Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 560. How It's Built: Leadership Transition Planning - Amber Melanie Smith

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560. How It's Built: Leadership Transition Planning - Amber Melanie Smith · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi friends, welcome back to how it's Built, a series where we explore the intricate and often overlooked elements that go into crafting impactful change brought to you by our friends at Allegiance Group and Pursuant.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Yes, they're fueling nonprofit missions with innovative solutions in digital ads, websites, technology analytics, direct mail and even digital fundraising too.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: If you need a partner in amplifying your brand, expanding your reach and fostering that unwavering donor loyalty.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Visit teamallegiancecom and be more for the causes that improve our world.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: 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.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: So welcome to the good community.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: So let's get started.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Hey Bea, what's happening?
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: I love days on the podcast where we're sourcing some brilliant ideas from people who are already in the community, like when we can learn from the collective that's already here.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: That is a great day and that is what's happening right here.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: We are absolutely delighted to introduce you to Amber Melanie Smith.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: You may recognize her name because y'all she just helped co-host the Impact Up Raleigh event and as I was listening to the intro there, as we were getting ready, it was like world changer, and I'm like Amber is one of those world changers.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: She's a speaker, she's a nonprofit founder and social entrepreneur, but y'all, she also has this social impact YouTube business that is so explosive.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: We cannot wait to double click on it and learn from her.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: But I want to give you a little bit of background on her, because we're in the how it's Built series, where it's allowing us to go deep into micro focus areas and see how other people are building and executing strategies around one very particular topic, and today we're going to be talking about transition and succession planning.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: We're going to get the playbook for it, which is absolutely a part of Amber's own story of navigating a transition from an organization she had founded to where she is today.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: So Amber is just an incredible speaker.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: She's a creator of the Changemaker Cafe, which was a startup e-learning platform featuring free educational content for nonprofit and social change leadership, and it was made for beginners, so if you're new to the space, you should totally check that out.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: She's also a champion of connection and meaningful work, and she really comes alongside nonprofits and people who are creating their roadmap to a life and a career that creates social impact.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: And one of the things I love most about her bio is that in college, she took a three-month cross-country road trip with her best friend to volunteer in more than 20 states and when she returned home, she launched Activate Good, which is this nonprofit that's mobilized over 50,000 volunteers to help hundreds of causes in her hometown of Raleigh, north Carolina.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: But the cool part is, in 2019, amber launched a YouTube channel to help educate changemakers on starting successful social impact orgs, and it has garnered nearly 3 million views and reached over 64,000 people around the world.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: So, world changer, we are excited you are in our house today.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Come on in, amber.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: We're excited to talk with you.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: That's good to be here.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Oh, we're so delighted just to hear your winding path and your story and I hope you'll just kind of indulge us.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: You've listened to the podcast before like take us back.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Take us back to where this heart and this curiosity for doing good really started and how it led you to where you are today.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: So many potential beginning points for this story.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: I would say you know, in high school you're always asked what are you going to go to college for?
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: What are you going to?
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: What do you want to pursue for your career?
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: And I never had a specific field that I wanted to go into, that I said this is what I'm going to do.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: But I did know that I wanted to make some kind of social impact.
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: I had no idea what that was going to look like.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: I don't even think I really knew what a nonprofit was until after I graduated high school.
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: That's real, yeah.
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: In high school, when all the kids were volunteering through Key Club, I didn't know what that was.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: I thought it was a club for keys.
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: I was in Key.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Club.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: It's like chess club.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: Yes, and also it was this place where all of the cool cheerleaders and athletes were in this club and I was the nerdy artsy kid, so it didn't.
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: At the time, I didn't connect to the idea that I could be a part of service.
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: At a younger point than I ended up being connected to service, but as I got older I noticed that things were just kind of bothering me.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: For example, I worked at this bakery cafe in high school and at the end of the day they would throw away dozens and dozens of completely, totally fine pastries, bagels, et cetera, and this would make me really mad, because I'd grown up with a single mom and frugality was our middle name and we didn't waste anything.
