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 rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
So let's get started. Becky, oh my gosh, the enthusiasm is so real right now,
Can I tell you two of my favorite things on this earth?
Go for it.
Big dreamers and people who can reimagine everything. And that is really who we are meeting today in this space. It is my great joy to introduce you to Danielle Steer. She is the founding executive director of Lunar Startups, and managing partner of Tundra Ventures. And y'all let me tell you a little bit about what Danielle's doing. She's going to talk to us about nonprofit mergers and acquisitions. And for those of you who are thinking about touching that dial, take your hand back, because we need this conversation. And I want to talk about just the humanity that Danielle really infuses into this process because Lunar Startups, Tundra Ventures, they are like in Minneapolis, St. Paul, they are first early stage accelerators. For founders who identify as black indigenous people of color, LGBTQ women and non binary. She has an incredible pedigree, I can't even go through all of it. But we're going to talk about this nonprofit mergers and acquisition because it's not just a last ditch effort, when your organization has exhausted all other options. With the strategic approach, this merger can be an innovative approach to delivering more streamlined services and funding vehicles to the community. So Danielle recently led Lunar Startups to be successfully acquired by Connect Up Institute, which was formerly a competitor of Lunars. And so today, we're just going to be talking about more about the decision making and the strategy behind her decision to pursue an acquisition, why it's already resulting in better services for the communities that Lunar serves, and how other nonprofit leaders can develop innovative strategies to adapt their orgs during these really volatile economic times, I feel this conversation is going to be full of ingenuity hope, and it's going to be steeped in equity. I'm so excited about it. Danielle, welcome to the We Are For Good podcast, we are so excited to have your heart and your intuition here.
Thank you. I'm so honored to be here. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. I just I love your community. It's like such an amazing crew of folks that are I think really deeply passionate and trying to make the world a better place.
They are and you are a part of it. And we want to hear your incredible story. We've already gotten to know off off camera a little bit about Charlotte and Griffin, your amazing kids, but we want to know about you growing up and what kind of gave you this heart for this work?
Yeah, I think I mean, all of us are like, you know, for for pies, we're getting little tiny slivers all the time that make up that pie, right. And I think when I think back on my career and my life, there's a couple of distinct through lines that are all rooted in the fact that while I was surrounded by amazing, loving women who built community, who made sure that, you know, their children had everything that they needed in the world, to be successful in their lives, you know, at the end of the day, they they were dependent on their partners and for other other folks around them, you know, financially. And so I think the absence of a role model growing up who was successful in her career and who was financially independent and, and who was also a great mom, like, I just I didn't have that role model growing up. Even though I had a wonderful, amazing mother, you know, who was perfect just for me. I think that was really, you know, I look back a core driver of saying, why wasn't there more financial self sufficiency, because there's a lot of externalities and kind of downsides to that at the same time. And then when I went into college, I saw that financial independence, it's one of the largest indicators of decreasing violence against women, for example, is financial independence. And I found out that entrepreneurship is one of the best interventions for increasing financial independence for women. And it just kind of like kick started this passion for me on how can I help myself? How can I help my family and how can I be thinking about you know, the the greater economy? Because the reality is, is we will all be better off when more women have financial independence, right and when women are controlling more capital, but the data is really clear. And so I think that that has is really like my North Star of trying to support more women getting financial independence. And I graduated from college at the height of the recession, that was like a great time to be getting out of school with a ton of debt. Right? I was bartending and all of the jobs that I wanted kind of an international development required a master's degree, and were unpaid. And I was like, well, that's, that's not going to be me. And also, like, from my own learning style, I learned a lot about my learning style and what did and didn't work for me in college. And so I had the privilege of getting into, I think, a graduate school, Middlebury Institute of International Studies. And pursuing a degree in nonprofit management that was like incredibly hands on, there was almost no theory around it, it was like you learn a concept, you learn a tool, you go and you implement. And for my personal learning style, that was fantastic. So I think the ability to to take some of those core drivers for me, which was around like financial independence, and building community and removing barriers, things that I saw and getting a practical kind of layer of education on top and then added another layer of practical application was really important. So I ended up heading down to the Andes Mountains, outside of I was in Kalka Peru, not too far from Machu Picchu, and was working with a group of Indigenous women on financial independence, we helped them to create a community savings bank. They were on bankable, and another good friend of mine was working on an entrepreneurial strategy with them. And there was all these nonprofits in the Sacred Valley working together. And it was it was a lot of like white Westerners coming in and saying, like, here's how, here's how you can build and you're taking a different and I just, I had this epiphany, even though I had studied white savior complex of like, oh, is it me? Am I, am I? Is this me? Kind of a moment, and I'm so I came back to the States. And I said, I know this is where I need to be entrepreneurship. And I like supporting entrepreneurs is where I need to be, but doesn't need to look differently. And in part of that process, the other thing that really came to light for me was, I think, capital allocation inefficiencies, to be real jargon heard about it, where I was seeing that, you know, a lot of these white