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Building Meaningful Connections and Preventing Burnout with Beth Saunders | Nonprofit411 Podcast · Nonprofit411 Podcast

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Welcome to the Nonprofit411 podcast, the podcast where we speak with nonprofit professionals and experts to uncover strategies, share insights, and tackle the challenges you face in fundraising and sustainability.
I'm Sarah Barton, your fundraising growth partner and the founder of Nonprofit411.
My mission is to help you develop tailored strategies and support you as you implement them, ensuring your nonprofit thrives.
Let's dive into today's episode and learn from the experiences and expertise of those who have been in your shoes.
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Nonprofit411.
I'm your host, Sarah Barton, and I'm joined today by Beth Saunders.
Founder and chief strategist from Beth Saunders associates.
Welcome.
Thank you, Sarah.
It's really fun to be here with you.
Yes.
I'm so excited to have a conversation with you.
And I'm going to let you introduce yourself in a minute, but before we get started, I want to ask you my favorite question, which is what is your favorite hobby? Well, I kind of knew that was coming, so I gave it some thought.
And I don't know if you would normally call this a hobby, but I have two things that I would mention.
It's truly socializing.
Meaningful connection is so important to me.
And So one of the things that we love to do, I personally, but also with my husband, is have people over or go out and do something joyful like hear live music, you know, go to theater.
But when we socialize at home, this is where the, I'm the mom who doesn't cook.
And I love it when it comes out because I like to entertain.
So I love preparing food and having people in my home and connecting meaningfully in that way.
So it's, it's definitely something that fills my bucket and I would consider a hobby.
I love that.
I love that.
One of my goals for this year is to, originally it was like to do a potluck every month at my house.
But last week we actually had friends over.
We just played cards.
We didn't do the potluck, but.
I really enjoy having people into my home.
My home is this, the stopping ground for all of my family.
So.
We typically have people, especially during holidays, but I love people too.
So yeah, yeah.
We have a long history of it from back in my single days, having the single friend dinner group because none of us loved cooking.
So we took turns and then as couples, we were in a dinner group.
So maybe it's eating.
Maybe it's just like eating good food, but doing it with other people and connecting around a meal is really really fun.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I like that.
Well, would you like to introduce yourself to our listeners? Tell us a little bit about yourself, about your background and what you do.
Sure.
Thank you.
Well, I'm Beth and I've been in the nonprofit space for a little over, I was about to say 20, I think a little over yeah, about 20 years.
And I came to it though, through The corporate world.
I spent my first 10 years in commercial banking, but what I do now, you know, I moved in.
We can talk more about that later if you'd like not the corporate world, but the move, the move, the transition I spent the first part of my nonprofit career working in nonprofits.
doing some project management work and really solving the business problems with technology.
So I was able to leverage that helping nonprofits be successful with CRM or customer relationship management systems.
But what I really, really love is helping nonprofit leadership teams, nonprofit organizations connect with their supporters and really develop those meaningful relationships so that they can make their mission happen and achieve their goals their goals of impact.
Right.
And, and meet their shared mutual goals.
So I've been running this consulting practice for a bunch of years and I've worked with associates, I do some of the work on my own.
Yeah, so rather than ramble longer, that's a really brief high level intro, I suppose.
Yeah, so that's great.
So it's interesting.
I've been having conversations with other colleagues and we talk about the positive things that nonprofits can teach the corporate world, which that's a great, that's a great piece.
And I'm probably going to ask you what you think.
What do you think? And you know, if you can contribute to that conversation, but what from the corporate world, were you super excited to introduce them into the, your nonprofit work? Well, I.
I was about to say not much, but with my tongue in cheek because one of, as an aside, or maybe not as an aside, a pet peeve is when I hear people say that nonprofits should run more like business.
And I think about a lot of businesses that go bankrupt and go out of business and that, you know, are just running little people talk about corrupt executive salaries and all these things right so there is maybe some not so positive things.
But one thing that I do think is really important is the idea of sort of investing in your people.
And investing in your tools, the tools, right.
And tools like air quotes tools.
So for me my entire career, I've really thought about solving business problems using technology.
And I firmly believe technology needs to support your process.
Not that you should design your process the way the technology works.
And when I was in the business world, that's what we did, right? We had bank products but I learned from my customers what they needed to do and like made sure they knew how to use the product to achieve their goals.
And I really think that.
Sometimes there's a we're not good enough or we can't afford that mentality that says, well, we do it this way because the database works that way.
And I really feel like in the nonprofit space, there can be a little, a little, or a lot more confidence that their business process is.
