Pay, Leave and Power: The Nonprofit Pay Conversation - Evan Feinberg

4:25AM May 12, 2022

Speakers:

Julie Confer

Becky Endicott

Jonathan McCoy

Evan Feinberg

Keywords:

nonprofits

organization

people

conversation

contribution

compensation

pay

nonprofit leaders

talk

community

year

evan

salaries

create

sector

employees

thinking

empowered

impact

podcast

Hey, I'm John. And I'm Becky.

And this is the we are for good podcast,

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, where Nonprofit Professionals, philanthropist world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.

So let's get started. Yo, Becky, what's up?

Favorite human alert, right? Three peat back on the podcast,

when we bring back a three peat podcast guest I mean, you know, it's gonna be good. But we really wanted to just kind of uncover a lot of the conversations that we want to be top and center in this sector, but often get pushed off or delayed or kind of muted on a lot of times. And so we really want to have a conversation about pay. You know, in the nonprofit sector, it's kind of the brunt of jokes, right? How many of us were like, Oh, you're going to go get a real job after you leave the nonprofit kind of that mentality. And we just wanted to talk with somebody that could do more than just give us some vision because I love vision. And I could stay in the vision space for a long time. But we wanted a conversation that got into the nuts and bolts of like action that we could leave today and feel really inspired and empowered to have these big, meaty conversations about really pushing to something better for our compensation and the way that we equitably compensate our employees in the nonprofit sector. And so as we looked around, we're like, who would be prime to talk about this? I don't really be thinking maybe I don't know New York Times Forbes article enthusiast who happens to be one of our dear friends. Evan Feinberg is coming back to the podcast, we're so delighted to have Evan today, he leads the stand together Foundation. And you know, we love this organization, they really look and find these organizations and people that are disruptive in the best of ways that they're making an incredible impact. They put them into their catalyst program and like explode their impact teaching frameworks, and really rippling it across the country, that organizations that are involved with them are the ones to watch. And Evan is really at the helm and a humble servant leader it kind of at the core of it. And so we're delighted to have Evan back on the podcast, Evan, get in this house. So glad to see you.

Well, it is so great to be with you, John. And Becky, I would spend all my time just chatting about the nonprofit sector. I just love being on the podcast and think the community you build is just incredible. And so anything I can do to help contribute, I am always game and so excited to have this conversation today.

Well, I mean, thanks for coming back to this house, we really have been counting this down. And would you give us just a little bit of your story. I mean, for people that are new to you, we wanted to get to know you, the Evan that we know and love. Tell us about what led you into this work, and then we'll jump straight into the combo.

Yeah, I mean, like I'm passionate about the what we would think about the principles of empowerment, those principles that help more human beings, all human beings to flourish. And, and so I have throughout my life and career tried to discover what those principles are and how to apply them in new and different ways. And so early in my career that took me down the public policy route. And so I worked on Capitol Hill and and we're sort of in the realm of policy and politics for a number of years, but really took advantage of the opportunity to engage in what my true passion is, which is in our communities. How do we drive these principles of empowerment, these principles that lead to progress in people's lives? How do we use those principles to transform philanthropy, to transform our organizations, so that we can really help people to flourish. And so that's how stand together Foundation came to be and we launched it about, look, it's about seven years I've been on the project now six and a half years we've been out in the public. And and so it's been a wild ride of going from working with just a handful of nonprofit organizations on these ideas in 2016, to now working with 232 nonprofits all over the country soon, that'll be over 300 nonprofits around the country, and helping them to apply these principles to their management frameworks and to their impact vision work, how they measure success. In general, how do we build a movement that transforms lives and transforms communities?

