Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 549. Tapping into Top Talent: How Fractional Executives Can Help Nonprofits Thrive - Sahar Vermezyarito and Cindy Wagman

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549. Tapping into Top Talent: How Fractional Executives Can Help Nonprofits Thrive - Sahar Vermezyarito and Cindy Wagman · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hey, I'm John.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: And I'm Becky.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: And this is the we Are For Good podcast.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: 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.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: 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.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: So welcome to the good community.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: So let's get started.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: Becky, what's happening?
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: We've got a repeat guest, we have a new guest and anytime we have two women in the house.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: You know I am here for that.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: And today we are taking you to the how it's Built series.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: We are talking about how to work with fractional executives and how they can help small and mid-sized nonprofits access this top-tier talent on a limited budget.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: It's going to help you with retention, and we have brought two powerhouses to the podcast, so it's my great joy to reintroduce you to our good friends Cindy Wagman and our new friend, sahar Vermizari.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Cindy is the founder of Fractional Fundraising Movement and Sahar is the director of the East Scarborough Storefront.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: And if you've hung around here for any length of time, you know that our trend number two this year was retention as an inside game, and we really wanted to bring this conversation to you because really investing in the talent within your team is going to give so much longevity and vibrancy to your organization.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: So let me just dive in and I want to introduce these two incredible ladies to you.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Sahar is this incredible equity-focused nonprofit leader with experience in anti-oppressive and anti-racist frameworks, and her lived experience as a refugee and an immigrant and an identity as a radicalized woman gives her a really unique perspective into this work.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: And Sahar, I love that explanation so much and she's dedicated her career to working with people to find solutions to their challenges as they see it.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: And she does that from a systems perspective.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: And the storefront is just this beautiful community hub in Kingston, galloway, orton Park neighborhood in Ontario.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: That's facilitating collaboration, it's building community and supports people to learn and create together as they're living healthy lives and to find meaningful work, play and thrive.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Love that you put play in there, sahar.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: And then Cindy Wagman is no stranger to the we Are For Good community.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: We love her dearly.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Her heartfelt goal is to unlock the potential of small nonprofits through fundraising.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: She spent her entire career in fundraising and she absolutely knows how to make it accessible to small nonprofits in a way that's really mission enhancing and empower, which we are totally here for.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: So, after 15 years of working in-house at nonprofits, she ventured out on her own almost 10 years ago and she's learned, adjusted and grown and now she's bringing her education experience to the masses.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: And now she is creating this incredible movement of nonprofits and consultants who work together to achieve this huge impact to the world and to themselves.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: So, y'all, we are so excited that you are in the house, get in here and let me quit talking.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having us.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: We're so excited that you guys are here, and I just think that more and more organizations are struggling to find and retain their staff, which is leading to higher turnover.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: They're piling on more and more work onto an existing staff and we're hearing this so much in our community and it's just a recipe for disaster.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: But at the same time, there is this rise in fractional executives and if that's the new phrase for you, don't worry, we're going to break it down for you.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Don't worry, we're going to break it down for you but these are experienced executive level professionals who are working in this consulting capacity with orgs, using this sort of unique blend of high level strategy and day-to-day implementation, and so fractional execs can really help fill these critical capacities.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: Like CFOs, cmos, they can help in fundraising, marketing, hr, and it's really just like having an extension of your team.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: That's not entirely in-house, but they are so in the mission with you.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: So we are excited to hear all about this today.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: We want you to unpack how to build it in this series, but first we want to get to know you guys first.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: So, zahar, I want to kick it to you and just say tell us a little bit about your journey and what led you to today.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: Sure, yeah.
• 4:27
  Speaker 5: Thanks for having me.
• 4:29
  Speaker 5: Really nice to be here.
• 4:30
  Speaker 5: So I like to start because you know I've talked about coming from an anti-oppressive background.
• 4:37
  Speaker 5: It's important to know who I am in terms of my identity.
• 4:41
  Speaker 5: So I was born in Iran and I was a refugee in a couple different countries before I landed in Canada.
• 4:49
  Speaker 5: And that experience of being a refugee and immigrant in different countries and then coming to Canada, having to learn a new language, seeing my parents do everything that they could to give us a good life and, you know, experiencing poverty and racism, I think give me, you know, a firsthand experience of the kinds of issues that we want to address and the challenges in society.
• 5:17
  Speaker 5: And I went to school for social work and that's where I became familiar with anti-oppression as a term, and I actually had applied to other schools for psychology, but a master's in social work and that education gave me the language and the framework for what I had been experiencing all my life and I was able to put those two things together and I quickly found out, yeah, that for me where I could shine was really in the behind the scenes and strategic and systems level work, and so, yeah, I came back to the storefront after working there as a manager, as the director, I've been there for three years now and I love it.
