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Passion Isn’t Enough: Empowering Nonprofit Leadership with David Rhode | Nonprofit411 Podcast · Nonprofit411 Podcast

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Welcome to the Nonprofit 411 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 Nonprofit 411.
My mission is to help you develop tailored strategies and support you as you implement them, ensuring your nonprofit thrives.
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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 the nonprofit for one on one podcast.
I'm your host and I'm joined today by David wrote author of passion.
Isn't enough.
Welcome there.
It's so great to be here.
Thanks for having me.
Yes.
I am so excited to have a conversation with you today about your new book actually.
But before we get started, let me ask you my favorite question, which is what is your favorite hobby? There, I would have to say I'm a puzzle person.
I rediscovered jigsaw puzzles during the pandemic and I'm also somebody that starts their day with wordle and connections and strands and spelling bee.
I'm one of those people.
So I'm, I'm, I'm a puzzle guy.
Oh, how fun.
How fun.
My father actually lives with us, and my parents both live with us, and he really enjoys doing jigsaw puzzles, so we do them.
What size is your favorite size? I'm a thousand piece guy.
I gotta, I have a, I have a puzzle board, which enables me to sort of like move it around our apartment if I'm in the way.
I can be, I can be mobile with my puzzle if I need to.
So, thousand pieces is kind of my, my sweet spot right now.
Wow.
Well, I applaud you.
We don't make it through very many thousand piece puzzles.
We did over Christmas.
It was a super easy one.
And my oldest brother said, you guys can do this one.
And he was right.
It was really a lot of fun, but generally we're like the three to 500 piece.
That's okay.
I get it.
I get it.
It's there's, there's, that's why they make 31 flavors, you know? That's right.
So can you introduce yourself and kind of your background to our listeners today? Me too.
I've been in the nonprofit sector for around 20 years.
I entered the sector as a founder.
I started an organization called pitching for baseball and softball and ran that for about 15 years and love the ride.
And, and so many of those experiences are baked into the book itself.
I then have moved into a couple of different areas consulting, Transcripts I consult with two different organizations.
One is called pen pack, which is University of Pennsylvania alumni who do pro bono consulting.
And I'm the deputy director of that organization.
And then I also have my own consultancy called dot dot org where I do CEO mentoring and coaching.
And I also teach at the University of Pennsylvania, teach nonprofit branding and nonprofit consulting.
So I've got a, a lot of different angles into the nonprofit sector.
And I try to bring that all to bear both with my clients and also into the book itself.
Yeah.
Yes.
And I've had a chance to look through the book and I think it's so well written.
I can really see that academic background because you're very thoughtful about how you present the information and it's so informative, you know, about the various areas a nonprofit needs to be informed about.
I wanted to make it accessible.
So to me, you know, if I'm If I read a book and a book is intimidating or is up here and I'm down here, then then I feel like it's out of reach to me as a reader.
And I really wanted this to be something that is.
Something that people literally carry with them and or or would take and open and just read one particular chapter if they have an interest or maybe a struggle in one aspect of their organization or another.
So I really wanted it to be almost a conversation between myself.
The executive director and, and make it something that people can approach easily.
I, I, somebody who read the book, she said, I read it in 24 hours.
I'm like, that's a lot of reading.
And they're like, no, but it went really fast.
Like, I really loved your book.
And so, that, that was a big compliment to me that people are finding, it flows naturally.
The information is in a digestible format and there's very actionable next steps at the end of each chapter so people can.
Can put the lessons right to work.
Yeah.
Yes.
All of that is very true.
And in fact, I actually flipped over to a couple of areas of interest where, you know, I really talked to nonprofits a lot about these different areas.
And I would love to just kind of talk with you, you know, through the podcast about some of these areas and learn from your expertise.
One.
Yeah.
One of the areas that I love as soon as I saw it, I loved it.
It was about when you were talking about capacity building boards that organizations need to move towards capacity building boards.
Can you talk a little bit more about that? Or, I mean, many organization, there's really 2 different types of boards.
There are working boards and then there are capacity building boards.
Sometimes organizations try to have 1 board achieve both objectives.
And that's really interesting, but not all that successful of a strategy working boards are just that board members are asked to take on specific roles and functions within the organization.
Kind of almost be an extension of the staff.
And that may be fine in the beginning for an organization, especially as it's getting off the ground.
But for long term success, the capacity building board to me is the right structure.