I mean, I need to reflect your compliment back to you I mean, the community that you have built over it stand together it not only is it so modern, progressive, impactful, it is so human and and relevant. You guys are such good people. I am fangirling every time I see something that comes out of your community and and I just want to say you're just the perfect person to talk about this. I love that you talked about empowered based, you know, philanthropy, you wrote this great article for Forbes we're gonna drop it in the show notes because I think it's so powerful. It's about how do you make the use the great resignation to be stronger? And I really love this concept and having you're just a beacon in terms of how do we get out of our scarcity mindset and really start to pour into solutions that not only power, the mission, but they power the people to in such an equitable and healthy way. So I want to transition just a little bit to talking about this pay equity problem and the sector. And I feel so many people in our community leaned in to this conversation we've we've talked about it in our community and coffees, we've socialized it a little bit in the community. And when we do there is an explosion and a flurry of activity where people want to know, how do we get past this pay equity problem. So I would love for you to just kind of talk about this a little bit. Because we get so busy building a sector that is serving we forget to value ourselves. So we're thinking like, what if we flip the script up, level up, start to attract the most magnetic people and start living in scarcity? So talk to us about how do we start to paint a picture of this equity problem in our sector? And what are the solutions that you're seeing?

Yeah, well, that's such a great question. Becky, you referenced the article that I wrote in Forbes, it was in response to this just really terrible article in The New York Times basically saying that nonprofits have to settle for second best, they have to settle for the scraps of the for profit industry. And so if the for profit world is having this great resignation, and people are leaving their jobs in droves, than the nonprofit industry is going to get hit even harder. And we're going to have to settle for essentially the bottom of the barrel, so to speak. And I just think it was offensive, Becky, it was offensive. Thinking. And so you know, first of all, let's let's dispel a couple of important myths. Right? First of all, this idea that the nonprofit industry is hurting right now is just not true nonprofit giving is up in our country overall, you know, the general rise in wages. And with some inflation going on the nonprofit sectors giving has continued to increase. And so there's not a problem right now, overall, in the country with nonprofit Givens, this notion that we're going to lose talent because We can't pay them because we don't have donations coming in. It's not true to start, nonprofits are the fourth largest employer in the country. Right now. We're one of the fastest growing sectors, if anything, we might have a problem a little bit with bloating and swelling. But frankly, we're growing like like crazy as a sector. So there's a there's a lot going on here that's in the favor of nonprofits. But the other thing is, is that we've always had a competitive advantage with for profit organizations in what workers want the most. And so in the piece that I wrote in Forbes, as a response to this New York Times article, I quoted from the American workforce index, it's a survey done by an incredible group of populace, an incredible leader named Todd Rose, who you've got to have on the podcast, putting it in the queue, come on, Todd. Todd is phenomenal. He's written a handful of books. But the American workforce index demonstrates that whatever people say they want out of their job and their career publicly doesn't actually match what they really privately value in what they really want. And overwhelmingly what workers want is they want to find meaning and purpose in their work, they want to be trusted to discover new solutions to problems and have autonomy and driving some of those solutions in their work. And so the things that those are just a couple of the things that the survey found, but the things that that workers want, nonprofits have this incredible opportunity to provide. But at the end of the day, we are, we're missing out on using this competitive advantage for one reason or another, either because we're not paying enough to attract those workers. Or we're not providing a management culture in our organization that trusts and empowers our people. So if we think about compensation a little bit differently, and we think about management culture a little bit differently, I believe that nonprofits can and should attract the very best talent. And in fact, then, of course, our look, I believe in the meaning and purpose of for profit work, but they're gonna get our scraps instead.

Oh, it's so good. And I just believe that, you know, because we've talked so much this season about culture. And like, if we get it right, like we have got everything lined up to really attract the best and brightest minds, because the work that we do are doing is so deeply connected to some of these things that you called out, like meaning and purpose and to be able to show up and do that, like I see the value proposition. So we kind of help us unwind like what are some of the historical narratives that you feel like have driven society to maybe some of the pay inequity? We've talked a little bit on the podcast, how just even the media's portrayal of the nonprofit kind of like I said in the intro, it's sometimes just like kind of a brunt of jokes, you know, at family gatherings of what a fundraiser does for a living versus, you know, something that may be in the for profit side? Can you unpack some of that for us?