Good.
If it's not fix it.
But if your business process is working, then the technology should support that you don't have to bend to the whim of a vendor.
So I feel like kind of getting some of that confidence that you're allowed to set the terms.
And I don't bump into that, you know, negative mindset a whole lot, but that's definitely something that is probably more common in the for profit space.
Right.
I'm yeah, I should.
I think that I think that's really interesting that you point that out.
So I actually started my career at a university that was shifting from a DOS based CRM to a Windows based CRM.
So I really was introduced to this, the challenges of CRM very, very early at a university.
It's used for a lot of pieces and What I, I did learn that, like, well, I learned both sides.
I learned that one, often it's not the technology that's the problem.
It's actually the people, almost 100 percent of the time.
And they're often asking the wrong questions of, about the technology.
Right.
Instead of asking, what does it do? You say, how do we do right.
And that shift in the question to how do we do this? gets different answers.
And when you do that, then you can kind of what you're saying, you can utilize the technology in a much more meaningful way because now you're, you're incorporating your current systems that are already developed.
So you're not having to develop new systems.
new processes and understand the new technology, you're only changing one of those at a time.
You just hit several hot buttons for me in that, Sarah.
So one of them is the questions people ask, either when they're looking for new systems or adopting a new system.
And It's really not their fault, right? Like, the user of the technology knows how to ask questions based on their role.
And what I found, and why I think I was able to help so many organizations in the early part of my career, is that the non profit teams are the business user.
And the systems provider is the technology user.
And often, I would hear them say the same words.
And I could tell instantly that they understood something different.
So there's this disconnect.
And early in my career, I had this tagline connecting the dots and the dots could be the conversation.
Like I'd say, no, you know, software vendor, what I believe Sarah is talking about is this.
Right.
And you heard this other thing.
So let's like connect this conversation to be about the same thing.
So I was a lot of a translator, right.
And, and a connector in that, but sometimes the dots were actually internal in the nonprofit, in the organization itself, that like the fundraising team was speaking one language and the program team was speaking a different language and and then even getting that to connect so that they could use the CRM.
Right to support the organization, not a department or a person.
So I think the questions being asked are coming from an honest place.
But you're absolutely right.
That's why I think project management and external expertise and advice is helpful.
To, to make sure that that language is the same.
The other thing you said about the question when I was in that work, I'll just share this story real quick too, is what I would hear is, is we're learning the technology, right? We're learning the new system.
And they say, well, can I do such and such, or can it, can we add this field or can we add this? And I would say, well, the answer to, can I, is almost always going to be yes.
So let's start with what are you trying to achieve? Like why are you asking that question in the first place? Tell me a story, right? Tell me a story about when that question came up for you and then let's think about what you're trying to achieve, how we should get there.
And then if it's data related, how are you going to use the data and who's going to be the consumer of that data? And those that's storytelling.
I think, you know, like Brene Brown said, right.
That data are just stories are data with a soul.
Right.
And so the data can tell a story, but not if you don't know what the story is before you build the system.
So, yeah, that was, yeah, I love that example.
And I, I do think that question can I is when it comes to matching technology is such a tricky one.
It's also a tricky one when dealing with human resources.
So I have, I've spent time as a manager.
I've spent time as a director of human resources.
And actually when I was and so when I was director of advancement, my boss would always say, Hey, Sarah, can you do this? And I was young, I was young and I have a lot of ability to adapt and learn quickly.
Would do it.
And he always says I'm the smartest person he knows, but it's just because I always would, he'd be like, can you do this? Yes.
But when, when that would happen, it would take me a long time.
I would have errors cause I'm learning it.
Right.
And it, the product probably could have been better if you were working with someone who actually was skilled at that.
And I think in our nonprofits.
So many times we ask that question, can you, and because our people don't want to disappoint and they, they, you know, it could fit within their role.
Like maybe they're not even role creeping.
They do it.
And I've seen this over and over at organizations where they are spending so much time and energy achieving the answer to the can I, but not realizing that the real question that needed to be answered wasn't related.
So maybe now they have this great report that they were able to do.
They spent the last three solid days of their work working on it.
And then they get so frustrated when it's not really utilized except to answer one question.
And so, you know, that's a, that question is one that I think is something we should all be very careful about asking and really think about that source.
Like what is the source of this story or this data need, particularly when it comes to data, cause I'm a data geek and I know you're right.
When you say, can you, the answer often is like, sure.
And if you ask a technology person, can I.