western run organizations who had really great ideas, solid, solid ideas, and amazing passion, we're getting a lot of funding. And because they were not within the community, and from the community, and of the community, I think that there was oftentimes a lot of some misses in terms of how that capital was actually, like leveraged in those communities. And that was another thing that really just like, I think, rooted my passion for entrepreneurship in a way are like, deep into the roots of of my passion for entrepreneurship, because the entrepreneurs in that community had the solutions to their own community's problems. But again, they weren't getting the capital. So like, I started kind of digging into this idea of like, how can we help capital to get to the best ideas, not just the ones that are the easiest defined or the most well written? You know, in terms of a proposal? Yeah. And it's, you know, I think that that's, it's, it's messy, and it's sticky. And it's hard. It's hard to kind of conceptualize at large, but came back to the states and ended up having the privilege of at the time living in California, and the privilege of stumbling upon, I think, a job here in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that was really about building an ecosystem of social entrepreneurs. And came here and it just kind of catapulted me into this next level realm of saying, like, wait a second, who's on stage, who's getting attention? Who's in the media? Why am I not seeing more women that are on stage and asking about AI, as opposed to just like, what's it like to be a woman in tech? So I started to really dig into it. I had like this ongoing little like, note, in my Google Drive that was like, all of these problems are kind of inefficiencies. It's not if it's not obvious, I'm like an optimizer. What are these inefficiencies in the system? And like, what are the things that I see feel like problems? And let me go ask other people do they think their problems and then like, ask people what they think should be the change. And so at the time, we had this very, like nascent entrepreneurial scene here, it was super siloed like med tech people are here and social entrepreneurs are here. And then like tech entrepreneurs are over here. And then like the tech bros are over here.
Tech bros.
Yeah. And so I started just like showing up and all these things and saying, like, Hey, I noticed you had an entire panel of like white men. If you need any recommendation, I'd love to help you find some other folks that represent different identities that could be on the panel or Hey, I saw you're writing a story about this thing, would you like an introduction? And so like leveraging the network that I was building to say, like, hey, there's more voices, we could be including at this table. I think shortly thereafter, Philando Castile was murdered here. And I think I made some really big mistakes in our community around how I was showing up, and how I was supporting the folks around me. And like that was a that was a really pivotal moment, I think, as it relates to I think race and ethnicity in entrepreneurship for me, like, what is my power and privilege? And how was I leveraging that for good versus like kind of being performative about it? Again, it was like one of those hard, hard moments. And then shortly thereafter, I think I had I had been working on getting more women applying to different, like Minnesota Cup is one of the largest state run pitch competitions where folks actually get capital on the other side, it's run run through the University of Minnesota, and you know, something like at the time, 40% of their applicants were women, but only 10%, were getting through to the finals, right, things like that. And so I was starting to work, really hands on with other folks in town, and somebody saw that work and that passion and invited me to jump into a project that was looking at how do we really reduce barriers to growth for women and people of color. And it was the perfect, I think, opportunity for me to bring together my graduate experience, my nonprofit experience, my design experience. And then just the deep listening, I had been really working on doing and community building and working on doing to then build Minnesota's first inclusive accelerator. And at the time, it was just like a project inside of Minnesota Public Radio, honestly, which was kind of an oddball there. And then it was like, No, we need this, we need to build this better. And all of the things that I think I was like, a bit of a critic about in the nonprofit sector and in philanthropy, I got to go in and like say, can we do this differently? Can we try and shake things up? And how are we thinking about making sure that more folks in Minnesota could build businesses that work great, you know, not just in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and not just, you know, people of color, not just women, but like, you know, all of Minnesotans could really benefit. So it's a little bit more than you asked for. But I think that, you know, those important components of, of each of those pivotal moments, you know, of not having a job or wanting to get Yeah, they they all really come together. And I think that I feel really proud and privileged that I had the opportunity to go try and build something and do things differently. And I think we did.
Wow. I mean, we sit here and we're eating your story up. By the way. I just think the fact that you started this was saying how you feel at home with this community. I'm like, I'm so glad you feel at home. Because this is the exact type of people that we want to galvanize together that want to build something different, that want to lift and amplify voices and get out of the way, in a lot of times to be able to do that. And so I look back at your story, and you use these words, and I think they really jumped off the page to me, you early found your North Star, you early found like what you were rooted in and that's like, you know, moving money to different places to women to give more empowerment to be rooted in entrepreneurship. And I'm just like, that's what you're building with Lunar. And so I want to give you space to kind of talk about because this conversation today is about mergers and acquisitions, which sounds so corporate. But we thought this is an important conversation to lift in light of the people gathered around this movement today, if we're for good is if we're really got our North Star in the right spot. Some of these like ways we go about things have to like fade off and our preconceived ideas have to shave. So I want to like give you space to talk about what did it look like for y'all to go into this acquisition with connect up? And then I'll kind of tee us up to like talk about why and how can we look at this as all the nonprofits listening today?