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: And the idea that someone might be out there hungry while we were able to connect to some faith-based nonprofits and other nonprofits in our area and start that donation process.
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: And that was sort of one of my early experiences of realizing the agency that anyone has, if you just allow yourself to feel the feelings about the problems and then teach yourself to take action Right.
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, so that was like my first taste of it, I think.
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: And then I graduated from high school and really continued to feel this itch to do something.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: That's when I actually discovered volunteering.
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: Weirdly enough, and me and my best friend Heather, we would go around and volunteer for everything we could get our hands on.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: We were doing literally all the kinds of volunteering we were building habitats for rescued tigers, we were serving meals Right, that's a thing that's so good, I know.
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: And oh, by the way, we did it in the dead of winter in a rare year where there was actually snow in Raleigh, but we were serving meals at the shelter in downtown.
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: And we were doing marketing strategy for an organization that was helping at-risk youth escape homelessness.
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: We were doing all of the things and we couldn't pick a favorite issue, area or cause.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: We were just stuck.
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: We loved them all.
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: There was a sense of guilt If we just focus on one, what about all of these others that need help?
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: And so Heather and I decided this was a couple of years into college, at this point that we were going to pause college and for her, pause working and save up a little bit of money over that summer and drive around the country just volunteering for all of the nonprofits that we could find and just learning and absorbing and seeing if we could try to understand the psychology and the motivations between what inspires action in people and what prevents action.
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: So that was our sort of mission going on this road trip.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: I love that most people can just jump in here.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: I love that most people are going like on spring break in college and we know all the things that comes for break.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: I want to go get to the bottom of this question, like kudos for following that nudge and going on this journey.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: So we were back in the car.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: Now we were strange.
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I love it, yeah, but the funny part is is we saved up like 800 or a thousand dollars to do this and I believe, as travelers yourselves, you know that that is a ludicrous amount of money to try to travel across the country.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: I find hostels in the US.
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: So we traveled across the country and just started connecting with causes and volunteering and, honestly, when you volunteer, sometimes you get fed, so that helps save some money on the road trip too, and sometimes we would meet strangers who were so kind and offered a place to stay.
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: But what we learned on this road trip?
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: Because we would literally go ask people why are you or why aren't you involved in your community, what's holding you back or what inspired you to do it?
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: And we would consistently hear the same thing over and over and over again.
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: And it was yeah, I've been thinking of getting involved, I'm just not sure how to get started.
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: And that resonated because I'd felt that before, and the road trip, in fact, was an expression of that confusion about how to get started.
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: Just get out there and explore and figure it out.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: So when we got back to Raleigh just before Thanksgiving of that year that was, 2004, we decided to start this organization, activate Good, with a mission of helping people figure out how to get started in service.
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: And that's how Activate Good was started, before I finished college.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: What a story.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: It's one of legends.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: I feel like that you went in this car to have these experiences that inform, but at the same time it's like all the seeds kind of line up to what you've planted and I just think of the thousands of people that you've impacted through your work now to help them get started just rings.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: So true, so love this so much.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: I want to ask you like as we kind of lean into this, because we're going to talk about something that's very specific here in a minute about transitions but I want to go on this thread that you're talking about, about talking to people, about what's keeping them from from starting.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: What are those barriers?
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, what do you think, what have you observed?
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: What are the barriers for people to get started, whether it's to volunteer or to take the next step, maybe make that first gift?
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: What do you think that's the block that you're seeing?
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: Specific to volunteering.
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: You know we did so much research around this very question through the work with Activate.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: Good, and it's complicated.
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: Right, there's an initial layer of feeling overwhelmed with the information out there on the internet and not knowing how to match it to your specific skills, needs, interests, schedules, right.
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: So you could say, oh sure, it's easy to figure out how to volunteer.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: Just go on the internet and type in volunteering opportunities in my city and you'll come up with all these sites.
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: That's true, potentially depending on where you are.
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: But figuring out how to connect to what's going to be the right fit for you is a totally different story.