Yeah, well, I think there's a this idea of stigma around nonprofit work not being as important to the growth of our economy overall and to the sort of the daily life of our Republic. And I think that's got to go right, we have to change that stigma that this work is absolutely critical to driving progress together. I'm, I'm someone who believes in, in free markets and the growth of our economy overall, it's absolutely critical. But we need that growth to be inclusive of everyone. And we need strong communities that empower everyone to participate. Because if we don't have strong communities, it's going to ultimately lead to the degradation of our of our economic sector, overall. And so we need a strong social economy alongside our business economy. And so we need we need people to see that big vision and the importance of communities first, and then within our own structures, we definitely have to change some paradigms as well, I'll give you a really specific example, the idea that we would make nonprofit grants, whether it's from government or philanthropists and foundations, or from high net worth individuals, the idea that we would make grants based on the amount of overhead that an organization spends, is just absolutely ridiculous. You would never evaluate a for profit company based on that you say, Well, do you need to make capital investments and infrastructure investments to that in order to lead to better results for your customers to lead to more growth for your business? And you'd say, well, if you're spending a lot of money on the capital, and infrastructure and staff investments, and you're not growing and creating value for your customers, yeah, that's a big mistake. But if you're making those investments, and it's paying off, you'd be like, that's fantastic. Let's do a whole lot more of scale

scale in for profit, you would be scaling at that moment.

Exactly. And so this idea that, you know, the the the historical reason why we look at that 10% Number, or 20% number on administration, is because givers are desperate for measurement, that they can compare nonprofits to each other. And the only publicly available data that compares across are what we report to the IRS and the IRS decided, at some point, historically, to require that nonprofits disclose how much they're spending on their staff and overhead versus their program, so to speak. So this false distinction got codified into our lexicon, and then now GuideStar, and all these other things, publish that data. And that becomes how people make decisions. And it's led to this really nefarious idea that we can't pay our people or, you know, we're worried about our leaders compensation showing up on the our 990s. And so we're afraid to invest in our leaders, what they're worth, what they would be worth in the market, and so on and so forth. And so I think if we're gonna get past this, there's some sort of macro level things we got to change some paradigms on, and then we can get to some of the micro things within our our organizations as well.

Okay, you want to freak out on that, John? Or do you want me to?

I mean, I just want to be like, preached like that, that framing helps so much, you know, of where we're at today, and uncovers a lot of the problems in the sector, because the organizations that have figured out how to navigate that may look different on paper. And at the same day, like it's, it could be hurting the sector. And so it really is working against itself in the thing that was trying to be helpful. So we were here for this conversation. We want to help rewrite a new story with this. So where do you want to go next beer you want to react?

I mean, I want to give a practical pro tip here because we just had this conversation with Mallory Erickson a couple of weeks ago, when we just literally did nothing but squat on the overhead myth issue. And I thought she gave such a great example. For me you talk about GuideStar Charity Navigator, whatever it is, she has had her clients put in these are her progressive clients who are at bronze level, which let's talk about the distinction of how your gold silver and bronze just the power dynamic and that is horrible. But she says she has her clients put on their website on the front of their website. I am a parent we are a proud bronze Charity Navigator listed organization which means that we pour into innovation we pour into creativity we pay our people well. And because of that we are never gonna reach the Gold Star distinction and we are proud to be sitting in this place. And that's sort of a bandaid. I feel like on this issue because it's a much bigger problem but friends, holy smokes, go back, do me a favor. Listen to what Evan has said listen to it a couple times. Because I think just empowering and getting that mindset shifted in you. I've got 20 years of thinking in one way in the nonprofit and development and advancement sector and it is taking time to unwind In that scarcity mindset that is keeping us individuals in poverty. And so yes to all of that,

I think there's a ton of risk aversion among nonprofits, because they think there's this is this gets back to Todd Rose and collective illusions. So, again, you should have him on the show. But Todd talks about a lot about how we hear the sort of loud minorities, and the majority of us might feel a different way. And we don't realize it, because we only hear the loud minorities on either side. But I think most nonprofit leaders think, man, if I spend more on overhead, I'll lose my GuideStar, or whatever the bronze rating, I think folks believe that, oh, all donors are going to care so dramatically about that, because I heard from some of my donors that they really look at that. And so they haven't heard from all the donors that are out there. And all the foundations that are like, I couldn't care less about that. And so they're risk averse. We need our nonprofit leaders to take the risk that you described, the proudly talking about their bronze star rating instead of their gold, but in talking about their innovation, but just in general, I believe this with all my heart, nonprofit organizations that are truly transforming lives and transforming the world can fundraise off of that transformation. And they just don't have to worry, they can leave this problem of how much money you're spending on infrastructure in the dust because it's like, who cares, right? Look at what we're doing to transform the world. And and that might require risk taking, right? It might require, Hey, I gotta make the investment upfront. And then that investment will bring in top talent, that top talent will help me change the world when I change the world I can go fundraise off of that is a risk mindset that I don't feel like we often see enough. We see nonprofit leaders playing it safe. And then hiding behind Oh, I gotta keep my, my salaries below 10%. Because, you know, that's that's the way this game is played.