Yeah, yeah, I think it's such an important question. And admittedly, you know, in my graduate degree, literally nonprofit management, mergers and acquisition was never talked about, right? It was not. It was not a conversation that folks were having or like how to do it. So as we were building Lunar, there were a lot of underlying kind of like systems norms or normative behaviors, maybe I'll say that are intrinsic in the nonprofit sector. I'm a if you're familiar with Gretchen Reubens, Four Tendencies. I'm a questioner. So every time I see something that is like curious or maybe ineffective or inefficient or not optimized, I'll like ping it and be like, Oh, why does that exist? Does it, can it be something different? Right? And so when I was looking at the philanthropic landscape, and I had this vision of building a sustainable nonprofit that yes, absolutely, we were going to need to be subsidized in part by philanthropy and that was going to be an important part of our work. But was there an opportunity for us to build more earned revenue strategies to be not so dependent on on our grantors and to individuals, for example, because if you're in this business, you know, one of the only constants is that philanthropy is always changing, attention is always changing. And at the core of it, you know, we have to do a lot more with $1, we're gonna make it stretch, we're gonna make it do more, we got to like, pay ourselves, we got to not burn out, we got to, you know, we got to still be at home, we got to be at all the events, we got to do all the things and, and it's a super challenge. So when we were building, it was like, how do we think about our long term sustainability? How do we think about the wellness of our staff? How do we think about the wellness of our entrepreneurs, because we were trying to teach these entrepreneurs how to do good and to be well and to work on their, you know, financial mindsets, and to build confidence and all these things. But like, our our sector wasn't really built to support us to do that either. I started looking at, you know, if if we're going to be able to be responsive in this economy, and it was changing again, quite rapidly, right, like COVID, had a huge impact on all of us. We're in Minneapolis, Minnesota, this is literally the epicenter of America's social and reckless racial awakening. And, quite frankly, we benefited from that, like when, when all of a sudden, all of the media companies were going like, oh my gosh, we don't know any black entrepreneurs, or the corporations were saying, Oh, my gosh, we had no idea what it was like for Black, Black and brown entrepreneurs or indigenous entrepreneurs in our community, like, can you help us connect to them? Or how do we help them or, you know, all of those things, they came to us, and we really like benefited both, you know, service wise, and financially and whatnot. And we knew that was a moment. So I started kind of looking at like, okay, what are the options here for us? Um, at the same time, again, capital allocation has always been my passion, I had been executing this multi year research study on how do we better allocate capital to entrepreneurs, and specifically historically under invested entrepreneurs, and was in process of launching a venture fund that was going to do just that, you know, in my research, I had found that like, looking at, like where I wanted it to be, and to have true impact. And you know, I love a good theory of change. And so to be able to actually execute on that I needed to be outside of the nonprofit, and I needed to kind of be doing some of the same work that we had been doing inside of the nonprofit sector, which is like educating folks on on entrepreneurship and soft skills and, and educating philanthropy on kind of the wicked problem that is like building a business at large inside of a greater context. And so that meant that I needed to, if I wanted to go and do this capital allocation work, which I'm very passionate about as well, we needed to be thinking about the future of the organization, not just, you know, under my leadership at present, which at the time, this was, like a year before I was planning to exit. But in the next few years, and the next 10 years, I had this vision for what was going to happen in the next 10 years. But as I looked at, you know, all of the strategic planning that we had done, the three years before that we'd met all of our goals that we had for those first three years is like a baby nonprofit. But I was having a hard time seeing how we were going to get to that 10 year strategy without being in community and in concert with somebody else, or, or under like really radically different leadership. Again, I knew I knew I wasn't going to be the the long term leader in this. But there was something the puzzle pieces were not connecting, right? So I embarked on kind of this big, I think, for lack of a better term research project. And the way that I problem solve is by going and talking to everyone, I want to know what problems they face what advice they have. And then I distill that down for like, what works for me in this scenario. And that was really kind of got us to the point of like, oh, an acquisition is an option, which in hindsight, you know, I was like, Well, that makes a ton of sense, then we could just do this work in concert with somebody else and be additive to someone else's mission. Because the reality is, is so many nonprofits like we get started, I got I started our nonprofit because the other folks in town, were not doing the things that I thought were necessary in order to support entrepreneurs and the way that I wanted to support them. And the way that I was hearing they wanted to be supported. It's not that those organizations weren't good. But we were we they were, they were doing this work, you know, over here on one side, and I wanted to do this work over here and on the other side, but ultimately, I knew eventually we would have to come together in terms of whether that was shared alignment or mission or something else. So we started out as Minnesota's first inclusive accelerator, we are no longer alone in that and that's great. When when the idea of of saying like, Oh, well who who else in the community is aligned. Maybe has things that we don't, maybe we have things that they don't and that kind of like really catapulted this bigger year long work of that was always one bucket, I should say, talent was always another bucket that we were constantly exploring, right of like, is it a replacement? Is it a transition process? And that's, that's a whole nother story in terms of like succession planning that I had, like, in my head been doing for a while that did not, you know, the acquisition was the better strategy for us.