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: Right, there are a lot of considerations when you're going to get out there and take action.
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: You've got to be honest with yourself about your bandwidth.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: You've got to be in tune with what interests you, what causes you're passionate about.
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: It's certainly a great idea to dabble and try all these different things, as I did, to figure out what fits too.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: But there's that sort of awareness on both sides of what the organization's needs are and what your needs are to being an effective volunteer.
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: That awareness issue is prevalent.
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: There was a great points of light study that came out one or two years ago, it said 66% of Americans don't believe they can make an impact.
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: Whoa Right, Think of that.
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: We are in a time where we're feeling disillusioned, disconnected, isolated, yearning for purpose, yearning for connection.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: Of course, there's going to be a collective sense of a lack of agency that comes with those other feelings.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: If you don't believe you can make an impact, what aren't you going to do?
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: Go out there and try to make an impact.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: All the things, yeah, exactly.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: So we have an issue here that we have to address as a sector of belief, of efficacy.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: You know there's some work to be done on just helping people remember that they do have the power to do something, and then showing them the pathway to do it, because that's the next step is well, how do you do it Right?
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: So there's all these reasons.
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: Some of the data will tell you, john.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: Time is a factor in terms of people getting out there to volunteer.
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: There are so many opportunities, though, that you can fit into your schedule.
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: The desire to not sacrifice family time in order to volunteer was a big one.
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: We would see coming up in our surveys a lot, but there are many opportunities where you can bring your family too.
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: It doesn't have to be one or the other.
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: So I know I really want to encourage people to just expand their imagination of what getting involved could look like, because it can look like so many different things.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Well, I love this conversation.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: I didn't know we were going to go here and I'm so geeked out about it because to me, it's the foundational part, and you've talked about belief and this belief that I feel like we need to have in ourselves, and this belief that everyone can be a philanthropist and how that looks is diversifying and growing every day, and it's not just about what you can give financially and it's about how you show up and when you show up and what you have to give.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: And I think you know I really like this conversation of transition planning and succession planning, because one of the key trends that we lifted this year and I you know we never want to play favorites with our trends, but I would say that it's probably one of the most dire and important trends that we saw is that retention is an inside game and we're watching just this exodus out of the sector that so many people are feeling post-pandemic and as the world is evolving.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: And so I want to ask you about what you're observing in the sector right now around turnover and what are those opportunities that exist today for listeners and how they can get more change makers into this work.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: What needs to shift and change?
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I want to start by acknowledging that I'm part of the statistic.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Now, right, us too.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'm part of the statistic now, right, because, yeah, I started Activate Good before I finished college and a mere six weeks ago I transitioned out of my role at Activate Good as executive director and since then, I've been going on what I'm calling a discovery journey of meeting with different community leaders, thank you, and just trying to talk to as many people as I can to understand if they're seeing the same trends that I'm seeing, or how would they define the top challenges that the social impact world is facing right now.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: And sure enough, the vast majority of the people that I'm talking to are saying that they're very concerned about burnout and retention in nonprofits and social impact organizations in general.
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: I've talked to corporate social responsibility professionals who are seeing the same, or at least parallel, trends in their work too.
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: You put that up against teacher burnout retention.
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: It seems like anything having to do with public service or social impact.
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: We're seeing these people leave the sector, and that is a huge problem because no one else is going to do this work.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: I think it was gosh.
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: There was this study that came out a couple months ago, the Social Impact Staff Retention Project.
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: You've probably seen this, but they were talking about how three quarters of nonprofit staff are going to be looking for a new job this year.
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: Three quarters Now.
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: This is 2024.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: But 10 years ago, there were articles coming out sounding the alarm about the nonprofit leadership deficit that we were going to see in 10 to 20 years.
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: So this is it's almost like it's being exacerbated, but it's not new.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: The issue is simultaneously retaining our current talent, though, and making sure that we have enough pipelines of new talent to come into the sector, because even if everyone were staying in their jobs right now, eventually they would retire and we would still need that talent coming up from the next generations to fill the gaps.
