at what everybody's saying, it's like, Y'all, I I'm okay. I'm actually doing good today, you know, and and I can bring that energy back to the people that need me to be the best version of myself, but also needs me to be honest and say, y'all, I'm just totally messing up right now. Like, just help me.
Yeah, yeah. Bringing us back to self love like Nelvin. Bring us home. What you got?
Oh, it's along the same lines what everybody's been saying already, you know. But I bring, I think back to the title of the session. One of the words, it's disrupt, and I love that word so much. You know, we're all part of ambitious organizations, and that's what initially draws us to the organization that you're in, right? But keep thinking about, how do places actually disrupt and it starts with an audacious mission, but it trickles down to the people that form the teams that tackle those missions. I think that if we want to future proof our organizations, we need to start by future proofing our people, you know, and it's not just that's a salary I'm talking about, tailoring professional development, tailoring work life, balance, figuring out what matters most to your people, proving that they matter the most to you. So just have conversations with your people. Your wishes fall flat without them.
Hope is blooming.
Oh my gosh. My one good thing is go follow all these people and get in community and get served and uplifted by their the way they share online and show up online. It's so authentic. Y'all. My heart is full as we close this out, I gotta thank the sponsors that power this. Thank you for creating an open, inclusive platform for all of us to get together today. Microsoft, feather community boost one cause, classy windfall. Amphil and coscamp, really, you know, grateful for you powering these conversations and friends. This is the end of the car.
This is the end, but it's not the end. Yes, please join us over on Main Stage. We're going to listen to Sonya Perez Lauterbach bring us home. It is going to be a conversation of healing, self love. It's going to be an extension of what this conversation is. Thank you for incredible humans for the work you're doing. Thank you to you in the chat. Keep going. Keep riding that wave of hope. We've got it.