Okay, Danielle, you're a unicorn, like you truly are you have, you don't see walls, and that those are our favorite kinds of people. Because I think that so many of us who've been in nonprofit, feel that there is one playbook. And you get the playbook. And it's super dusty, because it hasn't evolved in a really long time. And we're playing by one set of rules. And the reality is that this work is so improved when it's reimagined, and when it evolves. And when it includes more voices, and when it includes humility, and when it includes thinking like a business, and when it includes expanding the table. And these have all been hallmarks of everything that I hear that you've done in your career. Jon, I'm going to take you back this, like we're in the episode 480s. Do you remember episode 11? When we talked to Feeding Tampa Bay? Where have you been thinking about it?
I was hoping you were going to bring this up, I was thinking about it.
Yes. And I mean, I want to like tell everyone out there who's thinking, this is such a novel idea. No, people are doing this in their benefiting. We had Feeding Tampa Bay on who's talking about just this incredible campaign that they moved during COVID. And moving at that speed helped them reimagine their business entirely. And they ended up merging with Trinity Cafe, which was like a physical structure where people could go and get free WiFi and not only eat, but they could also look for a job. And all of a sudden, these two missions that had a very similar alignment, in their business strategy also figured out that they had alignment in their values, and the things that they held very, very dear. And I see you standing up very boldly, Danielle in saying this, and opening your table and giving up your seat. And I just think it's beautiful, what you've built. And I just want everyone to get a mindset of openness and abundance around how we can make this bigger. Because I gotta tell you, we Jon, we never talked about mergers and acquisitions. I don't think I ever heard that one time in my career when I was in nonprofit, right?
No. And I think I mean, we should say like in your bio, you talked about it being your competitor in quotation marks, because I think there's also just this perspective of
Isn't that cool?
Yeah, it's not really competitors, either, you know, I think in this space. So moving beyond that, like this the mindset is different than I think a lot of people have.
Well, and I think that's like competitor based on what stakeholder is what's really important, right? Like, Elaine, Elaine is the founder and CEO of Connect Up, she and I have known each other for years. And I don't believe in replicating things that already exist, someone else is doing it great. Let them have that swim lane. And that core competency, like what is maybe an edge that is slightly different. And so we have always had very explicit conversations of who we serve and how we serve them and what that variation looks like. But that's nuanced. And that's really only felt if you're the entrepreneur, who has been through one or both of our programs, and teaching philanthropic leaders about that nuance, and why that nuance needs to exist together. That was the hard part. And that's where we were oftentimes, like Co Op petition maybe is more of like the in quotes term that we should, we should probably use, because we were going after a lot of the same grants. And we were going after, you know, some of the same donors. And I think that being able to be really explicit. It's one of the other things Elena and I both have, I think, a gift for being very direct and saying like, here's my enlightened self interest, like, what is yours? Where does that fit? Where is it not? And we built a relationship on that. So you know, like, just putting everything on the table like that. And so that's where, like, I had a lot more power and privilege, like a white woman being able to step into a room and saying, like, Hey, here's, here's the things that philanthropy needs to be thinking about and what donors need to be thinking about, you know, from my perspective, and like leveraging my power and privilege in a way to invite other people into the work or invite more more privileged and powerful people into the work in a meaningful way, was an important part of that. A lot of I think what I brought to the table is I would walk into a philanthropic meeting, and say, like, our core differentiator, and our core product that we bring to entrepreneurs is our people. So I'm going to pay our people really well. So I need you to increase your operating dollars for us. I want this to all be operating dollars. And I would just walk in and I would say those things To be like, oh, we only have programmatic dollars and be great my program is people fund the people. And not everybody gets to say that Elena and I always aligned on that. And I had a lot of success during that I raised over $2 million in three years for our projects. And I and I created, you know, in partnership with our entrepreneurs and with some other stellar stellar humans, kind of, you know, at the staff level, and contractor level, we created a really replicable and proprietary process that works, our entrepreneurs that we supported have created more than $250 million in economic impact for Minnesota, they created like 614 direct jobs, right. And these are like, what historically I think women and people of color kind of have historically been bucketed in is like charity cases, or an economic development agencies or like, only you can only get like small, tiny business loans, because you know, you can only be small and tiny or whatever else like the jargon, pejorative, you know, wording is going to be at the time. And I think that, you know, I spent three years really trying to like, tell everyone like, it's just wrong, it's wrong.
And you've reimagined it, which is just so beautiful. And I think you just took the the playbook, you threw it away, you created a new playbook. You spoke honestly. And I think about a listener listening right now and who's really trying to embrace this topic? What is that typical process that nonprofit organizations can follow when they're considering a merger and acquisition?