Evan Feinberg. Okay, go back and find every Evon time that he's been on the podcast, because I think the first time he came on, you talked about impact in the same way that it's like, it's not just this nice number. It's like, what are you really trying to do? And I feel like that's what this conversation is about is like, getting to the heart and the core. And Newsflash, the people that are doing that are probably not your donors, these people that are obsessed of metrics that don't tie to actual tangible and impact. And so I just feel like this conversation is kind of greasing the skids. We are so ready for where to next, like we've got our mindset right, wrapped around this, share this with your board, share this with your team, come on, let's jump into you know, some frameworks. I mean, as we really get to the nuts and bolts, how do we pay people as individuals? How do we incentivize around top performance? Go?

Yeah, I think compensation in both the for profit and the nonprofit sectors has fallen prey to, to good intentions that lead to bad results around ideas around pay equity. So what they're trying to do is they're like, Oh, my goodness, we want to avoid unfairly compensating people to too little for the role because of historical injustice is because of an subconscious bias, or, or many other things that would lead to not paying somebody what they're worth. And so because of this good intention of solving that problem, people have turned toward things like pay bands, right of trying to make sure hey, you know, with anyone who's got this role, we're going to make sure they're within this band and things like that. And, and I just think that that's a big, big mistake. And here's what we ended up doing is we end up diminishing people to their job description, right, and characteristics about themselves and trying to make sure those things all match up. So we take a completely different approach to compensation that stand together Foundation, and it's one that I think is the most important thing an organization can do to drive equity in their pay, which is to make sure that we have a compensation philosophy that is highly individualized, and make sure that that at any given time that we match the total compensation for an individual to their total contribution to the organization, not looking forward. But looking backward. Let me explain what I mean by that. If we're at the end of the year, and we look back and we say who cares what they made in base salary, that person made a contribution that's worth. Let's take an example of someone, someone made a contribution and you're saying, If I were to go to the market to get that contribution from anyone, I'd have to pay $100,000 to get that kind of contribution from someone. And I paid that person $50,000 in base salary in the previous year. We would pay them a $50,000 bonus. Right? And that leads us there So, the reason the reason why we would do that is because we want a win win relationship with our employees at all times looking backward. Because if at anytime we're profiting off of our employees, they make sure that we pay them as little as we can to get the most contribution. Well, we might have gotten in the short term, right, lower cost, higher yield, but that employee is going to go look for employment elsewhere, somewhere that will pay them what they're actually worth. So we don't like that win loss relationship, we want a win win relationship with every employee all the time, and it incentivizes them to make the most contribution because they know who cares what my base salary is, I'm going to make the biggest contribution I can and we every year, we look at every single person's pay, and we look at it blindly, right? Don't even look at what their base comp was. We say, what what contribution did they make we we price that number, and then we say, well, what was their base, and then we make them whole for whatever the difference is. Now, some roles are going to be more predictable, right, some of our entry level roles and what have you, their base salary is going to make up a larger percentage of their total comp, because we can kind of predict, right what type of contribution they might make. But if they, if they surprise us, we still pay him for the total amount. And as you get your leaders, your leaders are gonna have more variability, they, you know, they might make really great decisions and your organization might drive transformative change, or we might make really poor decisions, and you do worse that year. And so our leaders who are hold more of their pay at risk than perhaps the average employee at our organization. But we do the same philosophy for every single employee. And here's the way this gets at the equity point, and then I'll I'll let you jump in.