So, board members are asked to and are explained about this in advance of joining the board that 1 of the things that they're going to be doing is reaching into their networks to try to help the organization obtain either.
You know, financial support.
Obviously, that's the most basic kind, but it could be partnerships.
It could be corporate partnerships that they know there could be other relationships that they have.
So, you know, engaging board members to to help bring people to the organization to share in the passion.
And for board members, the simplest way for that to happen is really for them to say, this is an organization that I'm deeply passionate about.
And I hope you will support me.
So that the organization can achieve its results because the cliche of people support people.
They don't support organizations really is true.
And think about it for yourself.
Sarah, a close friend of yours reached out to you and said.
Something is really important to me.
Will you, will you please help me and support it? I think our natural instinct would be to say, yes, we'd say, of course, I, I care about this individual.
I would help them in whatever way that I could.
And so what we need to do is empower board members and give them the tools and support so that they feel comfortable.
Going out and bringing in those kind of resources, and maybe just, it goes as far as making the introductions and then the staff takes over the, the cultivation and making the actual ask in a lot of situations, but we won't get those introductions without the board members help.
And the board member plays a big role in that.
a critical role in helping bring the kind of capacity building to the organization that's so critical for them to reach their goals.
Yeah.
And I think you make a good point because a lot of organizations do feel really strongly about having strong, diverse.
Diversification of their board members.
So they go out and they're intentionally seeking and finding these board members who large networks and who have the capacity to really move them into new you know, new arenas, but they don't always strategically utilize their boards in that way.
I think it's a function of expectations.
So if you, if you come into the organization, knowing that that's something that you're going to be asked to do, and we can have, if I'm vetting you as a prospective board member, and I say, hey, Sarah, one of the big things we ask our board members to do is to help make introductions to people they know personally and professionally, have you ever done this before? Is this something you're comfortable with? And people will will kind of tell you pretty quickly.
Yes or no? And it's so much more helpful to have this conversation before they join the organization because the answer is no, then you're in a pretty, you're in a pretty much an impasse.
And if that's the case, then you might have a board member who's really underperforming or not performing at all.
And is that really fair to the other board members who are being asked to take those same steps? So, yeah.
I think this is all about, you know, clarifying roles and expectations up front, having very what I will call adult conversations about the, the issue of money.
What a give get is for the organization.
You know.
Making a gift personally to the organization is a requirement, but having a, maybe a broader fundraising target is also very common and, you know, let's put it out in the open so that this doesn't become.
Hey, now that you've been with the organization for 6 months, let me tell you about this fundraising thing.
Like, well, that's, that's not fair to the individual because they want to be successful.
They want to meet the expectations you have for them as a board member.
So, So tell them up front what success looks like and, and, and let them work towards it.
And you're going to partner with them so that they can be successful both for themselves and for the organization.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I really appreciate that.
And you kind of, you mentioned there, you know, you talked about partnerships and that's an area where I feel like organizations.
Often have not tapped into enough, right? Building partnerships with corporations and other organizations in their community.
You want to talk about that a little bit? Happy to partnership development is an area where I have a lot of enthusiasm and experience you know, for pitching for baseball, we work closely with equipment manufacturers and, and a number of major league baseball clubs.
And, and it was a really important part of.
Our resource development in terms of financial support, but also in terms of building the profile of us as an organization.
We had a few thousand followers on on social media.
The New York Yankees have a couple million.
So it doesn't take much math to figure out that when they might put out a positive tweet.
Or some kind of other post about the work we did to support youth in the South Bronx that that was going to elevate us as an organization.
So I think the common mistake that organizations make when they think about corporations and partnerships in general is they think about just the biggest companies in their community.
And let's go after that.
And, and that's, that's fine.
I mean, those are the kind of, those are normal conversations, but.
Yeah.
What I propose a slightly different approach of just think about the organizations that know, love and trust you the most.
And Joe waters, who's one of the guest contributors to my book, you know, talks about this from from his lens.
And Joe's 1 of the experts in partnership development.
And he's, he's all over chapter 4 of the book.
And and so if people know and trust your organization, then they are going to welcome you in to have a face to face conversation.
Conversely, if you're trying to get a meeting with, let's say, I'm here in New York City and I want to try to get a meeting with Goldman Sachs, one of the large, you know, investment houses, if I don't know anybody there, why, why would they give me the time of day? Why would they just because I'm with a nonprofit organization that's doing good work? There are thousands and thousands of nonprofit organizations in New York City doing good work.
So we really have to focus on 2 things.