Research indicates that nonprofit mergers can really contribute to a more stable nonprofit environment. So the reality is, is I think we're gonna see a lot more philanthropic institutions, kind of pushing for this a little bit, in some ways. So what we did I mentioned earlier that, you know, I'm, I go and I socialize all my problems. That's how I get them solved. Yeah. Well, and I think anybody in the philanthropic space, you know, when when you need money, ask for advice. And it's a it's a very effective strategy. And so a lot of people had a lot of input into this process, which was really, really important to our success and important to our financial success in making this actually, I think viable. So I went out and asked everybody like, what have you seen in terms of mergers and acquisitions? What have you seen in terms of succession planning? What have you seen in terms of like, how to support a staff through the acquisition, like, what do I need to do to really get ready to make a good decision. So one of one of the biggest helpers I had was Kate Barr, who here in Minnesota, she's the exec director, Executive Director of Propel for Nonprofits. And she actually supported an amazing merger between MAP for Nonprofits and the Nonprofit Assistance Fund, they actually did a very public facing merger several years ago, in like six months, which is more or less what we did as well for our acquisition. So she was like, here are the steps that you need to take, you need to do like a broader stakeholder analysis, you know, from the donor perspective, from the beneficiary perspective, from the foundation perspective, like, where do you align? And where do you not align? Where is there overlap Where is there not overlap with the different entities at that point, I had, I had identified, you know, ideal entities, but we hadn't. We hadn't pitched anyone on this yet. And for the record, I did pitch this, this was like me actively saying, I want this to happen. We did a core competency analysis, like, what are we really good at? And what are we really bad at? And then like, what are assets? And when I say assets? I mean, you know, the humans? I mean, the computers and the desks and kind of more importantly, like the intellectual property.
Yeah,
What are, what are the reports? What are the learnings? What's the research what, you know, the the whole, we have a very robust grant system, you know, in terms of what we brought to the table. So what are all those assets? And then what of those assets can someone else take and use versus what really is only going to apply to us? And then I think, like doing this same analysis with our prospects to the best of my ability, so going out and literally having coffees and asking, you know, before saying like, I want to do a merger, like asking these other leaders and say, like, what's, what's your vision for 10 years from now? What do you want to achieve? And then really looking at, like, would our program add value to that? And if not, we wouldn't be mutually aligned. And you know, our incentives would not be mutually aligned. So really looking at like, are we mutually aligned, in terms of not exactly the exact vision, but in terms of how we can make each other better, and quite a few people self selected out right away, because their vision was, you know, and what they needed in order to be able to get to their vision. We were not going to be the right contributors to that, which is great.
And that's great information to have. Like if we're not a good fit, let's move on. Let's find somebody who's a better fit for you and we need to move on. I think that's healthy.
Yeah, and I I tell our entrepreneurs this all the time, like your job as an entrepreneur. And I think quite frankly, in some ways is if you're a development person or an executive director, like your job is to collect noes, and then use those noes as learning for how to get to yes. And every no is a step closer to a yes.
Heck to the yes.
One of our values play the long game, too. And so I just think like going in and talking about somebody's 10 year vision, I always hear like the quote, like you can never accomplish much as you think you can in a year. But you can do so much more in 10 years than you'd ever dream possible. And I think those kinds of conversations get into like that space, because this is not to just help with the short term budget thing. This is not to just help us get through the next year. It's like, what literally, how can we make systemic change by locking arms? And over a longer horizon? This is not just a quick fix. This is a we want to do this together and what will be so much better as a result, which does get us out of scarcity and into like abundance and a better place to activate and dream from?
Yeah. And I think you know, it's so funny, because when I hear the word abundance, I can't tell you how many times I have taught on abundance mindset, and how many times I have lectured on abundance mindset. But like, I'm not gonna lie, like that was a really hard thing for me to think about in the context of this.
Yeah, the mountain seems so big, you know?
Yeah. And like not most of most of the entrepreneurs that I work with do not have the privilege of an abundance mindset. And most nonprofits, quite frankly, don't have the privilege of inherently just having you have to, like work so hard to build that mindset. I think to your point of not not being walled in, in terms of how we do things, I'm the type of person like, I cannot follow a recipe, you give me a recipe, I'm like, Oh, here's the ingredients, you know, like, what feels good? Or like what tasted good last time, like what I'm gonna do, right? So I think like, just from a personality perspective, that's an important part of being able to, like, see beyond the walls. And, and really seeing, like, what rules are around because they need to be whether that you know, and not for breaking the law by any means. But like, what, like normative rules are around because they need to be in which ones aren't. And I think to that point, like, there's a lot of normative rules around abundance mindset in the nonprofit sector, or the lack of abundance mindset that we had to really like, hack our own brains around, of how do we get over that? You know, another, I think way that it kind of manifested is, I'm the type of person like I set a really realistic budget. And then like, I'm always trying to be under budget. Like, you want to see someone who is frugal, like, I will set a very realistic budget, here's what we actually need. And then every time that there's a moment to like, cut a dollar, like, I will, because the fear of not having several months of runway to pay my staff real. It's, it's that is like triggering someone who like, you know, I was on a fixed income for the majority of my 20s. So I think like, as a nonprofit leader, that translated to like, sure, I want to like, I want to like step in, I'm gonna, like, fake it till I become it from an abundance mindset perspective, but like live the reality of where we were. And I think that was really important as as a transferable skill for the merger to it's like, let's live in the abundance mindset of where you want to be in 10 years and the like, what are the things that are actually going to work between us and like, hopefully, you can get there. And what's really important for me, and one of the things that was really important for me is, you know, I joke all the time, you mentioned, you mentioned my, my kids at the top, like, I joke all the time that I had four under four at one point. So Lunar was my first baby.
