Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 482. A Deep Dive into Nonprofit Mergers and Acquisitions - Danielle Steer

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482. A Deep Dive into Nonprofit Mergers and Acquisitions - Danielle Steer · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hey, I'm John.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: And I'm Becky.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: And this is the we Are For Good podcast.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: So welcome to the Good Community.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: So let's get started, becky, oh my gosh, the enthusiasm is so real right now.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Can I tell you two of my favorite things on this earth?
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Go for it.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Big dreamers and people who can reimagine everything, and that is really who we are meeting today in this space, which is my great joy to introduce you to, danielle Stier.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: She is the founding executive director of Lunar Startups and managing partner of Tundra Ventures and y'all.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Let me tell you a little bit about what Danielle is doing.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: She is going to talk to us about nonprofit mergers and acquisitions, and for those of you who are thinking about touching that die, I'll take your hand back because we need this conversation and I want to talk about just the humanity that Danielle really infuses into this process, because Lunar Startups, tundra Ventures, they are like Minneapolis St Paul they are first early stage accelerators for founders who identify as black, indigenous people of color, lgbtq, women and non-binary.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: She has an incredible pedigree.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: I can't even go through all of it, but we're going to talk about this nonprofit mergers and acquisition because it's not just a last-ditch effort when your organization has exhausted all of their options.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: With this strategic approach, this merger can be an innovative approach to delivering more streamlined services and funding vehicles to the community.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: So Danielle recently led Lunar Startups to be successfully acquired by ConnectUp Institute, which was formerly a competitor of Lunar's, and so today we're just going to be talking about more about the decision-making and the strategy behind her decision to pursue an acquisition, why it's already resulting in better services for the communities that Lunar serves, and how other nonprofit leaders can develop innovative strategies to adapt their orgs during these really volatile economic times.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: I feel this conversation is going to be full of ingenuity, hope, and it's going to be steeped in equity.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: I'm so excited about it.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Danielle, welcome to the we Are For Good podcast.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: We are so excited to have your heart and your intuition here.
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: Thank you, I'm so honored to be here.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: I love your community.
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: It's such an amazing crew of folks that are, I think, really deeply passionate and trying to make the world a better place.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: They are and you are a part of it.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: We want to hear your incredible story.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: We've already gotten to know off camera a little bit about Charlotte and Griffin, your amazing kids, but we want to know about you growing up and what kind of gave you this heart for this work.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I mean all of us are like, if we're pies, we're getting little tiny slivers all the time.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: They make up that pie right.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: And I think, when I think back on my career and my life, there's a couple distinct through lines that are all rooted in the fact that, while I was surrounded by amazing, loving women who built community, who made sure that their children had everything that they needed in the world to be successful in their lives, at the end of the day they were dependent on their partners and for other folks around them financially.
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: And so I think the absence of a role model growing up who was successful in her career and who was financially independent and who was also a great mom Like I.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: Just I didn't have that role model growing up, even though I had a wonderful, amazing mother who was perfect just for me.
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: I think that was really I look back a core driver of saying why wasn't there more financial self-sufficiency?
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: Because there's a lot of externalities and downsides to that at the same time.
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: And then, when I went into college, I saw that financial independence it's one of the largest indicators of decreasing violence against women, for example is financial independence, and I found out that entrepreneurship is one of the best interventions for increasing financial independence for women, and it just kind of like kickstarted this passion for me on how can I help myself, how can I help my family and how can I be thinking about the greater economy, because the reality is, we will all be better off when more women have financial independence right, and when women are controlling more capital.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: The data is really clear, and so I think that that is really like my North Star of trying to support more women getting financial independence, and I graduated from college at the height of the recession.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: It was like a great time to be getting out of school with a ton of debt right, I was bartending and all of the jobs that I wanted kind of an international development, you know, require a master's degree and we're unpaid and I was like, well, that's not going to be me.
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: But also like for my own learning style, I learned a lot about my learning style and what did and didn't work for me in college and so I had the privilege of getting into, I think, a graduate school, middlebury Institute of International Studies, and pursuing a degree in nonprofit management.
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: That was like incredibly hands-on.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: There was almost no theory around it.
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: It was like you learn a concept, you learn a tool, you go and you implement and for my personal learning style, that was fantastic.
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: So I think the ability to take some of those core drivers for me which was around like financial independence and building community and removing barriers things that I saw and getting a practical kind of layer of education on top and then adding another layer of practical application, was really important.