1 is.
What is the impact of our work? And does that align with what the corporation cares about? If I'm an arts organization and the bank cares about financial literacy, then we, there's very little opportunity for us to sort of meet in the middle and, and, and sort of build on each other's impact and, and, and, and goals.
So we have to start with sort of strategic alignment.
Let's make sure what we do is what they care about.
Okay, well, that's solvable.
And then the next thing, which is a little bit harder sometimes is trying to get a warm introduction.
Who do we know that can make an introduction to somebody at that organization so that we have a chance? A very, very good chance of having that first face to face meeting and so instead of cold calling them or cold emailing them, let's get introduced from somebody that can say, hey, I know these guys are doing really good work.
I was hoping that you might be able to find a way to connect and get together to learn a little bit more about what they're doing.
In that case, the person in corporate giving or the corporate foundation or whatever is going to most likely say yes, because One of their teammates, potentially an executive said, Hey, this is an organization that you may want to check out.
So that gets you from having like a 1 or 2 percent chance of getting a face to face meeting to maybe a 50 or 75 percent chance of having a face to face meeting.
So you have to really work hard about getting those.
You know, those introductions, so you can get in front of them and then at least then you can have your day in court.
You know, if you if you're in front of your audience, then you've got a real shock because then they're going to hear from you and understand what you're all about.
And in the book, I go through the kind of questions you might want to ask in that 1st partnership meeting.
I go into a lot of depth about that, but, you know, there's a lot of ways to handle that 1st meeting to get the potential partner to get them talking.
and to get them to open up and for you to learn about how they think so that you can come back to them with a proposal that's really going to meet the kind of things that they care about and the structure of a partnership arrangement that's going to meet their eye.
I want to tell you, I love that list of questions actually that you had for that first meeting with a potential partner.
I actually was like, Oh, I need to jot those down.
Those are all very good questions and they were laid out.
Yeah, I did.
They were excellent.
And, and I, I too am really passionate about partnerships because I find, I have always found them to be very meaningful for the organizations that I've worked with.
And it's not hard.
You know, I haven't found that partnership being is really, really hard when you go about it the way that you're talking about, you know, and conversely, it is a very nice gift that you can give organizations to do warm introductions whenever you do know that there's alignment for anything.
I do it all the time.
If I know someone who has a resource or who has knowledge of or who is working with a similar subject.
I will do an email introduction, and I will include both of the people on the email, I'll say, you know, Jane, I would like you to introduce, I would like to introduce you to so and so.
I've met them through this, and this is something that they're really passionate about and then to their to the other person in the same email, I will say, I would like to introduce you to this person and this is why, and it is, it's so beautiful to network people like that.
It is, I think, I think we always appreciate when people do things like that for us and to be able to return that and pay it forward for other people.
I think just it gives you a good feeling.
It's also, it only costs us a teeny bit of our time, but, you know, to appreciate and to put ourselves in the shoes of those individuals running small nonprofits potentially.
Any kind of an introduction like that can be a game changer for them.
So, I mean, if that's, if that's what you're doing, then you can give yourself a little pat on the back.
You, you, you did a good deed for the day, but a very meaningful one for the nonprofit, those kinds of introductions, whether it's a respective board member or respective partner or perspective donor or anyone is, is really valuable because you know, your credibility or mine or someone else's that means something and, and that will really.
Break down a lot of barriers and allow them to have a chance of working closely together.
Yeah, and there are so many resources in our communities that many times they just don't know about each other.
So even if they're, you know, even if they just work similarly, sometimes it could be really nice to have someone who understands exactly where you are and what you're doing.
So there's always a great opportunity for that.
I agree.
And I mean, that's, that's, that is just, it's the kindness that, you know, sometimes we're, we're a little bit in, in the, in the world of.
And so, you know, why not share those things with, with other people? Yes.
And you do that in a lovely way in the book.
So you actually brought in people and interviewed with them and you included kind of their experiences and their observations in the book.
And so that's kind of how you brought that in.
Tell me about that.
What was your favorite part about that? The, the book enabled me to there are 22 different nonprofit CEOs and subject matter experts whose, whose wisdom is embedded throughout the book.
So you get a lot of me, but you get some of them and and what you really get is all of this cumulative experience over 450 years of experience in the nonprofit sector between between all the folks I talk to.
My favorite part about it was just getting to reconnect with some people that have been really important to me.