Sounds like Jon.
Yeah, oh, geez.
I've got twins over here. Double twins.
I launched the nonprofit, I had my first daughter, I launched a venture fund, I had my son. So So I was running two companies, I had two kids at home, I was like, you know, in this in this position of how do I how do I be the mom, you know, like, my mom was such a good mom, how do I be the mom that I had, but like she was a stay at home mom, I'm working two jobs. And so I think that, you know, the context of all of those things, like we really tried to, like the idealistic values, like abundance mindset, like work life balance, like, you know, meeting people where they're at. That was another thing that really aligned in terms of our businesses and how Connect Up really thought about their staff. So it was just yet another example of we were like, Okay, we're going to do our best at bringing these two entities together. The the most important thing at the core is the entrepreneurs. It's like, how are we supporting these entrepreneurs? And so every time we hit a hurdle in looking at like, okay, what's the what's the financial systems or like, what are the assets that we want to transfer or not transfer or like, how do we literally do a transfer at all I had had the privilege of spinning our nonprofit out of another entity. It was it was a project to start and then I founded it as a nonprofit. So I got to kind of see that in reverse and like leveraged those experiences, you know, in the acquisition, but simple things for for nonprofit leaders who are always doing all the work, like how do you transfer a Google workspace? How do you like we had, you know, an E-trade account that was tied to our EIN and my social security numbers so that we could get securities donations like, does that transfer or not, or our 401k, I learned some tough lessons about 401k's and they do not transfer very easily, and like what that looks like. And so I think a big part of our process for the merger was every single thing that we did, I literally just had, like an Excel sheet of like, here's our tech stack, and it was not organized. It sounds, you know, hindsight, you can like organize your thoughts better in hindsight, but like, in the process, it was absolutely messy, and imperfect. But because I think I included a lot of people in the process, I got to see where there were holes and gaps or opportunities to evolve. And I, I also like one of one of our big, soft skills that we teach entrepreneurs is how to ask for help. And so I tried to remember that, yeah, yes, it is not a skill set, I think, especially for women or for folks who have just been required to like, be tough or resilient in their lives. Were like, necessarily taught, it's, um, I joke all the time. It's like a muscle, you have to exercise it. And sometimes you're going to ask for help in a bad way. And it's like, well, that was a that was a bad leg day. But like that, and so I asked for help a lot. You know, I had some friends who were like, extra, like, whizzes at Excel. And I was like, Hey, I have this really ugly, you know, list of things like how would you organize this, you know, and then got to spend time doing that. So I think it really was like being able to put that whole list together and then figure out how do we organize it into a way that's an actionable plan was was really helpful. So that, you know, I know, I know, what grant reports I still have to do for that entity that are due next month.
By the way.
Been there.
Yeah, I know, I know what those things are, because we like documented them all. And we were able to, therefore more effectively, delegate and that seems like basic from a leadership perspective. But there's just so many moving parts, sometimes it it's important to be reminded like, oh, we can simplify this.
I mean, we agree, there's always too many moving parts. Let's be clear in the nonprofit space. But you've laid groundwork for this question that keeps bubbling up in my head because we talk about the power of a strategic plan, a refined, short strategic plan that people can be on the same page
and actually used, yes,
Absolutely. So we talk about that on the show. But I think, especially at this time of year, if you're thinking and looking at doing this, doing a merger, doing an acquisition, something like this, how do you effectively strategically plan and make sure that you know this is going to move forward at the same time you're pursuing and exploring this thing that could change everything for you at the same time? How do you kind of balance that tension? And how should organizations you know plan effectively in light of that?