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: So I ended up heading down to the Andes Mountains outside of I was in Calca, peru, not too far from Machu Picchu, and was working with a group of Indigenous women on financial independence.
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: We helped them to create a community savings bank.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: They were unbankable, and another good friend of mine was working on an entrepreneurial strategy with them and there was all these nonprofits in the Sacred Valley working together and it was a lot of like white Westerners coming in and saying, like here's how you can build and here's how you can do different, and I just I had this epiphany, even though I had studied white savior complex, of like, oh, is it me, am I, is this me?
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: Kind of a moment.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: And so I came back to the States and I said I know this is where I need to be.
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: Entrepreneurship and like supporting entrepreneurs is where I need to be, but does it need to look differently?
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: And in part of that process, the other thing that really came to light for me was, I think, capital allocation inefficiencies to be real jargon head about it where I was seeing that a lot of these white Western run organizations who had really great ideas, solid ideas and amazing passion were getting a lot of funding and because they were not within the community and from the community and of the community, I think that there was oftentimes a lot of submissives in terms of how that capital was actually leveraged in those communities.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: And that was another thing that really just like I think, rooted my passion for entrepreneurship in a way or like deep into the roots of my passion for entrepreneurship, because the entrepreneurs in that community had the solutions to their own community's problems, but again, they weren't getting the capital.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: That's how I like it.
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: I started kind of digging into this idea of, like how can we help capital to get to the best ideas, not just the ones that are the easiest to find or the most well written, you know, in terms of a proposal, yeah and it's.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: You know, I think that that's it's messy and it's sticky and it's hard, it's hard to kind of conceptualize at large.
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: But I came back to the States and ended up having the privilege at the time living in California and the privilege of stumbling upon, I think, a job here in Minneapolis, minnesota, that was really about building an ecosystem of social entrepreneurs, and came here and it just kind of catapulted me into this next level realm of saying like, wait a second, who's on stage, who's getting attention?
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: Who's in the media?
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: Why am I not seeing more, you know, women that are on stage and asking about AI, as opposed to just like, what's it like to be a woman in tech?
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: So I started to really dig into and I had like this ongoing little like note in my Google Drive that was like all of these problems are kind of inefficiencies.
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: It's not obvious.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: I'm like an optimizer what are these inefficiencies in the system?
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: And like, what are the things that I see feel like problems?
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: And let me go ask other people do they think they're problems?
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: And then like ask people what they think should be the change.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: And so at the time we had this very like nascent entrepreneurial scene here.
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: It was super siloed, like med tech people are over here and social entrepreneurs are over here, and then like tech entrepreneurs are over here and then like the tech bros are over here.
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: And so I started, just like showing up at all these things and saying, like hey, I noticed you had an entire panel of, like, white men.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: If you need any recommendations, I'd love to help you find some other folks that represent different identities that could be on the panel.
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: Or hey, I saw you're writing a story about this thing.
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: Would you like an introduction?
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: And so, like leveraging the network that I was building to say like, hey, there's more voices we could be including at this table.
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: I think shortly thereafter, philando Castile was murdered here and I think I made some really big mistakes in our community around how I was showing up and how I was supporting the folks around me and like that was a.
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: That was a really pivotal moment, I think, as it relates to, I think, race and ethnicity in entrepreneurship for me, like what is my power and privilege and how was I leveraging that for good versus like kind of being performative about it.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: Again, it was like one of those hard, hard moments.
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: And then, shortly thereafter, I think I had been working on getting more women applying to different.
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: Like Minnesota Cup is one of the largest state run pitch competitions where folks actually get capital.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: On the other side it's run run through the University of Minnesota and you know something like at the time 40% of their applicants were women but only 10% were getting through to the finals right things like that.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: And so I was starting to work really hands on with other folks in town and somebody saw that work and that passion and invited me to jump into a project that was looking at how do we really reduce barriers to growth for women and people of color, and it was the perfect, I think, opportunity for me to bring together my graduate experience, my nonprofit experience, my design experience and then just the deep listening I had been really working on doing and then community building I'm working on doing to then build Minnesota's first inclusive accelerator, and at the time it was just like a project inside of Minnesota Public Radio, honestly, which was kind of an oddball there.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: And then it was like no, we need this, we need to build this better and all of the things that I think I was like a bit of a critic about in the nonprofit sector and in philanthropy.
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: I got to go in and like say, can we do this differently, can we try and shake things up?