• 6:13
  Speaker 5: I was looking for value alignment and there's such great value alignment for me in terms of my own personal values and the organizational values, and it's been a great learning journey.
• 6:24
  Speaker 5: So, yeah, that's me in kind of in a nutshell.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: I mean both of our faces.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we couldn't be more impressed with just how you show up in the world E Scarborough.
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: That's all I keep thinking I think that too, because we're going to talk about fractional fundraising today and, cindy, I want you to catch us up, because last time you were on, I feel like this wasn't the focus of our conversation, but it's this movement that has, like, massively grown.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: So tell us a little bit about your story.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: but I just gotta say this is the power of fractional work like this because you can tap people with this type of experience, with these types of stories, that want to give back in a way that fits not only with that organization but also with them to thrive as people too.
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: So this is just such a cool conversation, cindy.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: Catch us up.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: Over the last couple of years since you've been on the podcast, yeah, so I'm a fundraiser.
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: I like to say I'm a fundraiser through and through.
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: I started fundraising even while I was still in university.
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: I wrote a thesis on feminist fundraising.
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: No, you did not.
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, Of course you did.
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: I'm such a nerd.
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: Um, yeah, and which is like sort of back this was a long time ago Um, like early two thousands which led me to um, doing social justice work and fundraising, and so that's been my whole career.
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: And then, about nine years ago, I kind of fell into consulting and started the.
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: I knew I wanted to work with small organizations and I knew my skillset was in fundraising.
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: So I said, okay, I'm going to help small organizations and I started doing things that I thought consultants did.
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: Like organizations would hire me to do a fundraising plan Great.
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: And then that plan would sit on a shelf or on a computer for three to five years and then they would come back to me or someone else and say, hey, we need a fundraising plan.
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: You give the same plan back to them doing this one, or I would sit with an executive director and coach them on fundraising and I would give them all these great ideas and nothing would happen between our meetings and I started to have like an identity crisis because it felt almost fraudulent.
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: I was like why I can't take this money, knowing that these organizations are not going to do anything with the services that I'm providing.
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: So I was like, well, what if, instead of just giving advice or ideas which works for a lot of organizations, but particularly small ones they don't need?
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: They need that, but that's not enough.
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: They actually need the implementation.
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: They need that, but that's not enough.
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: They actually need the implementation.
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: They need the fundraising results come from doing the work consistently, and that's what was missing.
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: And so I said I hired an intern.
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: It started as a summer intern.
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: I said what if we go and we work with organizations and we just run their fundraising program right and that kind of worked?
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: And so we took on a couple more clients and that intern became a full-time staff and we started we called it done for you fundraising at the time and we had such great results for our clients and the demand was so significant that our my little company grew.
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: We had a team of five staff.
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: We had a little office in downtown Toronto and one of the cool like I miss our office.
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: It was really cool.
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: But yeah, I'm I.
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: I had this team and things were going really well.
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: But I was hiring very junior people to do the work and I was supervising them or actually my colleague Betty, who I met through Sahar.
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: She was a senior leader on our team and it became really heavy and scaling to meet.
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: The demand of the sector felt very significant and so I thought what if, instead of hiring junior people and me having to supervise and teach them, what if I went out and found really experienced fundraisers and taught them the business model of what again we called at the time done for you?
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: We now call fractional fundraising?
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: I thought, what if I teach them how to run their own business doing this work, because there's so many organizations that need that and that's kind of the birth of the fractional fundraising movement, which now we have 42 fractional fundraisers in our network, which is amazing and there's so much need for this sector.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: It literally reminds me, john, of when we say in our company we need an adult.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Like we say this all the time when we can't figure something out and we're like we need an adult.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: That is literally what fractional fundraising, and it's what it is in our business.
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: We have a fractional CFO, we have a fractional growth advisor.
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: We, you know, invest in courses so we can grow Like.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, you use these things to accelerate what you could afford in your budget, and so I want to create space to just talk about some of the tone setting, because this is going to be a very how it's built type of episode.
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: But first I want to just get clear on the case for this.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: What kind of opportunities does it unlock to have a fractional executive on your team?
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: Cindy, you want to start, and then we can get to Tara.
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: Sure, I'll tell you both the story of like how I where I saw the need for this, but there's a lot of stats to back it up.
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: So I was that junior fundraiser in a small organization, my first fundraising job.
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: I was their first and only hired fundraiser and I had no experience, which for most small organizations that's all they can afford.
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: And so I went in and I did all the things I was busy, right, and when the board said jump, I said how high, Even if they were saying like jump off the bridge, right.
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: So at the time it was write a letter to Oprah, which I literally did and never got a response.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: All of us have probably been instructed from our board to do that.
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: It's not that I like.