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: So that's what I'm hearing.
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: I'm listening on the ground and what the data is also backing up, and I think, if you're talking about barriers to entry, what I see is that there are some great resources and materials out there for professionals who are already in the space space, but my observation, and what I aspire to change, is that that top of the funnel, the entry point, the doorway to getting in to social impact work, is harder to get into for a number of reasons.
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and if you want to be a change maker and you want to teach yourself or get the learning and the education, the training you need to be a changemaker and you want to teach yourself or get the learning and the education, the training you need to be a skilled, professional changemaker of some variety, whether it's nonprofits, social entrepreneurship, csr, et cetera.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: You have a handful of options.
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: You can get some kind of degree and hopefully not go into student debt for it, which I did, I've been there some kind of degree and hopefully not go into student debt for it, which I did, I've been there.
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: You can try to find opportunities to get the right on-the-ground experience where you're going to receive solid mentorship and training and really have the freedom and opportunities to grow as a new leader.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: Or you can manage to be accepted into some kind of elite fellowship program or incubator program.
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: Those do exist but, in my opinion, right Any content I create on YouTube I'm thinking about 19 year old Amber, who didn't really even know what a nonprofit was when I explained things Right, and I want to continue to to grow that that content through change maker cafe, to help those beginners feel more comfortable getting into the space.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: So good.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, we're so aligned on this and it's like creating space for the conversation, talking about it at a beginner's level, not to like diminish that, but just like let's talk about it in simple terms, Like it doesn't have to have all the pontification and things that maybe we're rife in the sector for so long.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: So much jargon.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, can we just be humans over here?
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: And so I mean, I love this too, because we don't talk about like transitions a lot, and I think you end up in a place we've talked a lot this season about, even like toxic leadership and different things that can enforce or maybe hurt our ability to retain our staff.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: But let's, this conversation is kind of special because if you're in a season of transition whether that's you thinking about leaving, which you're, so you know, recent in this journey or if you're on a team and man, your fearless leader, is leaving, regardless of what your relationship is like, there's a lot that we need to unpack there, like, how do we walk through this season Well, so we can get back into the places where we can shine and be aligned with our purpose.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: So I want to kick it to you as we do this, how it's built, like, talk us through these transition and succession planning.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: We'd love to have your playbook and I feel like you're going to be able to thread such recent experience, which is so really wonderful.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: But where would you want to start?
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: we got our notebooks out I think, starting with yourself, because knowing that a transition is needed, perhaps both for you and the organization, takes a lot of reflection and sometimes a bit of agonizing.
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and going back and forth, yeah, and journalizing, journalizing, I made up a word.
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: Let's do it.
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: And so I would say there were several signs that I missed over the past I would say two years that in retrospect I now see were little signs telling me maybe it's time for a transition.
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: The first was you know, sometimes in organizations you do these personality tests to see how you can best collaborate with your team.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: I did this one with the help of a pro bono volunteer consultant who is working with us at activate good and it's called the oad.
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: I couldn't tell you what that stands for, I'm sorry googling it.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I don't know either Anyone out there.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: What do you know?
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: But the idea is it's supposed to offer a snapshot of how you're feeling about your work and your role in that moment based.
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: And they ask you all sorts of questions that don't seem related to that, like do you prefer to be, you know, introverted or extrovert, like whatever these things are?
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: And I did this test and I submitted the results and a couple of days later this volunteer wrote me an email and he said Amber, I wanted to talk to you about your results.
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: Can we set up a quick meeting?
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: And I was like sure, why not?
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: I like I like to be introspective, let's see what this has to say about me.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: So we met and he said I normally wouldn't talk to the test taker about this, but I thought you might want to know that your test indicated that you are about to implode.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Oh, my gosh Interesting choice of words.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, he's like.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: This is why I wanted to talk to you.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: I didn't want to put this in an email.
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: And that you're feeling some kind of conflict about the work that you're in right now.
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: And I was very I don't know that.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: I was actually very surprised because it was a high.
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: It was a period of high stress for me and I just attributed it to that.