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: And how are we thinking about making sure that more folks in Minnesota could build businesses that were great, not just in Minneapolis, st Paul, and not just people of color, not just women but, like all of Minnesotans, could really benefit.
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: So it's a little bit more than you asked for, but I think that those important components of each of those pivotal moments, you know, of not having a job, or wanting to get a job.
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they all really come together and I think that I feel really proud and privileged that I had the opportunity to go try and build something and do things differently, and I think we did.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: Wow, I mean we sit here and we're eating your story up, by the way, totally.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: And I just think the fact that you started this was saying, hey, you feel at home with this community.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm so glad you feel at home, because this is the exact type of people that we want to galvanize together, that want to build something different, that want to lift and amplify voices and get out of the way in a lot of times to be able to do that.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: And so I look back at your story and you use these words and I think they really jumped off the page to me.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: You early found your North Star.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: You early found, like, what you were rooted in and that's, like you know, moving money to different places to women to give more empowerment, to be rooted in entrepreneurship, and I'm just like that's what you're building with Lunar.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: And so I want to give you space to kind of talk about, because this conversation today is about mergers and acquisitions, which sounds so corporate, but we thought this was an important conversation to lift in light of the people gathered around.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: This movement today of we are for good is if we're really got our North Star in the right spot.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: Some of these like ways we go about things have to like fade off and our preconceived ideas have to shave.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: So I want to like give you space to talk about what did it look like for y'all to go into this acquisition with connect up, and Then they'll kind of tee us up to like talk about why and how can we look at this as all the nonprofits listening today?
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think it's such an important question and and admittedly, you know, in my graduate degree Literally nonprofit management Mercer's an acquisition was never talked about.
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: Right, it was not.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: It was not a conversation that folks were having or like how to do it.
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: So, as we were building lunar, there were a lot of underlying kind of like systems, norms or normative behaviors, maybe I'll say, that are intrinsic in the nonprofit sector.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: I'm a if you're familiar with Gretchen Rubin's for tendencies, I'm a questioner.
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: So every time I see something that is like curious or maybe ineffective or inefficient or not optimized, I'll like ping it and be like, oh, why does that exist?
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: Does it?
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: Can it be something different?
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: Right, and so when I was looking at the philanthropic landscape and I had this vision of building a sustainable nonprofit, that, yes, absolutely, we were gonna need to be subsidized in part by philanthropy and that was going to be an important part of our work.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: But was there an opportunity for us to build more earned revenue strategies, to be not so dependent on On our grantors and and to for individuals, for example?
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: Because if you're in this business, you know one of the only constants is that philanthropy is always changing, attention is always changing and at the core of it, you know, we have to do a lot more with a dollar.
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: We got to make it stretch, we got to make it do more.
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: We got to, like, pay ourselves.
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: We got to not burn out.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: We got to, you know, we got to still be at home.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: We got to be at all the events.
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: We got to do all the things and and it's a super challenge.
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: So when we were building, it was like how do we think about our long-term sustainability?
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: How do we think about the wellness of our staff?
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: How do we think about the wellness of our entrepreneurs?
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: Because we were trying to teach these entrepreneurs how to Do good and to be well and to work on their you know financial mindsets and to build confidence and all these things.
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: But, like Our, our sector wasn't really built to support us to do that either.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: I started looking at you know if, if we're going to be able to be responsive in this economy and and it was changing again quite rapidly, right, like covid had a huge impact on all of us.
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: Um, we're in Minneapolis, minnesota.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: This is literally the epicenter of america's social and racial awakening and, quite frankly, we benefited from that.
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: Like when, when, all of a sudden, all of the media companies were going like, oh my gosh, we don't know any black entrepreneurs, or the corporations were saying, oh my gosh, we had no idea what it was like for black and brown entrepreneurs or indigenous entrepreneurs in our community, like can you help us connect to them or how do we help them, or what you know all of those things.
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: They came to us and and we really, like benefited both, you know, service-wise and financially and whatnot.
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: And we knew that was a moment.
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: So I started kind of looking at like, okay, what are the options here for us?
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: At the same time, again, capital allocation has only been my passion.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: I had been executing this multi-year research study on how do we better allocate capital to entrepreneurs and specifically historically underinvested entrepreneurs, and was in process of launching a venture fund that was going to do just that.