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: I knew that was not the right fundraising strategy, but I was too junior in the role to be able to manage the board.
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: I started as a.
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: It was run as a collective, the organization.
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: Eventually it had three co-directors, but again they started as a.
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: It was a run as a collective, the organization.
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: Eventually it had three co-directors, but again they would say things let's sell t-shirts, um, for the, and like, make money that way.
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: And I knew that that was not a good use of time.
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: But again, I couldn't manage up in that way.
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: So while I was really successful, while I was there, I spent a lot of time doing things that were not contributing to that success.
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: And so I had that firsthand experience of what it's like being that junior fundraiser in a small organization.
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: And as I grew up and went along my career path, I've seen it from the other side, where executive directors are so overworked and they have so much on their plates and they wear all the hats and what they really need is someone to take some of the work off their plate, like to relieve some of that stress.
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: But guess what, when you hire junior staff, it's not necessarily a relief.
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: Yes, staff it's not necessarily a relief.
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: Yes, you have more hands, but you have to manage them.
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: And so what I saw happening was staff would come in, they would stay for, you know, six to eight months and they wouldn't really move the needle in that time.
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: At that time the executive director is panicking like what did we spend this money on?
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: We're not seeing any results.
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: And so either the person leaves because we know there's high turnover which I can talk about, or they're let go because again no results, and then that organization has wasted the salary for that long and they get a little shy about hiring again.
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: And so now the opportunity cost of not fundraising is significant.
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: And we know I said before, like fundraising, results come from consistency and it has a compound effect, right?
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: So the more you do it, it grows, it grows.
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: You don't start from zero to a hundred.
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: You really have to put in the time, and the loss of time meant the loss of potential.
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: No-transcript they found that 74% of nonprofit staff are looking for or considering a new job this year.
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: Thank you, evan and Michelle, for that labor of love study, I know.
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: And, when you look at the numbers, even deeper, like those with less than 10 years experience, so those that are working for the small organizations because they're less experienced, that's 82 percent, which is even higher.
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: And Future of Good, which is an Ontario based publication, also did a study or pulled from different studies.
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: Ontario-based publication also did a study or pulled from different studies and they found 26% of nonprofit workers were somewhat or very dissatisfied, compared to 19% outside of our sector, and 65% of Ontario nonprofits had staffing challenges in 2023.
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: So we're seeing this as a sector.
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: We know how important fundraising is and the traditional staffing models are.
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: They work for some organizations, but there's a huge subset of organizations where it just becomes more stressful and more challenging instead of the opposite.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, we don't ever want to be alarmist here, we don't want to be grandiose, but it's like this is a crisis that we're looking at right now and the pipeline is, and we talk so much about major gift pipeline and plan giving pipeline, and the fact that we don't talk about a talent pipeline is just wild to me in this work.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: And we are feeling the pressure in it.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: And we are hearing from you in the community.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: You're saying I'm burned out, I'm overworked, I can't find my joy in this work, I'm not getting compensated properly, and it's like we have got to get into the guts of this and figure this out if we want to have not just a sustaining sector but a thriving sector.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: And so, sahar, I want to come to you because I want to start with the result, and then I want to go back to the beginning to hear how you and the team really leveraged a fractional executive.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: Tell us about the impact that's been unlocked and what you've noticed.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: Sure, yeah.
• 17:59
  Speaker 5: So I think the biggest thing you know and hearing Cindy speak just resonated so much in terms of the bandwidth that was opened up for me by bringing on our fractional fundraiser what you're saying, Cindy, in terms of like we had the strategy, we had the plan, we knew what to do and who was going to do it me and so I wasn't able to do it because I had these more urgent, you know things that I had to be reactive to that I couldn't prioritize the more proactive work of doing fundraising work that I needed to do and I knew I had to do it.
• 18:38
  Speaker 5: So there was also this, like you know, guilt and like horrible feelings.
• 18:43
  Speaker 5: That's like things are on fire behind you and you're like I know I need to deal with that, but there's this fire in front of me and with a fractional fundraiser, I know I need to deal with that, but there's this fire in front of me and with a fractional fundraiser, I think one of the things that I think is the biggest impact is that I don't have to feel guilty about doing it, and I don't have to, you know, like we actually have this extra capacity, and so that part of my brain that would worry and feel guilty is now opened up to do strategy work, is opened up to support my staff who we just talked about.
• 19:17
  Speaker 5: The crisis of people feeling, you know, wasn't there necessarily before the pandemic and just with climate change and all of that that I need to, I need to be more hands on in supporting them and I'm able to do that because you know I have that, that space opened up in my brain.
• 19:41
  Speaker 5: The second piece is again the fractional fundraisers.
• 19:46
  Speaker 5: Being folks who are experienced, can do, you know, mindset shift work and, rather than just starting on executing and implementing the plan, our fractional fundraiser her name is Katie, she's amazing.