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: I was like, well, of course it looks like that right now I'm just kind of stressed out.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: This month.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: It's just been a month, so I kind of ignored it.
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: But then several months later, I started feeling physically I almost want to say ill.
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: I just felt low energy, depleted, shorter fuse, hard to concentrate, hard to focus.
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: Every thought was consumed by some kind of anxious thought about work.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: And I went to the doctor and, uh, you know, sometimes when you go to the doctor, if it's for a mental wellness issue that you've shared, before your appointment they'll give you this checklist and they'll say, okay, check all the boxes indicating your state of mind and how frequently each week you feel these things.
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: And next to the box that said, I feel depressed.
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: I checked more than three times a week and that was illuminating for me as well.
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: We did some blood tests and the doctor determined that I had a B12 deficiency.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: So I started getting on those vitamins and I ignored that.
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: So all these little signs were starting to rack up and about some point last year in the middle of the year, I was just feeling so heavy with this that during a meeting with my board's executive committee, I just blurted out I need a sabbatical.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: And very fortunately, I was very lucky and privileged to be able to experience this.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: They said yes and I was able to go on a sabbatical last summer for about two months, and it wasn't until I went on the sabbatical that I was able to compare what a healthy day or a healthy week in my life should feel like physically, mentally and emotionally, compared to how it had been feeling A couple of weeks.
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: Into the sabbatical.
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: I was starting to get really good sleep, I was drinking enough water, and this is a very small thing.
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: But when I was walking my dog, I noticed how my feet felt on the ground and it just felt like I just felt.
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: It's hard to explain.
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: I felt both buoyant in the comfortability of the shoes, but also connected to the earth and stable.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: It was a very interesting feeling, not something I would have noticed at all or allowed my body to feel in a state of constant anxiety or exhaustion.
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: So just being able to compare physically during sabbatical to before sabbatical was a huge wake-up call for me.
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: I also brought back some of my other hobbies that I'd neglected for years.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: I was painting, I took singing lessons.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: I did all sorts of things.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: I did dog training with my sweet, sweet little lab who's snoring beside me right now.
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: I felt like a real whole human.
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: In fact, the reason I go by Amber Melanie Smith now instead of Amber Smith, which is the name I've used for the first majority of my 99% of my life, is because I realized I needed a way to symbolize to myself a wholeness, right?
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: So Amber Smith was the identity, the entity connected to my work, and Amber Melanie Smith was me.
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: And so just these little things, right, that I was able to recognize that I needed for myself helped me finally identify that I needed for myself, helped me finally identify that I needed a change.
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: So I think that it's a really long answer to your question, but self-awareness and not ignoring the red flags is step number one.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: I got to jump in here because you could have been telling my story of my burnout and my mental breakdown, which I've already shared on the podcast.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: Feel free to go back there and listen to all of Becky's crazy, because I had a very similar experience from ignoring so many physical symptoms.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: And it's wild that you talk about that moment of your feet on the ground, Because I remember it took me one.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: I took a three month sabbatical and it took a month for me to even just stop buzzing, which I didn't even realize there was.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: The buzzing was always with me.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: It was like my shadow, you know.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: But I remember one day walking, also my dog.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: I remember like noticing the birds and the cicadas, and I was running four or five mornings a week and I had never, I hadn't noticed them in years, and I I just think there's something.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, you may have come for this transition planning playbook, but I don't want to skip over the fact that the wholeness that needs to be felt internally has got to be there before the organization wholeness needs to be there, and so I'm so glad you started there.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: Thank you for starting with self-awareness and even lifting some of those red flags that we just often plow through in the grind of this culture and this work that we're in.
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and in terms of how I mean it affects the organization and its work too, right If I can't bring my full self to the table.
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: No one said anything to me, but I knew I wasn't a hundred percent there, you know, yeah.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: So once we've got self-awareness, I mean, we have nailed that to the ground.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Please don't forget that step.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: What would you say comes after that?
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: Asking for help.
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: I asked my executive committee for the sabbatical.