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: You know, in my research I had found that, looking at like where I wanted it to be and to have true impact and you know I love a Good theory of change and so to be able to actually execute on that, I needed to be outside of the nonprofit and I needed to kind of Be doing some of the same work that we had been doing inside of the nonprofit sector, which is like educating folks on on entrepreneurship and soft skills and and Educating philanthropy on kind of the wicked problem.
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: That is like building a business at large inside of a greater context.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: And so that meant that I needed to, if I wanted to go and do this capital allocation work, which I'm very passionate about as well, we needed to be thinking about the future of the organization, not just, you know, under my leadership at present, which at the time this was like a year before I was planning to exit Um, but in the next three years and the next 10 years.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: Right, I had this vision for what was going to happen in the next 10 years.
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: But as I looked at, you know, all of the strategic planning that we had done the three years before, that we'd met all of our goals Um that we had for those first three years as like a baby nonprofit.
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: But I was having a hard time seeing how we were going to get to that 10 year strategy without being in community and in concert with somebody else or or under like really radically different leadership.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: Um, again, I knew, I knew I wasn't going to be the the long-term leader in this, but there was something the puzzle pieces were not connecting right.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: So, um, I embarked on kind of this big I think for lack of a better term research project, and the way that I problem solve is by going and talking to everyone.
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: I want to know what problems they face, what advice they have, and then I distill that down for, like, what works for for me in this scenario.
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: Um, and that was really kind of got us to the point of like, oh, an acquisition is an option which, in hindsight, you know, I was like, oh, that makes a ton of sense.
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: Then we could just do this work in concert with somebody else and be additive to someone else's mission.
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: Because the reality is, is so many nonprofits, like we get started?
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: I got, I started our nonprofit because the other folks in town we're not doing the things that I thought were necessary in order to support entrepreneurs in the way that I wanted to support them, in the way that I was hearing.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: They wanted to be supported.
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: It's not that those organizations weren't good, but we were, we they were, they were doing this work, you know, over here on one side, and, and I wanted to do this work over here on the other side.
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: But ultimately I knew eventually we would have to come together In terms of of whether that was shared alignment or mission or something else.
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: So we started out as Minnesota's first inclusive accelerator.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: We are no longer alone in that and that's great.
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: When, when the idea of of saying like, oh well, who, who else in the community is aligned, maybe has things that we don't, maybe we have things that they don't, um, and and that kind of like Really catapulted this bigger year-long work of that was always one bucket.
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: I should say talent was always another bucket that we were constantly exploring right Of like is it a replacement, is it a transition process?
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: And that's a whole other story.
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: In terms of succession planning that I had, in my head, been doing for a while and that did not, you know, the acquisition was the better strategy for us.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: Okay, danielle, you're a unicorn, you truly are.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: You don't see walls.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: And those are our favorite kind of people, because I think that so many of us who've been in nonprofit feel that there is one playbook and you get the playbook and it's super dusty because it hasn't evolved in a really long time and we're playing by one set of rules.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: And the reality is that this work is so improved when it's reimagined and when it evolves and when it includes more voices and when it includes humility and when it includes thinking like a business and when it includes expanding the table, and these have all been hallmarks of everything that I hear that you've done in your career.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: And, john, I'm going to take you back.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: This is like we're in the episode 480s.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: Do you remember episode 11, when?
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: we talked to feeding.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: Tampa Bay.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: Have you been thinking?
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: about this one.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: I was thinking about it.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Yes, I mean, I want to tell everyone out there who's thinking this is such a novel idea.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: No, people are doing this and they're benefiting.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: We had feeding Tampa Bay on who's talking about?
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: Just this incredible campaign that they moved during COVID, and moving at that speed helped them reimagine their business entirely and they ended up merging with Trinity Cafe, which was like a physical structure where people could go and get free Wi-Fi and not only eat but they could also look for a job.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: And all of a sudden, these two missions that had a very similar alignment in their business strategy also figured out that they had alignment in their values and the things that they held very, very dear.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: And I see you standing up very boldly, danielle, in saying this and opening your table and giving up your seat, and I just think it's beautiful what you've built, and I just want everyone to get a mindset of openness and abundance around how we can make this bigger.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Because I got to tell you, john, we never talked about mergers and acquisitions.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: I don't think I ever heard that one time in my career when I was in nonprofit right.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: No, and I think I mean we should say like in your bio you talked about it being your competitor, in quotation marks, because I think there's also just this perspective of yeah, it's not really competitors either.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: You know, I think in the space.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: So moving beyond that, like just the mindset's different than I think a lot of people have.