• 20:02
  Speaker 5: Katie came in and said you know, the first couple of months she just read everything.
• 20:09
  Speaker 5: She talked to us a lot, she listened and she came back and she said you guys have a mindset problem because you keep saying your work is complex.
• 20:21
  Speaker 5: And when you say your work is complex, it means there's going to be a whole bunch of people who aren't going to get it and you're not even going to try to make them get it because you're like our work is complex, you're not going to get it, and so how is someone supposed to give to an organization when they don't understand what you do and the good that you're doing in this community.
• 20:41
  Speaker 5: And so that was a bit of an aha moment for us, because we've always prided ourselves in embracing the messiness is one of our key, you know, principles of our work, because community work is all work is actually complex and messy, and community work has an extra added layer of messiness and we kind of mistakenly thought that everyone needed to know all the ins and outs of the complexities to understand what we were doing.
• 21:08
  Speaker 5: Or they didn't get us or they couldn't support us, and that was really getting in the way of fundraising.
• 21:16
  Speaker 5: We also, you know, started to talk about like embracing an abundance mindset.
• 21:21
  Speaker 5: There's money out there, People want to support our work, we do good work.
• 21:25
  Speaker 5: We started to embrace these very simple, you know, like mindset shifts that um, katie put in front of us.
• 21:31
  Speaker 5: It's like, yeah, we do good work, there are people out there who want to support it and there's always more money out there.
• 21:37
  Speaker 5: And like I, I'm not a fundraiser, right, I didn't study fundraising.
• 21:43
  Speaker 5: The funny thing is everyone thinks I did because I worked at afp for a while and that's how I know, cindy.
• 21:47
  Speaker 5: And so everyone's like oh so hard like they come to me like even recruiters are like we have this fundraising job and I'm like you didn't really look into my background, did you?
• 21:57
  Speaker 5: So, like, I'm familiar with it, I understand it, but I haven't gone to school and I haven't done it, which is how, like you really learn fundraising and so, um, I don't have that background.
• 22:07
  Speaker 5: So when I make suggestions, katie's able to say no, that's not going to work really well.
• 22:11
  Speaker 5: And the last thing I'll just say is you know, she's done amazing in terms of, like, some of the things that are peripheral to fundraising is like communications.
• 22:21
  Speaker 5: Right, we don't have a comms person, we're a small not-for-profit, we have a comms committee, and so she's done amazing work and that she has a background in communications as well.
• 22:33
  Speaker 5: But because she's looking at how our website is used by donors, you know she's able to kind of make changes to our website to make it more user friendly.
• 22:43
  Speaker 5: She, you know this is going to come up later, so I'm not supposed to say this, but since it'll air later, we're getting an award tonight, you're getting an award.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: Tell us about it.
• 22:55
  Speaker 5: So it's called the Toronto Champions Award.
• 22:57
  Speaker 5: There's 25 other organizations that have been awarded this and the great thing is it's you're nominated by residents.
• 23:04
  Speaker 5: So there were residents who felt that we were doing good work in the city and um, and so, yeah, we're getting that award.
• 23:10
  Speaker 5: And you know, to be completely honest, with my like ed hat on, I would just be like great, like we're gonna go, um, we're gonna tell the community, we're gonna take photos, maybe, like do one social post.
• 23:22
  Speaker 5: I would have never thought to like tell people that we're winning this award.
• 23:26
  Speaker 5: And katie's like here, all the people we're gonna email.
• 23:29
  Speaker 5: This is this is what we're going to tell.
• 23:31
  Speaker 5: This is why it's important you keep these donors, these even funders, like for me, it's like well, okay, I have this proposal and you're funding this, so I'll only communicate with you about this project.
• 23:40
  Speaker 5: She's like no, no, no, you have to tell them you won this award because it has to do with your credibility and so just things like that too.
• 23:47
  Speaker 5: It makes a huge difference because, even though we didn't hire her to support our comms, she does because it supports fundraising, or she'll come in early when there's media coming and you know support with those kinds of things.
• 24:00
  Speaker 5: So those were some unexpected impacts really positive impacts that I didn't really anticipate going in when we hired Katie.
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: So good, I mean one.
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: I love breaking news on the we Are For Good podcast.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: Congrats on y'all's award Totally and congrats.
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: Yes, thank you, but I also, just, I really love that.
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: You talked about the mindsets, and this is where you're getting somebody that's experienced, that knows the barriers, the under root problems that we have to address to actually transform.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: It's such a through line of what we talk about at we Are For Good is our core beliefs of just like we have to revolutionize from within.
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: So, cindy, I want to kick it to you because I think even the way we think about human capital, we have to shift our mindsets around that, and so you're such a great coach, you're such a great mindset coach specifically.