You know, you might be able to get away, even unknowingly with paying someone less than they're worth because of some characteristic about them, they may have gotten less education, they may be from a historically marginalized people group that enables you to sort of beat the market because you're willing to hire, you know, sort of take bets on someone with less education or what have you. This compensation philosophy enables you to avoid making those mistakes, because you're going to look at their actual contribution in the year. And we're going to challenge every single person as an individual. And so if if it comes back that someone's biased and recommending lower amounts, you'd start to see that over time be like, Oh, my goodness, this person's contribution is outpacing these contributions. Why is it that the price of their contribution is lower. And so it gives you a way to make sure that you never get away with paying someone less than their contribution was worth?

Okay? First of all, how many people listening to this episode had their heart drop? When Evan said, we would give them a $50,000 bonus, like I can tell you that nonprofit professionals could not even wrap their mind around what that would do to impact their life. And I also think about what happens when you invest and value someone who is so passionate about your mission, I think about the like, attrition goes away like your retention of employees, the value you feel the cultural vibrancy, the way you feel seen. And and like a human being, you feel like you are really contributing. I just think having this mindset, this model is so progressive. And it to me if you if you actually dive into this in this way, it could scale you, and untold ways. And I'm not even just talking about the bottom line, it would be a magnet for incredible talent to come to your organization. Because the value proposition is just so high. And I want to dive a little bit into what you mean by contribution. Because as I'm thinking about it, it's really easy to figure out, you know, a model of who's contributing What if you're a frontline fundraiser, if you're the digital marketer, I'm like thinking about our donor relations folks, our gift processors, how do you value a contribution of someone who is not on the front line?

Yeah, I'll give you the example that you know, my my assistant is one of the top performers on our team. She's phenomenal. And her role is not fundraising. It's not it's not even it's not managing our programs or projects. But I believe that by making she helps me to be much more effective in my daily life, she's the best of the best at what she does. Her name is Lisa. I hope she listens to this. Hi, Lisa. We love you, Lisa. We don't measure contribution like a like a formula, you raise x amount of dollars you get out percent the way we run the organization, as we say to ourselves, if we had to go to the market and hire the next, the next best alternative, the replacement player for Lisa, what would we have to do to pay that person to get the type of contribution that Lisa can make? And if a simple device I use is, and I hate to be talking about leases, compensation, we're not talking specifics, obviously. But we basically say, if we were to say to ourselves, if I dangled the amount of money that we are saying, we're going to pay Lisa, this year to the market, could I get people to line up who are capable of making that contribution, and I'd have my pick of folks and be like, Oh, my goodness, for that amount of money, we could get high and lots of high in town, if we've got, we would get imagine a list of people out the door that would that would come to work and be able to make that contribution, we're probably paying too much, right. But if we're saying ourselves, my goodness, if if Lisa left and we offered her salary to the market, we could never replace which this is, you know, usually the case with Lisa, we can never replace that kind of contribution, then then we're paying too little in that case. And we need to think about the total compensation increasing. And you're trying to get that sort of Goldilocks number each year that says, Okay, we've accurately priced that contribution against the market. And look, this is an art not a science. So some years, we'll get it wrong, too high, some years, we'll get it wrong, too low. But this is the commitment that we make to every one of our employees. Every year, your supervisor will be incredibly intentional about the price of the of the contributions you made to the organization. And then we're gonna get challenging feedback on that from others who can help make sure that we're being thoughtful about it. So we don't have everyone challenge everyone's comp. But we've got definitely levels of leadership and board that are making that are providing challenge and feedback to make sure that we're accurately pricing each person's contribution each year. And I think that level of intentionality is what sets our comp philosophy apart.

I think, too, I just keep thinking of like the sustainability that this builds to have just kind of putting you in this place that you don't, we talked about succession plans, you know, like, what's next, what's happening next, if you have earmarked that Lisa is this caliber person that you have to be able to retain, even if she does leave, your budget is already there to find that level of talent? Like I just think it sets you up to have less interruption to and creates the culture on the front end, that people probably aren't going to leave unless there's just some extenuating circumstance. But it just all feels like it feeds each other in the best of ways,