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: I was granted the sabbatical, thankfully, and I have to say when I came back I still wasn't 100% sure that I was going to leave the organization, because I wanted to see what it felt like to come back to the organization in full health.
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: Because I wanted to see what it felt like to come back to the organization in full health.
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: But some of the other epiphanies I had during the sabbatical were more on the self-awareness front, this idea that I'm a certain kind of leader and that it's possible the organization needs a different kind of leader for its next chapter and that's okay.
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: As a founder, you often think, oh, I'm never going to leave, this is my life, it's my life's work, but I'm an example of how someone can believe that and that can still change and it's okay.
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: Asking for help.
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: And then, once I'd made that decision and realized that the organization needed a different kind of leader and I needed something different for my next phase in my life, I approached my board chair and I said I need your help, I need you to partner with me to plan very intentionally a transition out of the organization.
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: And she agreed and we got to work organization and she agreed and we got to work.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: We were fortunate in that a couple of years before that we were smart enough to have drafted a succession plan, so it's not like we were starting from zero.
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: So we pulled it up together and reverse engineered.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: We picked a date this is the date Amber needs to be out based on my needs and the organization's timeline and what was going to work best for everyone.
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: So first step is kind of put that goal out there of the end date and then reverse engineer it.
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: There are a lot of considerations when it comes to succession planning.
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: You have to think about the internal and the external.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: Internally there's change management.
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of communications.
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: That comes with making sure your team knows and understands and is not too anxious about it.
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: The anxiety happens, by the way spoiler alert but you just kind of have to keep on your messaging.
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: So what we did, one of the first things we did was we created a talking points document that was available to both our internal team and we were going to use it for external communications as well.
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: This included things about the reasons for the departure, the board's confidence in our ability to be sustainable despite my leaving, the plan that we were going to execute on to find my replacement and the timeline for that.
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: So a lot of transparency about how this was going to go down, both for our internal team and our external team.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and build confidence and trust in the process and the transparency with your own team, which is, I feel, like, 90% of the battle in transitions.
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: And as much as you might feel like you want to control how this is going to go down, you're going to have to let go of the idea that everyone's going to be totally fine with this and that no bad things are going to happen.
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: We didn't know if this was going to lead to certain staff wanting to leave or or staff applying for my position, which did happen, um, which I was actually very excited to see because it meant, to some degree, we'd successfully built an internal pipeline of talent.
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: So that key talking points document was really helpful, mapping out the timeline and providing updates to the team on where we are in the timeline.
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: What's the next thing they're going to see happen and who's going to be involved in what?
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: Just transparency, transparency, transparency.
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: And then taking some time to assess which of your external stakeholders need to hear the news and in what order.
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: So our top funders, our closest partners they all heard it in a private meeting with me and them first, just really trying to honor that relationship.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: How did you prioritize the groups of people?
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: I mean, did you kind of just work through what relationships do we have and and try to sequence those appropriately?
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we, you know, called upon our CRM and sorted.
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: You know our, our top donors, our top partners.
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: You know it's not just all about donors either.
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: We have community partner organizations Exactly All of those, the organizations that we all agreed we had the closest and most longstanding relationship with got to hear it first.
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: Just a little bit more about the process, though.
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: You know we had a board committee formed to oversee hiring my replacement executive director.
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: We did have multiple internal candidates and multiple external candidates apply, and having the board step up to lead that process really created a sense of continuity to form relationships with whomever my successor was going to be.
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: So we went through the process and at the end, the team threw this beautiful party for me, and I will remember this forever because they had slides of photos dating back years and years.