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: So I mean, what do you think could be unlocked, as we kind of as a sector, open our eyes to what innovation could be in front of us to get more experience, to deliver mission more quickly?
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: Or, more poignantly, or whatever it may be.
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: Well, I mean, we have such a martyr.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: Call us out.
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so true.
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's martyr syndrome.
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: I'm not saying what's a combination of worth.
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: Anyways, we have that complex and so we think that to do good work and to be good people, that comes with a sacrifice, that comes with us working longer, doing more, burning ourselves out and we all are in this sector because we want to have an impact.
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: And what I think we sometimes miss is when we martyr ourselves in the process, when we burn ourselves out.
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: It actually lessens the impact by all means.
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: There are great people talking about this, obviously, like Dan Pallotta has been talking about all of this for a while and investing in our sector and our people.
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: And that is a fixed kind of mindset, right, where there's a limited number of resources and therefore I have to give up of mine so that I can serve everyone else.
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: But what's?
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: It's not true?
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: Right, it's just not the way the world works.
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: We reinforce that.
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: The way I like to think about it is with an abundance mindset the more I get, the more I can give.
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: Right, we've all heard, you know you pour from a full cup or you know there's there's all these sayings that talk about that.
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: But guess what, like, the more rest we have, the better we can show up, and so we need to start looking at the bigger picture in our sector, which is like, tied to the staff burnout, tied to low salaries, not investing in things like infrastructure and education and training and all of those things, to me, are part of the bigger piece, and I would I never want to talk about fractional executives as the only solution, because it is a bit of a bandaid to a much bigger issue, but we need those band-aids to stop them bleeding so that we can step back and deal with those bigger issues.
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: And so, yeah, to me, I think as a whole, our sector really needs to start thinking about how do we look at solving the real problems?
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: I should say, right, like so often, we solve the problems that we have always thought were the problems.
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: I need a staff person, and that's not the real problem.
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: And our brains are designed like I have a whole.
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: I like to talk about non-binary thinking, because the way our brains are designed is like we just do things the way we've always done them and when we make a decision, we think choice A or choice B.
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: But what happens if we step back and say, okay, what's the real problem we're solving for here?
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: That actually.
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: No, I don't just need a person.
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: That's only one part of the problem.
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: I actually need a person who has this perspective and who has these skillsets.
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: And you know, I actually don't want someone who's just like going to tell me yes, yes, yes.
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: I want, as Sahar was saying, like I want someone who's going to tell me no, when I'm wrong, because I don't know about fundraising.
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: And when we look at the more broadly and in depth defining that problem, those new solutions come out.
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: I call them your secret answer C's.
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: So it's not A, it's not B, it's your secret answer C.
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: And those are the ways that I'm finding where innovation happens in our sector and new solutions come up.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: Okay, I am all for pushing more innovation into the sector, because that creativity is the spark.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: It's the spark that you know as a marketer.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: It's like that's what gets attention, that's what gets somebody to stop scrolling and to click on something.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: And I just am very much drinking the fractional fundraising Kool-Aid because, you're right, it's not the end-all, be-all answer, but it is absolutely a bridge.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: It is a bridge to give you insights and I mean I love Sahar.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: You just gave the example of the first thing your fractional fundraiser came in and talked about was we got some scarcity thinking here and hello, that's probably every organization or many of our longtime organizations, and so I just I believe in this.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: I have seen it work for so many organizations that have felt absolutely paralyzed and I just commend you, incredible women, for what you're doing and how you're diving into it.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: I just want to add one thing, because the other side of this equation I always say, like these solutions have to work for everyone, and so it's a, and I've always always tried to design things as a win-win right.
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: It's not like a zero sum game.
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: We are creating a bigger pie, and so when I thought about this business model, one of the reasons I don't actually just have all these people as staff is now they get to run their own business, they get to be their own boss.
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: They're making more money than they were in-house as consultants compared to being fundraisers, and they have more flexibility.
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: They're not necessarily working nine to five.
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: A lot of the people in our network are parents, mostly moms.
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: They're with young kids, they're picking up their kids from school or they're going on the field trip with their kids.
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: Like all of the things that we have sacrificed in our work again in the service of the greater good, we don't have to choose anymore, and so one of the reasons why I think this particular model is so impactful is because I have a network of 42, almost all women.
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: There are a few guys in there and we love them, but they're all working for themselves.
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: They're in control of how much they earn and how they work and their boundaries and all of that, which, again, I would love to see that being possible if you're working in-house, but right now it's just not.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I just think there's so much possibility here and it's a total like it's not the end all be all.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: I want everybody to understand that, but I do think that it is a way to take a total like it's not the end all be all.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: I want everybody to understand that, but I do think that it is a way to take a pause, get a breath Everybody wins to start identifying where are the places we really need to pour in.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: How do we give each other space?