right? Yeah, yeah, I get the biggest challenge I get from nonprofit leaders on taking this individualized total compensation for total contribution is, first of all, they think that there's gonna be lots of people that are making 50,000, they get a $50,000 bonus, that's a great problem to have. That's a very rare thing for someone to just, you totally underestimated what they were capable of. And they just, you know, crush it to that level. That's, that's probably a rare thing. And so there's not as much variability as people think. But secondly, they think, Oh, well, well, that makes sense. If you've got like deep pockets to be able to pay out these bonuses, we don't, it's not so much the total salary, like we have to, as we talked about before, commit ourselves to paying our people what they're worth overall. But it's just a way of how you structure it. Right? You're, you're basically using salary as an advance on value contribution. And a bonus as a way of making somebody whole. So that that way, you you get the total comp right each year in arrears. Versus if you pay out high salaries, you might end up paying a lot of your team more than the value they created in the past year, and then underpaying your top performers. And that's also not a place you want to be. You don't want to be in a place where you're sort of you bloat your your salaries across the board. And then you know, you don't have variability so that basically like you're not incentivized in a good year, or feeling some pain in a bad year. A lot of for profit companies do that part better than nonprofits. And I think we've got to, we've got to learn here. We have to be relentless, that we care about impact, and we're going to reward the people on our team that drive more impact.

We have to be relentless about driving impact. I mean, there's no better phrase than what we're trying to do and what we call the impact uprising here than trying to be relentless and unapologetic about it. And I'm just sitting here in my chair, praying that there are so many nonprofit leaders that are listening to this, and I hope you lose Intuit a couple times, because I want this to get in everyone's head and I want to like get our arms around it because I have never in my years and nonprofit ever had a manager, bring me in and talk about the value that I've brought to the organization and ever talked about a pathway for me to be better compensated. Can you imagine what that would do? For your affinity to the organization to your level of hustle, loyalty? I just think that is an incredible pro tip. And I want to I want to get practical. And I want your counsel on this, Evan. I mean, at we're, we have a lot of people who are not leaders, you know, that listen to this podcast. So for fundraisers for, again, that donor relations person, that gift processor, we want to talk about negotiation tips and where to start. So let's talk to the frontline fundraisers who are listening right now. What is your advice for them as they start to negotiate salaries and benefits and having these conversations internally?

Yeah, well, first of all, Becky, I'm I'm so sorry that you've never had a supervisor. That's that's sat you down to talk about your compensation.

I think it's normal in our sector. John, have you which I feel bad because I don't I was John supervisor. So I

valued throughout my career, but I never felt like that was tied to my pay, you know, truly, which is scary thought,

yeah. Well, well, I think that you've brought up a really important point that every supervisor, every employee should think about how to productively not sort of be entitled to this, but productively start the conversation with their supervisor and with their direct reports, what whether the comp philosophy of the organization matches something like what I said or not to talk about, hey, I would like to grow my compensation. I would I believe that the way to grow my compensation is to create more value for the organization. What are the ways in which I could create more value for the organization that would enable me to grow my compensation? If we had everybody having that conversation, rather than thinking about how do I get a different degree or a different title? To get more money or move organizations to get more money? We that would be in a revolution in the sector in and of itself. So I hope I hope everyone has this

holy crap. Yes. Like if those conversations happen, and I think too, like there's just this philosophy that the only way to move up the chain is to start managing more people, which you see all these people just tank because they're not managers. That's what they're great at. You know, and so I just think, yes, can we have those conversations? That's anybody can have that conversation with their supervisor today? I mean, you know,

and I think that's the us about what does the frontline fundraiser Do I think that fundraisers have they get often into this, this trap of saying, Oh, well, the way I'll get paid as a percentage of my fundraising dollars. And you know, that this, that incentive could be really nefarious, right? Because you guys preach often. And we want the right donors, right, we want dollars for the biggest priorities for the organization, right. So there are all kinds of things that you would would label as goals of your fundraising team that are your frontline marketers, they're building your brand in the marketplace, there are all these things that fundraisers create value tour, they're going to help bring feedback back to the program's teams and others in the organization to make them stronger. We often talk about contribution to our management culture to our organizational culture is one of the top contributions that people make. And if you only price the outputs of someone's fundraising, and you didn't price, their contributions to provide a challenge and feedback and sharing knowledge across the organization, and helping us to develop our vision and better understand how to create value. In general, you're all of this unseen benefit you're missing and your pay. Or you might have a fundraiser, who's awesome at raising money. And as a total jerk, and they might be totally tanking your organization, but But it's showing up in their outputs. And you don't want to be giving them big bonuses and paying them more and more money, while they're totally destroying your organizational culture at the same time. So we don't like to use this sort of counting numbers for incentives for that reason. So all that's to say, I would encourage your frontline fundraiser to have a holistic conversation with their supervisor and with the leadership of their organization, on how they can create more value for the organization and to think about it in that regard, and see if they can't tie future compensation growth to maybe more broad view of, of how to create value.