It's a really tough question, especially when we all know that nonprofits are at this nexus of a really rapidly, like rapidly changing philanthropic sector, so you have to be responsive to that, right? That's those are your dollars, those are your funders, you got to be responsive there. And then the experience of your beneficiaries, oftentimes is also equally changing. And then, and then you have all the humans that are inside and the processes that are inside of your own Nexus. And like how those are shifting and changing in someone's dad is sick. Life keeps lifing for nonprofit leaders, and you have to be responsive. And so I've always used the strategic plan as like the source of truth. Yes, you need to be able to have it be responsive in ways to either beneficiaries or the funders, but in the chaos, you need to be able to have everybody back on the same page about like, what's our source of truth? And, and keeping people focused when it gets too crazy, right? Or when you feel like you're being pulled in all the different directions, looking back and saying like, okay, what is our priority? So I think strategic planning is critical. I also think it can get over engineered really easily for nonprofit leaders, like, can you come back to like three strategic priorities, which is really hard, and we're all trying to do all the things, right. I hate that. I hate it. Like, every part of my body is like, yeah, yeah, those are three priorities. But we also have these other 15. I know that. But if we have at least three that everyone is rooted on and everyone's centered on and we have what our execution is underneath that. I think that was one of the most effective things that we did in our strategic planning because when it came time to say, okay, we need to figure out like what is the future organization sustainability like merger acquisition, everything else? We were rooted in that unified strategic vision of where we were going. The board, you know, had literally like draft, like, approved it with me, right. And it had co written it with me in some ways, our staff was involved in it, our founders were involved in like everybody was at the core of what we were trying to do and where we're trying to go. And we knew what we were best at. I think knowing what we were best at, made it so that I could really like hang our lantern on that whenever conversations got challenging, or something or a founder would say, you know, we're thinking about like this strategic shift, I'm like, great, you can do that. Here's where we're going to be, if you want to support us, and you want to put our entrepreneurs, this is where we're going. And it's a really important negotiating tool, I think as well.
I love it so much. Yeah.
And it goes back to what you were saying about being confident and finding your voice. And I, I cannot put enough bold underlines under this concept that you have been promoting about soft skills. And it's just not anything that has been wired into our professional development, into habits, into how we grow. And yet, we know because we're all centered on building meaningful relationships, that it's the Nexus, it's the connective tissue that holds everything together. And so I think that's such a great challenge for everybody out there, like what do you feel uniquely primed to know exactly? What can you confidently walk in and say, This is who we are. And this is what we need. Because you know, what? Our programs our beneficiaries, our people they're worth fighting for. That is why we get up, it is why we're not paid well, you know, because we're, we're here for something else. I'm not saying I agree with it. And we're here to try to fight systems and institutions that keep us in poverty. Because imagine what could be unlocked, if we started pouring into those soft skills, if we were paid a living wage, if we had conversations at this level, the equity and the power just gets completely up ended in the best way. So thank you for all of that. And you've listened to the show enough to know, we got to, we got to bring the humanity into this. And we want to know your heart and your humanity. Take us back to a moment of philanthropy that has stayed with you. And how you define that is up to you. It doesn't have to be a gift. It doesn't, it can be an act, think about something in your life that really profoundly stayed with you. And we'd love to hear that story.
I will tell an old story. So when I went down to Peru, I was working with an organization called the Andean Alliance for Sustainable Development. And at the time, there were millions and millions of dollars getting poured into Peru, specifically addressing malnutrition and looking at interventions that were meant to, I think, address malnutrition for specifically, indigenous populations. And, and what I witnessed and what I saw was the organization I was working with the Andean Alliance, they were in the community, they'd been living there for years already, you know, part time now, now they're full time down there, they had been building connection and community with the mayor and with the women's groups and working with the men's groups and volunteering in the schools. And there was great data and science that demonstrated if you put greenhouses in communities, you can address malnutrition, and malnutrition in those areas. Because they really like the climates, it's tough to grow veggies at 15,000 feet. And in that cold, right, you got to have a greenhouse to be able to do it. So they were mostly subsistence on on potatoes. So they took a community centered approach. And I got to see what that looked like in action. So they were in the community and they said, What are you all want? Or what do you all need? Or what are your barriers to being able to use a tomato? Do you know what a tomato is? Do you know what lettuce is, how would you use it? How does this fit in with your indigenous context and culture? And how does it not? And how can we use what works for you in order to build better faster? So at the time, there were 35 greenhouses that went up around Peru, at the same time, millions and millions dollars to put these greenhouses together. This organization had almost $0. They were not one of the recipients. And they went to the mayor and they said, Hey, we have an idea. We've talked to the school. And we talked to you know, some of these other folks and we think that putting the greenhouse at the school, integrating it from an educational perspective with the children, having them harvest and learn about the different things and take that food home at the end of the day, in addition to getting meals prepared for them at lunchtime, because you're already preparing meals for them is going to be really impactful. And the mayor said great, that's fantastic. Good luck with that. And they were like, oh, no, we're not paying for this. You are and he said what? I'm not paying for that. Like you're you're international development. You're supposed to pay for that and they We're like, we need you to own this. We're gonna do it with you. But we need you to own this. And I think the the impacts of that. So like the the domino