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: I think that was a brilliant comment from you, sahar, and I thank you for saying that.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: It gave me a chance to breathe, it gave me a chance to pause.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: I don't remember in my 20 years in fundraising ever really having a moment where I could just sit and pause or celebrate, unless we created it.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: And so I definitely just want to talk to you, sahar, just about this experience, and I want you to walk us through the playbook of finding and maybe onboarding a fractional teammate and the impact that it brought to your organization.
• 31:49
  Speaker 5: Sure, yeah.
• 31:49
  Speaker 5: And just before that I'll just say the impact, going back, just what you were just saying, becky.
• 31:54
  Speaker 5: It allowed me to stay in this position and I think when you talk about burnout and the HR crisis, like let's talk about the folks in leadership who have gotten there and are like this isn't that great, and the responsibility that's weighed on your shoulders when you are an executive director of a small organization, it's great, it's immense.
• 32:19
  Speaker 5: And so you know again, I don't want to tout it as like a magic pill either like a magic pill either, but it really was one of the key ingredients to me being able to stay in this role and to make it sustainable, because at a certain point you do have to look at, you know, like can I keep doing this?
• 32:35
  Speaker 5: So I just wanted to say that before jumping into the um the kind of walking you through um, finding Katie so I had a call with Cindy and I was just like it was a bit of a panic call of like Cindy, like we need to raise money, I can't do this, I don't know what to do, like help.
• 32:52
  Speaker 5: It was a bit of an SOS and Cindy was like you know, you know we have this fractional fundraising and you need someone to do it.
• 33:01
  Speaker 5: Sounds like you need someone to do it.
• 33:02
  Speaker 5: And I was like yes.
• 33:03
  Speaker 5: And so she just gently said like you know, consider this and like we can think about how we get funding for it.
• 33:10
  Speaker 5: And we were able to secure some funding.
• 33:12
  Speaker 5: And I said to Cindy like okay, I think we've, we've got the funding.
• 33:16
  Speaker 5: Can we, can we go ahead and try this?
• 33:18
  Speaker 5: Because you're right, like we've, we've tried doing the.
• 33:21
  Speaker 5: You know, here's a plan and let's try to do it.
• 33:24
  Speaker 5: And no one in house has the skills or the time to execute.
• 33:27
  Speaker 5: And so Cindy set me up with a couple interviews and immediately when I got on a Zoom call with Katie, I was like yeah, she's cool.
• 33:37
  Speaker 5: She's cool, she gets us.
• 33:38
  Speaker 5: You know, we're always very direct in terms of like these are our values.
• 33:42
  Speaker 5: We don't want to do fundraising in ways that compromise those values.
• 33:47
  Speaker 5: When we hired Katie, we were just in the middle of like executing our addressing anti-Black racism action plan, and so I was like this is really important to us.
• 33:56
  Speaker 5: So like you have to understand this, you have to be all about it and that's the only way it's going to work.
• 34:03
  Speaker 5: And she was like yep, and she wrote back you know an answer, I think over email afterwards to work and she was like yep, and she wrote back you know an answer, I think over email afterwards too, and she was like I know I answered this, but here's like some other stuff I thought about with regard to like equity and anti-Black racism, and so I love that.
• 34:15
  Speaker 5: I was like she's really, she understands what's important to us and she's giving us a little bit more insight into her, and so we, yeah, I went back to the team and I said you know, this is, these are the conversations.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: I had.
• 34:26
  Speaker 5: I have a good feeling.
• 34:27
  Speaker 5: And they were like yes, go for it, you know.
• 34:29
  Speaker 5: So I just needed you know, just the team to be like, yeah, you know, wanting to say, like Katie's a white woman who, you know, has different experiences than the folks that we're supporting and many of the folks that we hire in house, and so that was the consideration that we talked about and what does she bring in terms of her lived experience and what she knows and understands about this work?
• 34:53
  Speaker 5: And once we hired her, she did a lot of just like reading, listening, learning, asking lots of questions to our steering committee members, staff managers, our steering committee members, staff managers and she told us she was like it's going to take a little bit of time, like don't expect me to just start doing.
• 35:12
  Speaker 5: I need like a few months to build the plan and I need to really understand you and your challenges before we go ahead and make this plan.
• 35:23
  Speaker 5: And she presented the plan to me and it all sounded great.
• 35:27
  Speaker 5: She walked us through, you know, like this is why I'm thinking this this can change, like I love the flexibility as well because, like I know that it's not going to go according, like exactly according to plan Right.
• 35:39
  Speaker 5: So I'm looking at him like that's nice, like do you really think we're going to be able to raise that much money from that?