I don't want to overstate this too much, but I feel like Evan is the Oracle of what we need from the from the business for profit side. Evan is the Oracle He is the one that not only do you bring these frameworks, you bring this explosive vision and mindset shift that just feels so much like it's needed and will power the moment that we're in right now, I can completely understand why stand together foundation is such a vibrant organization. And I don't know what else to add to that other than I just want to be your friend forever and sit at your feet and learn from you. Because this is such an epic conversation. And I hope people that are listening right now are really taking it in. And I hope it empowers you. I hope it empowers you to keep diving into this topic. Because this is going to take a legion of people who believe in this who are powering these narratives for it, I think education on this topic is absolutely key and socializing, that education, your board needs to be completely on board with this level of value. Because a lot of them I'm gonna guess our business men and women who understand how to scale how to scale a for profit. And if we can apply those mentalities to it, the mission space, there is no limit to the change that we can see in our individual communities and around the world. And to know that an a nonprofit professional, from the lowest paid to the top paid, feels such value as they're chasing that is something so aspirational, that I just want everyone to soak in and really embrace and try to chase alongside us back. Yeah,

I love that you use the phrase, I hope everyone feels empowered. And I love I love your language around we need an impact uprising. Just come back to why is this so important for a second? I think if people think of nonprofits as organizations that are like agencies that push out services that we know what to do, we know how to improve people's lives today. And we just need nonprofits to deliver services, then none of this matters, right? None of this, none of this, how you pay people to create more value. None of that matters if that's the case. But of course, we know that that's not we need a dynamic and vibrant social sector that discovers each and every day new and better ways of helping people to realize their full potential to live lives of meaning and purpose to solve major barriers in our communities. And since those answers are not known, they have to be discovered by social entrepreneurs. We need your listeners to be on the frontier and the cutting edge of this impact uprising, that that drives just this, this entrepreneurship and discovery of the future. And as they do that, they're going to need to be able to incentivize and reward entrepreneurship and empowerment, where they are empowering each of their employees to go be the leader, that in that regard, and that requires to think about everything differently compensation, certainly one of them. But it's going to be their vision, it's going to be how they measure everything. So we've talked about a lot as I've been on the show previously, but don't sleep on the rewards and incentives for your staff to attract and retain and motivate top talent. And make sure you avoid all the traps of hey, I want to root out subconscious bias, for example, my compensation, don't accidentally create a pay system that creates pay bands and bureaucracy in your effort to do that. Instead get radically focused and intentional on the individual so that you make sure that you don't, without knowing it, pay someone less than they're

worth. I mean, it's so beautiful, Evan, you know, I know a lot of people listening are probably saying, I'm sitting here in a small nonprofit, how are we ever going to transition to this? So I want to give you a second because I just think of y'all as catalysts. They don't come in the door, these huge mammoth organizations with huge budgets, they're entrepreneurial minded, they're scrappy, they figure things out in their community. I mean, would you just kind of give cast vision for what does this do? As these frameworks are put on organizations that are trying to figure out how to grow their impact? What does this do? How does it bring people alive and bring us home with this conversation today?

Yeah, I mean, the way that even a small nonprofit can begin to transform themselves around this idea is to start using the lens of empowerment and everything they do. So even if you don't transform into some major bonus structure tomorrow. The way to start is the conversations between supervisors and employees. It could be a two person, nonprofit and you're the you're talking about how are we going to make decisions around compensation roles and responsibilities, etc. And tie it all back to a shared vision and a shared set of principles around what we're looking for in the organization and say, and we're gonna then in radically and intentionally focus on you as an intern. Enjoy your professional development, your responsibility is what we're going to give you autonomy and ownership over in the organization because of your unique gifts and talents, right? We don't do nearly enough of the discussion about this. And as you as you get individualize and focus on the unique gifts and talents of each individual, then you can help provide them the roles and responsibilities that you need them to do. And then you can get to compensate them appropriately based on that unique contribution. So I would really encourage, if, if everyone hears this wonky conversation about compensation, they take one thing out of it, it's to have that sit down conversation, and individualize it, talk about their responsibilities and their compensation, based on their unique gifts and talents, and what will empower them to create more value for the organization. If you have that conversation, then then the mechanics of comp and everything else will flow very easily.