effect that that had is, is the community members owned the work and the community members owned the process. And they, we, we worked with them on asking for help with us on on what that looked like. And I think that like we did it a equivalent of like a chef's competition, you know, where we created, most of the most of the women that we were working with were illiterate, or only spoke Quechua. And so we created these cookbooks that were just drawings of like, here's the tomato and you cut it like this, and you put it, you know, in the front, right? So we we responded to what they said they were like, Oh, I can't read. I don't know how to read a full recipe. But well, if we had a book that was pictures, would you do that? No. Yeah, we're like, well, do you want to color the book, like, so they had ownership and every single piece of it. And so I got to like literally see what it meant to provide community with solutions, but not drive the solutions. And what the impacts of that was. Of those 35 greenhouses, you want to know how many are left. Theirs, theirs is the only one left. 10 years later, theirs is the only ones left. I know, they're taking that same work, they've got other integrative farms, they've got coffee collaboratives that they're working with, they've really taken this idea of like community based development to the next level, and they've been really successful. And you know, what, USAID still isn't funding them, you know, major donors around the country still are funding them. But like, at the same time, I think like that. The other the other cycle, they broke for that Mayor and for some of those community members with was was this cycle of like, the lack of self sufficiency, because people have been coming in for years and telling me, you don't know how to do this, we're gonna fund this, and we're gonna do this. So they thought they didn't know how to do that. And that's what we need to do with all of our beneficiaries. This is really testing like, what do you actually not know how to do versus what what just have people been telling you, you don't know how to do, right. Like I tell entrepreneurs all the time. Yes, you need to learn how to ask yes, you need to ask for advice, and to get help, and your network is everything. And the reality is, is all the tough decisions, you have to make like the wisdom is in your body, the wisdom is there. And the same is true for the nonprofit leaders. The wisdom was in my body that this acquisition was the right strategy for us. And most importantly, for our entrepreneurs. I didn't know that. Like that's we have to really like trust ourselves and trust the folks that that we quote unquote, say like think need help. And if they don't need our help, like, maybe we shouldn't exist. And I think that's the other thing that that I learned in that is, every year that organization would ask themselves, like, do we need to be around? And I don't think that that gets asked enough. That's like a big, juicy story that like was super, super pivotal to me that I reflect back on all the time in my decision making and in my like, you know, the question of like, are we being performative? Or are we being supportive? Is this value add? Or is it? Or am I still just responding to what the funders want? And sometimes you respond to what the funders want? Because that's what you got to do to survive for that day. But can you get back again, to that strategic planning to go back to that, like, can you get back to that, that core of what you're doing and who you're helping and how you're helping them and, and how you are with them, like making sure it's not compromising for always, like, that's another soft skill. And, and I think we also have to have grace with that, because you can't get that right all the time.
Danielle Steer, I like you so much, I really do. Glad you're in the world.
I like you all.
I think the principles extracted from that story are like everything, and it's something that we don't see every day, but when we see it, it's like that is the beacon, that's how this work has to be done. That does center community in a way that's it's just not as clear, you know, it's more messy, it's more it's, it's harder to pull off. So but it's like, it's the right dignified way to do it. And so, thank you for for sharing that. And that's one that's going to stick with me to today. So we ask all of our guests for a one good thing, how do you distill you know, your experiences? Or maybe just what you're feeling today that you'd share with the community can be a habit, a piece of advice, a mantra? What's your one good thing?
I think something that I'm known for, if it's not clear already, is that while I believe in the statement, like I am enough, I always believe is there a better way? And so I think the willingness to say how we've been doing things doesn't mean it's how we need to keep doing things whether that's myself in my parenting or or how I show up with my husband, you know, or or how I operate as a now a VC or formula nonprofit leader, like, is there a different way? And I don't want to be over qualitative about like, it always has to be for sure better, but like, I'm doing something regularly, could it be different? And I think that that constant questioning has helped me to, to improve impact, operations, efficiencies, I think leadership throughout my, I think both personal and professional career. But I think that that has been really at the core of, of how I've been able to show up as my best self every day, even if best looks different every day.
it feels so healthy, to have that moment of discomfort because it says we're checking ourselves every single day, and that it's not just about us, and my beliefs and my lived experience, because the problems are deeper than me. Their problem, they're deeper than what I can see. And so I like that just as a habit to kind of extend everybody. And so I know people are gonna want to connect with you give us the details about the best place to find you on socials, where can they connect with Lunar Startups? Where, just give us all the goods?
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm probably most active on LinkedIn, Danielle J. Steer is my handle there, you can find Lunar Startups on LinkedIn or lunarstartups.org. And maybe more appropriately now as a program of Connect Up Institute. So it's connectupmn.com. Lunar Startups does have an excellent Instagram that has done a great job at showcasing our founders, which are, you know, the great joy of my life is the founders that we work with. So I highly recommend going and seeing all of the fantastic, you know, mission driven folks that are building great companies in our community and beyond.
Amazing, I imagine you're surrounded by just the most incredible people. This conversation is completely filled our hearts we'll link all this up in the show notes. So glad to know you in this world and amplify the work that you're doing.
Oh, thank you. I appreciate you both. Thank you so much for you and the work they're doing in your community. I'm so grateful to be part of it.
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