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: All my old friends were there, and it really gave me personally an opportunity for closure, but I also got to announce our new executive director at that event, which was a strategy to show my support for the next person so that they could carry the torch.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, so seamless.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, I really commend you for the thoughtfulness that you put into this approach and I think that too often the ED is like one foot out the door when these things happen and we don't take that pause and we don't think about, like, the system's impact of it, the people impact, the human to human impact of it, and the intentionality that was baked into this is is really so human and beautiful.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: But I also want to lift that.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: I think grabbing a partner on your board as someone who's going to be an ally to help walk with you in this gives it makes you feel less alone as you're starting to transition out and also gives confidence to the staff that there's someone who's still sticking around that has their best interest at heart and will make the transition smooth.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: So so many good takeaways from this conversation and I kind of want to just have you roll up maybe some pro tips or critical lessons that you really garnered throughout this process.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: What's sticking out to you?
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: I think something that's really important to recognize is this is easier to do when you have succession on your mind before it needs to happen, right?
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: So there are systems and things you can put in place at your organization to make inevitable transitions smoother and easier when they are going to occur.
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: And for all my board knew, I could have said I quit and left the next week, and it wouldn't have been as seamless and smooth.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: Thank you for not doing that on behalf of all of us everywhere.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: It would have been a very short episode.
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: There are some things you can do now in your organization right To prepare for these inevitable things.
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: Things like making sure all of your policies are up to date, All of your staff job descriptions are up to date, making sure that you have infrastructure around your talent pipeline.
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: So do you have an internship program?
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: What does it look like for someone to enter as a volunteer or an intern and grow in their leadership with your organization, to potentially one day be a skilled staff person who leads your organization right?
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: So, thinking in the long term that way and putting that infrastructure in place If you can do those things, then when you have a written succession plan and it comes time to use it, it's also going to be easier to execute on.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: So much of this has been so helpful, especially us as, like founders, thinking about what.
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: What does the future ever look like when you try to step away from something?
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: But I want to talk and go inside of, like the actual organization and what tips would you have for staff you know that are weathering these transition?
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: What are some hallmarks that you would lift of just when you're on the receiving end of this news and not the one that's sharing it?
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: You know, what's some takeaways that you've taken learned from this process.
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's tough, just because I know that systems and cultures, internal cultures of organizations so widely vary across the board.
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: But I would say, if I were a staff person, on the other end of this, I would be seeking communication, right, I would be asking questions, I would be trying to understand my role in this transition and, depending on my interests and the organization's needs, if there are ways I could support or perhaps even fill some of the needs that are going to emerge from the transitions.
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: I think if you have a culture of trust and open communication, these things are possible.
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: If you don't, I yeah, yeah.
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: If you don't, honestly I I'm not sure and I think it would be hard.
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: So I think the most important lesson here is to have a culture of trust and open communication.
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: Everything's just easier when you have that.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with you, and it's hard to even think about how you would navigate that if you don't feel like you have support at the top, if you don't feel like you have psychological safety, because in my mind, everybody is mostly going to want to know how is this going to affect me and my job?
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: And if you don't know, say you don't know, but also say I'll get back to you when I do know and as soon as I know, and actually get back to someone.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: That is how trust-based leadership works.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: And I also think that find an ally.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: If you don't have someone at the top of your organization or you don't have leadership where you feel like you could ask those questions, find an ally somewhere.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Is it a donor?
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: Is it a volunteer?
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Is it a board member?
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: Who do you view that has power that you trust, that you could have a heart-to-heart with?
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: So I think this is all so good.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: Amber, melanie Smith, you amazing whole human.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: I just think this has been a really good conversation that a lot of people struggle through and I just think your lived experience in it has really been a goldmine for the rest of us to learn from.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: But we want to celebrate story as we always do on this podcast, and I wonder if there's a moment of philanthropy that has really stuck with you in your journey.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: Could be a moment of philanthropy, generosity, could be just a moment of philanthropy that has really stuck with you in your journey.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: Could be a moment of philanthropy, generosity, could be just a moment of kindness.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: What lifts for you.
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: Something occurred several years ago in my work at Activate Good that I will always remember.
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: As our city's volunteer mobilizing organization, we were the hosts of the 9-11 Day of Service every year and I'll never forget, as we're coordinating all of these volunteer projects across the city and coordinating volunteers who have questions and all that.
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: I'll never forget a phone call that I received from a woman who's trying to sign up to volunteer.