Yes, but it may mean that you're not optimizing the use of your technology or not optimizing the use of your people or you're not optimizing the use of it.
Yeah, if you ask, well, my developer friends, I love you.
But if you ask a developer, can I, sometimes that's how you end up with these like spaghetti bowl of data systems, right? Like behind the scenes or, you know, duct tape and paperclips, because every time someone said, can I, you just added a thing.
And every time you just add a thing, it just builds this teetering, you know, tower that is going to break someday.
Yeah, what we're talking about, you know, really like nonprofits and, and all of the amazing people working in nonprofit, again, I really think come by some of these challenges, honestly.
You know, the nonprofit structure is sort of set up to make you work harder, you know, maybe not work smarter and everyone kind of lives in this.
We can't have enough scarcity kind of.
And so the thing is, is there's tons of talent and tons of expertise out there.
And the reason that people end up kind of just scrambling or doing the thing without you know, You know, getting away from can I is this the way the system is set up? And that's why I actually came up with map move measure.
But one thing I think is important is to remember why.
Right.
Just like we said, why are you asking that question instead of can I tell me what you were trying to achieve as an organization, if, if as an organization, they can have a practice of always remembering why they're doing this mission work, right? Because the mission is the work, right? The mission is how we're going to make change.
So the question is, what's the change you're making? That's your why you know your impact and when you remember why you might say no to doing this one other thing because it's actually not going to move you towards your impact.
It's going to move you to some other important impact but isn't impact that you do? Yeah, being really clear on that helps also get away from doing three jobs at once, you know, or doing too many of the heads down kind of things.
And it's hard to say no, because also the nonprofit space is full of people who really care and want to say yes.
Right.
They want to, they want to fix, they want to improve, they want to make life better.
So how do you say no to something? It's hard, you know, but you can't say no because you know that what you're doing won't be meaningful and impactful if you keep doing all the other things also.
Yeah.
Right.
And it's the capacity, you know, I actually, so I experienced burnout or through the pandemic and it's something that I've talked pretty openly about and had conversations about.
But one of the words that I added to my vocabulary for me was capacity and being able to say, I don't have the capacity for that.
And I'm sorry, I'm, that doesn't fit within the capacity that I have.
Like those are the two ways that, that I approach that.
And I think oftentimes, and we see it, right, we see a huge burnout or risk of burnout rate in the nonprofit sector.
It is because we haven't had good language to talk about capacity of our people.
And so it's something that I feel like has become, thankfully, it's being more talked about since the pandemic.
And I'm really grateful for that because I hope that it can spare people from actually experiencing burnout.
It's a hard road of recovery and people leave the sector they you know what we are seeing.
I previously worked in community health.
And what we're seeing is People leaving that sector, right? If they, whatever the sector they're in, if they experienced burnout in it, they do something completely different.
And we lose such valuable assets in our communities.
When that happens, perhaps it's a doctor who decides to be a barber or, you know, a Nonprofit executive who decides that they want to work at the bank cause it's consistent and it's predictable.
And, you know, and so I think it's really important for us to have conversations about saying no, about identifying and understanding there is limited capacity and that's completely acceptable and okay.
We are still accomplishing good.
Within our capacity, you know, we can't solve all of the problem, but.
The problem will still, still be there tomorrow and we'll continue to work towards the solution.
I love that the idea of really focusing on capacity and remembering that humans have capacity.
It's not only funding capacity, right? Like we tend to think about what we're able to accomplish with tools or budgets but people are there and nothing happens without the people and yeah.
You've probably heard this too, but like give it your all.
Well, your all might be 80 percent today.
And you're all might be 60 percent one day or you're all might be, you know, like whatever the capacity you actually have as a human might not always be at 100 percent either.
So when you give it, you're all you give it all of what you have right now.
And that's doing your best.
And so I would say that's something, you know, the nonprofit world can teach.
Sort of the rest of the world is the, the human aspect.
We really actually do care an awful lot about humans and we can sometimes forget ourselves in the caring about others.
And you're right.
That burnout really comes from that.
Yeah.
I've learned that it has to be balanced and there is a portion of my capacity that I have to reserve for.
The self care, you know, I, I, I dunno, I have a little hate with the word self care, but it is self care you know, but there is a piece of my capacity that I can't give away.
And we all have that, right.
And as a mother and I am caring for, you know, aging parents, I am a business owner, I am a friend, I have all of these.
Roles that I play.
I can't give any one of them.
The truth is I can't give any one of them 100 percent of my capacity.
I actually have 100 percent of capacity and I have to choose how I divide it up.