• 35:43
  Speaker 5: And she's like, well, if we don't, here's, like you know, the other parts of the plan, and so we started to like test some campaigns, write proposals, and there's been a lot of refining in this past year.
• 35:56
  Speaker 5: The beautiful part of this is that, like, you build a relationship like you would with any other staff.
• 35:59
  Speaker 5: So, yeah, it's been a really great experience in terms of just a lot of like learning and listening on both parts to build this relationship so that we can make it as successful as it is.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: I just want to put a bow on all of this because you all I'm sitting here you have absolutely dispelled all of these myths that I've heard about fractional fundraising and, sahar, I just love that you came in as the example for us today.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: She has created so much discovery within you.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: The culture is healthier as a result of this.
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: You all are learning from each other and growing and innovating, and I just think the healing that I'm hearing in your words is so hopeful and to me, it's just such a beautiful win-win and I'm just so proud that we, as a sector, can adopt these sort of new ideas and embrace them and not be scared of doing something different.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: You know, because we're clinging to the way that it's always been done and this is proof that it can create that bridge and I just hope that for anyone listening and if you've been nodding, it's like please reach out to Cindy, reach out to Sahar if you need more stories, because we want this to be something that trends, because we want to attack retention on the front end, not the back end.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: We want to go to the root of the problem and we want to start building healthy cultures that create people that want to stay in their jobs and thrive there.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: So bravo to both of you.
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, I've, I've grown a lot in this conversation and I just thank you for how you've kind of unpacked it and get made it so relatable.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: But you know we can't escape hanging out with folks like y'all and not ask for story, because you get to be adjacent to philanthropy in its purest form and I just want to ask each of you to take us back to a moment of philanthropy that's really moved you.
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: Cindy, I'll kick it to you first, and then we can hear from Sahar.
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: So mine is really, really, right now.
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: My son is 12 years old and he is observing or celebrating his bar mitzvah in a few weeks and part of his program that he we're in a great little synagogue very progressive.
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: I love it.
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: But they have they call it a tikkun olam project, which is kind of like repair the world.
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: And my son is really into sports and so he and his friend wanted to do something that was soccer related because, you know, having access to sports is so critical for youth in their development.
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: So he and his friend are hosting a charity soccer tournament and they've raised over a thousand dollars which I'm so proud of.
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I know, and just like I've been coaching him in the fundraising and you know we had a family dinner and he took his little postcards and he went around like and asked everyone if they would participate or donate and it just made me so proud.
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: So that's mine's very, very top of mind, because the tournament is this coming Monday as of when we're recording.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: What's his name?
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: Cindy.
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: Lennox.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: Lennox, we are so proud of you.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: Thank you for being the changing your community in this world.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: That was wonderful story.
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: There's other kids listening.
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: Lennox is a fractional fundraiser available at your disposal.
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: Bring him in to whatever you're raising money for he is the 43rd fractional fundraiser in the network, that's lovely Cindy.
• 39:36
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think the one that comes to mind is you know, right before we hired Katie, when I was like trying really hard to do fundraising, I had this moment of like I need to believe in the work enough to like ask for what we deserve and need.
• 40:01
  Speaker 5: And so we went.
• 40:01
  Speaker 5: I went back to a funder who has funded us at like $10,000 a year for a while oh, sorry, $5,000 a year and I felt so proud because I said you know, we're going to ask for 20 this year and as someone who doesn't do fundraising, it was like so nerve wracking, and it was so much of like pumping myself up and be like yes, this is like, and they didn't give us the 20, but they gave us 15.
• 40:31
  Speaker 5: So it was like if I hadn't asked, I would have gotten the five, and it was such a great lesson in like no, you just.
• 40:37
  Speaker 5: And the interesting thing is for anyone who knows me, I'm pretty gutsy.
• 40:41
  Speaker 5: Like I'm, I will say the thing that no one wants to say.
• 40:45
  Speaker 5: I will do it, I will be the one.
• 40:53
  Speaker 5: However, when it comes to fundraising, there's all this like money stuff, right, our mindset around money, and there's a huge cultural thing for me around asking for money.
• 40:57
  Speaker 5: Like we don't do that in our culture.
• 40:58
  Speaker 5: That is not okay.
• 40:59
  Speaker 5: You don't ask, especially when you need, and so I think there was a lot wrapped up there for me in terms of like the mindset and and I think it was like you know we were I was in that really great place where there was that mindset cracked open and I think that also allowed me to kind of think about fractional fundraising and bringing Katie on and like I was ready for a mindset shift for the whole organization, because we had been thinking about like, oh, wasn't that cool?
• 41:26
  Speaker 5: Like we asked for what we needed and we didn't get exactly that, but we got a lot more.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: So good.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: I'm just, I just am in awe of you both and I love that.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: We celebrate the little moments with our children, we celebrate the wins with our team, and I love the way that philanthropy just manifests in so many different ways.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: So I want to get to your one good thing.