Some people that when I started my nonprofit organization were some of the very first people that I connected with Doug Bauer and Greg Goldman were instructors of mine at the University of Pennsylvania teaching me about nonprofit fundraising.
Doug introduced me to Rich Berlin, who was running at the time Harlem RBI, which is now called We Are Dream, and Rich is in the book.
So, like, this was a trip down memory lane for me.
I was able to go back to people that I had known for a period of time who I look up to.
And they were so generous with their time.
I guess that the best part about it was how excited they were to be part of a resource that was going to help nonprofit leaders.
They wanted young and ascending nonprofit leaders and board members to have more tools at their disposal so they could be more effective in their role.
So they were so generous with their time.
So that was really touching.
And it was a fun part of the book.
I had all these great conversations and I learned things along the way.
And then I was able to embed them in the book.
It was, it was great.
Yeah.
Yeah, I love that.
That's kind of, I've gotten to do that some with my podcast.
So it is so much fun to be able to revisit you know, old past acquaintances and friends and colleagues and be able to talk to them and glean from them just additional, you know, additional information.
I think that I think the timeliness of the book and your ability to be able to, you know, have those conversations is so good because over the pandemic.
We did see some turning over of, you know, the nonprofit sector, especially those that were close to retirement.
Maybe they moved into retirement a little bit early or they moved into retirement and we really didn't get a chance to say goodbye, but they have such valuable resources to offer us because they've experienced a lot of things.
And while technology and you know, all of the changes in our Our nation and in the sector, they change.
There are many things that have been learned before that are still so applicable to everyone in the sector, right? It's true.
I mean, the fundamental reason for the book is that conversations that I was having with.
CEO's in the nonprofit sector were the same conversations over and over again about strategic planning about board engagement about fundraising.
It didn't matter what part of the country you were from, what part of the nonprofit sector you win.
These were universal challenges.
And so from my perspective, just like you're saying, you know, can we.
Tie together some of those key learnings that somebody could look at this book and and glean from it and sort of have a head start.
If they were, they were embarking on strategic planning for the first time, they don't know what they don't know.
And so maybe you give them some questions they should ask.
How do I know if I should bring in an outside consultant or not to help me through strategic planning? All right, well, I give you.
And then you know, you know, half a dozen considerations that might help lead you in one direction or another.
So or a time an idea of like what the time frame would be or what the steps are in the process.
And again, it's not like I have the answers for strategic planning.
There's a lot of wonderful consult to do great strategic planning work.
But at least this is a framework.
This is an approach is a way to think about it.
And the same for board engagement fundraising, and then all 15, the 1st, 15 chapters, which sort of break down different aspects of the work that a CEO is going to have.
So we found that the challenges were pretty universal.
And from the feedback I'm getting from people that are reading the book, they say, like, it really hit the mark.
So I'm so delighted to hear that because.
You know, I invest a lot of time in the book and my greatest hope was that it would be read.
It would be helpful.
So the fact that people are getting value out of it and willing to share their views on the book is very flattering and I'm glad it's being helpful.
Yeah.
So, you are an instructor.
I'm going to shift gears just a little bit.
So you're an instructor and do you teach professionals about nonprofit work? Is that the area that you focus on? So, I, I teach 2 different things at the University of Pennsylvania.
I teach within the school of social policy and practice.
I teach a graduate program in the graduate program there.
And I teach nonprofit branding.
So I talk a lot about what is a nonprofit brand, how nonprofit brands are different than for profit brands and things of that nature.
And there's a chapter in the book about branding, and we go through a lot of those same concepts.
I distill them down.
So that's one class that I teach.
And then another class that I'm teaching right now is within the business school within Wharton and I'm teaching executives who are also full time executives and they're getting their MBA at the same time.
And that's a nonprofit consulting class.
So they're working in teams to support the nonprofit sector.
And at the same time, I'm lecturing to give them a little bit more Knowledge about some of the key tenants of, of being involved with a nonprofit organization.
We're focusing a little bit on what it might be to be a nonprofit board member, mostly that focus, but not exclusively.
And then I have other guest speakers that come in to share their, their perspective.
Last week, I had a nonprofit founder come in and talk about his journey as a founder, because many of my students want to found their own nonprofit organization.
So I teach the nonprofit branding side and I do this nonprofit consultant piece.
So it's great.
It keeps me very.
Okay.
Fresh and energized and on my toes.
So I like teaching.
Classic teaching the fall is in person.
The class of teaching right now is is virtual because I have students actually from all around the country.