And if I choose incorrectly, the demands don't change on the other part of my, you know, on the other role necessarily.
I'm the one that begins suffering.
And so, and so that's the other word that has come into my language.
And it's actually related.
I, my brother adopted a little boy and he was telling me one day about this book that he's writing called the boy who suffered.
And I was like, Oh, you know, is it poor thing that that's something that he had experience with.
But then as I was thinking about the word suffering, our goal is to prevent suffering.
Our goal in our sector is to prevent suffering.
But there's also a piece of us that.
Has to prevent some amounts of suffering for ourselves too, you know? And so like, when we think about self compassion that piece of my capacity that I have to reserve for self compassion is to prevent extreme suffering because when I suffer too long and that's what we're saying, you know, with burnout, when I suffer too long, then I have to change something.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, there's that age old analogy, right? metaphor analogy oxygen mask.
They always tell you to put your oxygen mask on first, because if you are suffering and if you can't breathe, you can't help other people, right? So self care is not selfish, you know, it's or self focused.
You know, what you're talking about too it's I don't know, I'm sort of forever amazed that how we talk about human, like our personal relationships is really how I think that the nonprofit Organization moves through the world as well.
Cause the way a nonprofit organization, which doesn't actually do anything, right.
The people in the nonprofit do.
So I always struggle with, do I talk about the organization or the leadership team or the staff? Right.
But nonprofit superheroes, you know, we're talking about burnout and overwhelm if, if we only ever think about mission, then there's always more to do.
Because mission is doing work, right? And if we only ever talk about our vision statement, There's always more to do also because that's so big and I talk about this a lot too is that vision is lofty and aspirational.
Just think about those two words, right? It's lofty and aspirational.
It doesn't feel tangible.
And so when you create a pathway to achieve your vision, you can then decide what's the impact and now go back to your idea of capacity, right? Is within our capacity, what is the change we can and will make.
Those are, that's the impact that moves to your vision.
And so if, if everything is big.
Right? Then you feel like you're carrying the weight of the world and all you can do is look down because you're so weighted down and then you're only focusing on your mission work, which, by the way, is not a bad idea.
It's just that if it's all you're doing, you will constantly feel burdened and constantly have a ton to do.
And you may end up doing things that don't move you toward your goals.
So breaking your vision down to more tangible impact statements and outcomes, I think, really helps.
lift up and reduce.
It may sound crazy, but articulating a series of goals could help reduce burnout potential because you know exactly where you're heading, right? It's more motivating.
So it's, it, it works personally as well.
You know, you never just start with the huge giant goal.
You have to figure out what do I have to achieve along the way? And it makes everything more.
manageable, right? And measurable.
Really.
It really makes it so much more measurable because now, and, and I see this in like community health.
So having come from that sector, you know, it's really hard if we're just measuring the impact we're having on hypertension by the number of Americans who have hypertension, it's really difficult to see progress.
But when we break it down and maybe we go to a community health organization and we're looking at very specific measurements within hypertension, perhaps it's, you know, people being controlled with medication, number of people controlled without medication, you know, we have Smaller increments that we can look at and we can actually achieve and make progress towards, because now we know exactly what the outcome that we're looking for is, and it's much more reasonable, especially when we think about humans, because there's so many variables in a human.
And so this narrows it way down.
So I really like what you're saying about.
You know, helping having goals doesn't make it feel loftier.
It actually makes it feel more manageable.
And I think it's much more measurable to see success, which builds us up and encourages us when we see.
Right, which comes full circle back to that data and technology we started talking about, right? You need to track data in order to measure, right? If you don't track it, you can't measure it.
But you have to know why you're doing it or you'll track it in a way that you can't actually measure it.
So it's all just, it's all intertwined.
You really can't have strategy and big outcomes without complete and accurate data that is structured to meet your, help you meet your goals.
If it's just sort of all thrown in there, The way the technology told you to do it, it may not get you where you're trying to go.
So it, it really, it's all connected.
Yeah, it is.
And I think it's very, I think what you do, you know, what I do is so meaningful mm-hmm.
Because it can be such it's, it's such a blessing to have someone just come in and help see some of these things and very easily identify some of the points that we miss sometimes when we're in the middle of the.
In the, the organization and the processes and the systems, right.
It's really helpful for that, that third set of eyes, or, you know, the second set of eyes, depending on how many people, you know, are coming in.
And I love it in my own business when I get other ideas.
when you have problems from outside individuals, when them, with them saying, well, I had that problem and here's what I did.