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: It's something that we always end our podcast with.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: We want you to leave maybe a piece of advice, maybe a life hack, sunny.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: What's your one good thing?
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: So this one is harder for me because well, I'm just going to say it I work with a lot of women, a lot of women in their late thirties, early mid, late forties.
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: Our bodies are changing and I have to say perimenopause is a thing.
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: I'm sorry.
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: You can cut this out if you want, but this is so prevalent for people right now that I work with, where we don't talk about, um, the toll it takes on our ability to show up for work, and we wonder and we think, like, why am I tired all the time, why am I struggling with motivation?
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: Why, like, do I not have energy and all of these things.
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: Like I hear it, I just hear it so much from so many people independently and I feel so privileged to be able to actually like, look back and say, okay, this is not, this is not just you.
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: It feels like it's just us, but it's not just you.
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: And so resources around they're just calling it out and having conversations that you're not alone, it's not you in that there's things you can do to refine yourself and your energy and your passion.
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: So, yeah, I don't know, this is really prevalent for a lot of people.
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: I know right now that I just couldn't think of anything else, so it might not be relevant to all of your listeners, but to those who are listening they're like oh my God, that's me.
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: Hopefully this helps.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is like what Sahar just said In my culture it's not appropriate to ask for money, and I just think in this lifetime and in this world we should be able to talk about anything, and because when we keep it in, we're alone and we're not growing and we can't find community, and so I love that.
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: That was your one good thing, my little feminist, my fellow feminist.
• 43:45
  Speaker 5: What about you, sahar?
• 43:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I love it.
• 43:47
  Speaker 5: I love it.
• 43:48
  Speaker 5: It's interesting.
• 43:50
  Speaker 5: I was going to say something that you just modeled, cindy, which is, if you can afford it, if you can find it within yourself, take that deep breath and say the vulnerable thing, because there are so many people who are probably thinking it, feeling it.
• 44:10
  Speaker 5: We have a practice that we do at Storefront, which is we start with every single meeting with a check-in question, and it could be as light as what's your favorite ice cream flavor, but I never go light because that's not who I am, and so it's often things like that's not who I am, and so it's often things like where is your heart at today?
• 44:29
  Speaker 5: You know, and often people are talking about things that are going on at work and home.
• 44:38
  Speaker 5: You know, and I think it helps get to know each other as humans we're able to see a fuller picture of who is in our organizations, who's on our teams, what folks are dealing with right now, because you know as soon as you open up your computer, you're like sending things okay, this email, can you please do this?
• 44:55
  Speaker 5: And you have no idea how they're receiving it, and a check in allows us to just know what's going on, what's the vibe of the team, and you know it's like okay, like if Cindy's having a hard day, like today's not the day to send her this message, you know let's hold off on it and let me actually connect with her and see how she's doing on my lunch break because she might need a hug.
• 45:21
  Speaker 5: So just that, I think, check in with one another and say the vulnerable thing.
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: Empathy and trust-based leadership.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: Right there y'all.
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: Thank you for modeling that and giving that a beautiful example.
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: I mean, what a way to round out this episode.
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: I mean, y'all the growth is right here in front of us, here for the taking.
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: Our friends here I know would be happy to connect with you, so I want to give you a chance to say how can listeners reach out?
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: Let's talk about the Fractional Fundraiser movement.
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: How can people get involved with that and just connect us to all the ways that you show up online?
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: Cindy, I'll start with you.
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: The home for all things.
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: Fractional Fundraising is fractionalfundraisingco C-O, not C-O-M, and you can go there.
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: If you're an organization that is listening, thinking I need that help, we actually have a directory online.
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: Or you can fill in our intake form and I will personally matchmake you with one of our fractional fundraisers.
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: Or, if you're listening, if you're a fundraiser and you're like, oh, that sounds kind of interesting as my next career step, you can go there.
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: Or we'll provide a link in the show notes on.
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: You can join the waitlist for our next enrollment period, for we call it the Fractional Fundraiser Academy, which is kind of like it's a business in a box.
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: I show you exactly how you can start, launch and get fully booked as a fractional fundraiser.
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: I'm so stinking proud of you guys.
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: Thank you for innovating.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: I think just the mindset shift of trying something different is actually going to give you rest and really embracing that.
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: That's what I want the community to hear.
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Sahar, for coming in and talking about storefront.
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: Anytime we can talk about anti-oppressive, anti-racist movements and communities and helping communities thrive.
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: We want to do that.
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: So rooting you both on mightily in your work and just hope that anyone listening who just has felt some resonance in here will reach out.
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: So thank you, ladies.
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: So so very much today.
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: Thank you, thanks for having us.