I have students from the West Coast and the East Coast.
So we, the only way we could meet is is on zoom.
So that's that's what we chose to do.
Well, I love that there's some formalization of some nonprofit education being taught as a person who has worked in nonprofits.
I actually, I have a master's degree in public administration and I did some work around nonprofits when I did my master's program.
But it is an area that is lacking, you know, often is some of that formalized education just about nonprofit business management.
And that it's a little bit different than for profit, and it's a little bit different than the public sector also, you know, and so I love that you have the opportunity to share that with young people, or any age person actually.
True, true, true, true.
Yeah.
And I'm seeing, I'm seeing more nonprofit programs sprout up at the university level.
There's, there's some folks that have been at it a long time.
But there's new programs that are coming up all the time because I mean, nonprofit organizations represent depending on how you measure roughly 10 percent of the economy.
And it's an important element of where people might end up landing professionally and they should have, you know, a good understanding of what, what it takes to be successful within that environment.
Yeah.
And I work with startup nonprofits frequently.
And one of the challenges that I see is that as they started this organization there, they just, there was so much that they didn't know about the nonprofit as a business a model.
And so, you know, kind of what is.
What is different.
So I definitely will be recommending your book.
Passion isn't enough for those individuals, because I think that it's a great primer on how to work in and with a nonprofit.
Sarah, I appreciate that.
I mean, again, if you think about the premise of the book, passion is normally what brings us into the sector.
But so we, we care deeply about particular cause or issue, whatever.
And and many times what that means is we're really focused on the program.
What is the thing that our organization is going to do to help a particular population in our community? How can we help them do whatever it is we're trying to do? And that's the lens we might enter the sector with, but if we're a nonprofit executive running that, that entity, which is a non for profit corporation.
So it's a business.
What does that really mean? It means I have to have to have a budget.
I have to manage the budget.
I have to manage people.
I have to hire people.
I have to have communications that go out.
I have to have donors.
I have to measure my impact.
I have to do all of these things.
So it's not just about the program.
The program is maybe At the center of the work we do, and it sort of overlays very closely with the mission, obviously, but that's not sufficient to be successful.
You can't just have good programs.
You really need all of these pieces of the puzzle kind of rowing in the same direction so that your organization can be sustainable over the long term.
And that's the perspective.
Most leaders don't have.
I think you're 100 percent correct.
And so by the time they discover that, then they're sort of.
confronted with things and they're thinking on the fly and maybe using their best instincts, but you know, I would like to coach them along so they have more confidence and more skill when they encounter something for the first time.
And so, you know, hopefully the book can be a mechanism to do that.
Yes, I think it is.
I think it is.
And, you know, in my work, I've learned that I can do almost anything if I put my mind to it and my energy, but it is so much easier to do it.
With someone teaching me along the way, and if I can work with someone who has done it before me even better, because I'm going to get to success faster, more efficiently and more effectively than if I try to do it all on my own without a mentor and some guidance.
In learning curves are real things.
I mean, and so why start at the bottom of the learning curve when you can start at the middle of it, at least and have a running start and and have a better idea of what what might be, you know, in the near future, what what challenges you might face, what things you need to consider and and then you'll go in with a more thoughtful approach.
Yes, David, can you tell our listeners where they can find you? The easiest place to find me is on LinkedIn.
I'm, I'm all over LinkedIn and they could reach out to me also through my consultancy, which is called dot.
org.
So either one is fine.
And if they are kind enough to get the book, Passion Isn't Enough available on Amazon or Barnes and Noble, I'd hope that they could reach out to me and let me know what they thought of it.
What they found particularly helpful.
And I love to hear from readers and it's it's a wonderful way to start a conversation.
Yeah, I hope they do that.
And before we exit, what is one piece of information you would like to give any nonprofit professional out there? I would just say that these are particularly turbulent times and for nonprofit sector.
And I think it's important to kind of focus on the things that we can control and and make our programs more efficient, refine them where we can communicate with our donors, communicate with our staff, communicate with our volunteers, communicate with our partners.
Remind them of the great work that we're doing.
And maybe there's even greater demands now for the work than ever.
So you don't have to be asking for money to remind people of the importance of the work you're doing, but, but focus on what you can control.
Yes.
I think that's great advice.
Thank you so much for joining us today, Sarah.
Thank you for having me.
I loved, I loved being part of the conversation.
Awesome.
To our listeners.
I want to thank you for listening.
You have a great day.
Bye.
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