It's so helpful to have someone help you break it down because even when you break it down yourself, sometimes you have really still made very unachievable, goals and expectations of your own organization.
I mean, you know, you can't see it if you're in it.
Right.
When you're in it, you can't see it the right way.
And then also, I, like you, I'm sure, right? We approach our work and I never have said to somebody, a client, I've never said, I know this better than you.
I always say, you know what you're doing way better than I do.
Right.
But here I know different things.
And I've worked with many organizations.
And right now you're inside of one.
So like, to your point, we bring perspective and experience and a different set of expertise.
Right.
So I'm like, they have all the expertise, like, I know, you know, what you're doing.
However, if you're talking to me, it's because you need someone on the outside, right.
That can bring having worked with 20, 30, a hundred, however many other organizations and seen the same question many times.
But also I'm on the outside and it's easier to see when you're on the outside.
But yeah, the expertise is on the inside and the experience can come from others and just having a totally different perspective on, you know, I, I do a lot of reframing and bringing a new framework so they can think about what they're doing in a way they never have before.
And yeah, it's, it's kind of fun, right? It's, we were talking earlier, right? We partner.
Because we, we, in order to be successful in helping them be successful, we have to both, right, the nonprofit and us, you know, the partners and the consultants need to partner and combine our expertise.
So it, you know, I can't do what I do without the expertise that is going on.
I'm so in awe.
of the amount of passion and the amount of true positive change that's happening.
It really fills my bucket to, to sit in the nonprofit space.
I love it.
I love that too.
I, and, and you're right.
Like, I definitely can't do the work that they're doing.
Because I've never done it.
And they do such amazing work.
I'm yeah.
I'm with you.
I'm always in awe.
And I have not met a nonprofit yet that I was not in awe of.
Work that they want to accomplish and are accomplishing because I, you know, and I always tell people in fundraising, when we go out to fundraise, it is helping people understand, like, did you know there's this problem? Like, because sometimes people don't even know there's that problem.
And then it's telling them, Hey, not only.
Is this a problem? But I know a potential solution.
And this is what we do.
Like we try to meet this problem or this barrier and correct it for people.
And so people who are participating in our programs, we get to help them not have to deal with that problem anymore.
Right.
I mean, at the base, that's a big piece of fundraising is telling the story.
And so, every nonprofit has that to be able to do because they're doing amazing stuff.
Yeah.
Yep.
Agreed.
Beth, can you tell our listeners where they can find you? Well, what's easy is you can find me because everything is my name.
So, on LinkedIn I definitely hang out there a lot, and I'm Beth Saunders.
Beth Saunders Associates is the website, and there you can download a guide about this framework but those are the two places, my website and LinkedIn, and I welcome connecting with folks that are interested in that, please shoot me a message on LinkedIn because connection is That's really what I'm all about.
Perfect.
And then the last question is, what is one piece of advice that you would like to give any nonprofit executive or professional or supporter who may be listening to this conversation? Well, something that I started this year with I'll share is that, you know, it's, it probably always feels like there's too much and and you can feel weighed down.
And just remember that.
If you pause and think, I can start here, look up, look up for a minute, no matter where you are.
If you just look up, you'll see all the people that you've impacted.
You'll see what you were, why you started doing the work you're currently doing.
And when you remember why.
Make you nervous.
And when you're nervous.
If you can't get anything done quickly, Then your energy and your motivation will come back.
I promise.
So pause look up.
And think about why.
Yeah.
I think that's great advice.
I think that's great advice for anybody.
Within the sector.
Without the outside the sector.
I've got to listen to my own advice.
Yes, I know.
You know, I'll just So I'm going to share with you, because I just, it came to mind, one of the things that I was actually just telling someone today is that I've learned that doing something outside of my office at lunchtime, like that makes me feel human.
And so it's like the pausing is like, what makes you feel human? And so going outside my office for lunch is a great one.
That is a good one.
Yes.
Thank you so much for this conversation.
I've really enjoyed it and I hope our listeners really enjoy it.
And for all of you listeners, I want to thank you for tuning in again this week.
We value it.
If you can like, and subscribe, or if you can share this with your colleagues, thank you and have a great week.
Bye.
That's a wrap for today's episode of Nonprofit411.
I hope our discussion with nonprofit professionals and experts gave you actionable ideas to take your fundraising efforts to the next level.
At Nonprofit411, I partner with leaders like you to develop strategies and guide you through implementation.
Visit nonprofit411.
org to learn more and let's take the first step together.
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Bye.