I mean, I'm just so geeked out about this. And I confess that I have like a tiny bit of sadness that I was not working in nonprofit, to see this actually play out, you know, and so I just want to say to everyone out there, do do your 1% shift today, do one thing today. And if it's that conversation, I can assure you, it will open the door to more conversations like that, I just see this, and maybe that one conversation, as a pebble dropped in the ripple that can come from that, I hope, again, I'm using this word, you feel empowered, to go in and fight for your worth. And I want us to get out of this poverty mentality of that nonprofits have about the value that we bring in the value that we create, you are so worthy of being paid well in the sector, you are so worthy of being compensated for what Evan is talking about the unique gifts that you uniquely bring to power, the mission that you're serving at. So understand that take that in and use it as fuel to go out into the world. And thank you, Evan, for tying in professional development to it. Because when we talk about equity and benefit structure, pouring into professional development, we think is absolutely key. We've said it many times it should be the very first thing put into your budget is how are we going to up train everybody in the way that they are powering this mission? Thank you so much. And I'm very depressed to say we gotta move to the one good thing because it means our conversation is winding down, but I don't know how you're gonna bring it all together. But what's your one good thing that you want to give to our audience today?

You know, I there's so many things that I could choose from my one good thing is I we just recently did a retreat with the hundreds of organizations we had, I think 125 people in San Antonio, Texas, to look inwardly about ourselves as nonprofit leaders and organizations and what we can do to self actualize in our roles to more deeply tap into each of our gifts and talents to contribute more to catalyst movement across our country to drive what you guys call an impact uprising, I think of an empowerment movement that's going to transform our communities all over the country. And I just got to be with the most influential leaders of nonprofits in the country not because of the size of their nonprofits, but because of the size of their hearts and the incredible impact of their their organization. And and I just left inspired and so you know, I say this all the time there are people that despair for our country they despair for our communities, they look at the poverty all around us the polarization all around us and they despair and I don't do that ever because I get to be around the the dealers of hope out there that are transforming lives and transforming communities and I hope everyone just when they when they would they find themselves in under that despair, they they look around with the incredible impact uprising happening already and everywhere. That we get to be a part of and find find their hope and that

what a freakin epic one good thing. I mean, we're here for this, Evan point people to how they can connect. And I'm telling you track these catalyst organizations, they're inspiring the videos on his website, you'll just get taken into these missions and these people that have the hugest hearts, and are making a clean, tangible impact. So point us to where people can find you online. Evan, I mean, you're in the Forbes magazine. So just pick that up too. While you're at it. Yeah,

yes, Sandy foundation.org is probably the best place to find us and read all about our catalyst network and ways to get involved and if folks are interested in the the training that we offer and the the programming that we offer, we'd love to connect that way. And then yeah, check out some of those articles I write for the Forbes nonprofit council. So I've got an up But of articles on on management measurement, this idea of the great resignation was a previous one, some stuff coming up on on youth and child welfare and play space, philanthropy and a number of other topics that hopefully, will be of interest to your listeners.

I mean, you're just such a hard wired visionary that honestly, you are one of those people that gives me the hope you take me out of despair every time that we talk, because I just think that you are you and I say you collectively stand together. Foundation is just so visionary. And the fact that you've already dropped your pebble into your community. I mean, I'm just thinking about all the pebbles that can be dropped as we socialize these conversations. I want to thank every person who came into this conversation clicked on your podcast episode to listen to this. I feel changed by it. I hope you do, too. And I am totally jazzed and so appreciative. Please go find Ebony's on LinkedIn incredible thought leadership as well. And gosh, guys, we've got this. I just want to give everybody like a mama bear hug and an Attaboy. Let's get out there and let's go fight for ourselves. You are worthy of it. Full hearts, man. Thank you so much. Thanks, Evan.

Thanks for having me.

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