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: She said I'm having trouble signing up, I can't figure out how to do it.
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: And I said did you get to our webpage?
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: And she said I don't have a computer because I'm homeless.
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: And what struck me about that was she wasn't calling for assistance.
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: I gave her some and she could have been calling for that.
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: She could have been asking for that.
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: What she was asking for was an opportunity to participate and to connect and to be a part of this thing that was going to help people and be across the city and join in that community.
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: And it just reminds you of a couple of things.
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: Like you were saying before, philanthropy is for everyone.
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: It takes so many different forms, it can look like so many different things and, secondly, connection and community are often things we take for granted as basic needs, but I believe that they are and of course, I also connected her to so many resources with our nonprofit partners that could support her and she got to sign up to volunteer our nonprofit partners that could support her and she got to sign up to volunteer.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, I can't help but think of just like you're going back to your road trip and the kind of the takeaway that people didn't lack the belief that they could make a difference.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: And it's like she had that.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: She thought that if I go it actually would make a difference and like, what a beautiful.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: Like, what a beautiful story.
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: You know, we're all needed in this world.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: We all have something of value to add and I just see that, gosh, thank you for sharing that.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: It's beautiful.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: Round us out, my friend.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: Like we're going to ask for your one good thing.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: What's a mantra, a habit, a quote, what's something that stirred up for you in this conversation that you'd leave?
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: I would say, if you're in a leadership position, make sure that you're listening and paying attention to those in your circles, because people are looking to you and they're going to remember what you've said and how it mattered to their lives.
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: Who did such a great job for us, I want to say, seven or eight years ago, and I received an email from a totally different person with a slide deck from her college class and it was a college class in entrepreneurship and in that slide deck the student was sharing role models who had inspired them to want to be an entrepreneur, and on one of those slides was my face and I was shocked.
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: But what it taught me was sometimes you don't know who's paying attention.
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: So you should pay attention to make sure that you're modeling that impactful behavior and if you can do that, we can bring in a lot of new change makers into the work, because we really need that.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: Leaders, it is your time, and if you are looking for a roadmap on that, I can't let that one good thing go by without saying please go, listen to Dr Kevin Sandsbury's podcast episode that we just had a couple of weeks ago.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: He literally breaks down culture strategy for leaders and how to upend so much of what we've talked about here and toxic leadership and really move into healthy, healthy cultures where the internal culture starts to look as vibrant as the external one, and those are the missions that are winning and moving right now.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: So I love that one good thing so much.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: Amber, tell people how they can connect with you.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: I can't believe we have not talked about your incredible YouTube following, which is a phenomenon, and we dropped that link there too, because we want to know all the ways that people can connect with you.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Thanks, Becky.
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: Hit me up on YouTube.
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: Go check out my content and let me know.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: Subscribe turn on the alarm.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: We're going to put it in the show now, so if you don't want to find it, it's there.
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: And give me feedback, engage with me.
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: What do you need to see, especially if you are a beginner to the space?
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: What do you need to hear?
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: What do you need to learn that I can help you learn?
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: Let me know and if I don't know the answer, I'll find an expert who does and I will get you that information.
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: Changemakercafecom is the new platform I'm building, where some of the YouTube content is featured already, but over time it's going to evolve and grow and I'd love for you to be part of that journey.
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: And, of course, hit me up on LinkedIn.
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: Amber Melanie Smith.
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: Hearts are full, Notebooks are full.
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: I mean this has been an awesome conversation.
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: Just thank you for the way you've shown up.
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: I mean you're living your values by the way you've shown up and served in this community and grown the table, grown the conversation.
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: Just think the world of you, yeah.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: And we've linked up the retention survey from nonprofits that Evan Wildstein and Michelle Flores-Vren came onto the podcast and talked about.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: That Amber also referenced.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: That will be in the show notes.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: All the ways to connect with Amber are there.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: Come meet this incredible human.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: We want you to sit and also bask in her orbit and how wonderful and good she is.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: So, so glad to meet you.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: My friend, Keep going with your amazing work.