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: Well, and I think that's like competitor based on what stakeholder is what's really important, right?
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: Like Elaine Elaine, who's the founder and CEO of ConnectUp.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: She and I have known each other for years and I don't believe in replicating things that already exist.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Someone else is doing it great.
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: Let them have that swim lane and that core competency Like what is maybe an edge.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: That is slightly different.
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: So we have always had very explicit conversations of who we serve and how we serve them and what that variation looks like.
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: But that's nuanced and that's really only felt if you're the entrepreneur who has been through one or both of our programs and teaching philanthropic leaders about that nuance and why that nuance needs to exist together.
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: That was the hard part and that's where we were oftentimes like co-op petition.
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: Maybe it is more of like the in quotes term that we should probably use, because we were going after a lot of the same grants and we were going after some of the same donors and I think that being able to be really explicit it's one of the other things Elaine and I both have, I think, a gift for being very direct and saying like here's my enlightened self-interest, like what is yours, where does that fit, where does that not?
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: And we built a relationship on that.
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: So, just putting everything on the table, like that, and so that's where, like I had a lot more power and privilege, as, like a white woman being able to step into a room and saying like, hey, here's the things that philanthropy needs to be thinking about and what donors need to be thinking about from my perspective, and like leveraging my power and privilege in a way to invite other people into the work or invite more privileged and powerful people into the work in a meaningful way, was an important part of that and a lot of.
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: I think what I brought to the table is I would walk into a philanthropic meeting and say, like our core differentiator and our core product that we bring to entrepreneurs is our people.
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: So I'm going to pay our people really well, so I need you to increase your operating dollars for us.
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: I want this to all be operating dollars.
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: And I would just walk in and I would say those things and be like, oh, only a programmatic dollars would be great.
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: My program is people fund the people and not everybody gets to say that.
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: Elaine and I always aligned on that and I had a lot of success doing that I raised over $2 million in three years for our projects and I created in partnership with our entrepreneurs and with some other stellar, stellar humans kind of.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: At the staff level and contract level.
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: We created a really replicable and proprietary process that works.
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: Our entrepreneurs that we supported have created more than $250 million in economic impact for Minnesota.
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: They've created like 614 direct jobs and these are like what historically, I think women and people of color kind of have historically been bucketed in is like charity cases or an economic development agencies or like only you can only get like small, tiny business loans because you can only be small and tiny or whatever else like the jargon pejorative wording is going to be at the time, and I think that I spent three years really trying to tell everyone like it's just wrong, it's wrong and you've reimagined it, which is just so beautiful, and I think you just took the playbook.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: you threw it away.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: You created a new playbook.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: You spoke honestly and I think about a listener listening right now and who's really trying to embrace this topic.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: What is that typical process that nonprofit organizations can follow when they're considering a merger and acquisition?
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: research indicates that nonprofit mergers can really contribute to a more stable nonprofit environment.
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: So the reality is is I think we're going to see a lot more philanthropic institutions kind of pushing for this a little bit in some ways.
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: So what we did I mentioned earlier that you know I go and I socialize all my problems.
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: That's how I get them solved.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: Smart yeah.
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: Well, and I think anybody in the philanthropic space, you know, when you need money, ask for advice, and it's a very effective strategy.
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: And so a lot of people had a lot of input into this process, which was really, really important to our success and important to our financial success in making this actually, I think, viable.
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: So I went out and asked everybody, like, what have you seen in terms of mergers and expositions?
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: What have you seen in terms of succession planning?
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: What have you seen in terms of, like, how to support a staff through the acquisition?
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: Like, what do I need to do to really get ready to make a good decision?
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: So one of the biggest helpers I had was Kate Barr, who, here in Minnesota, she's the executive director of Propel for nonprofits and she actually supported an amazing merger between MAP for nonprofits and the Nonprofit Assistance Fund.
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: They actually did a very public facing merger several years ago in like six months, which is more or less what we did as well for our acquisition.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: So she was like here are the steps that you need to take.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: You need to do like a broader stakeholder analysis, you know, from the donor perspective, from the beneficiary perspective, from the foundation perspective, like, where do you align and where do you not align?
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: Where is their overlap, where is their not overlap with the different entities?
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: At that point I had identified, you know, ideal entities, but we hadn't pitched anyone on this yet and for the record, I did pitch this.
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: This was like me actively saying I want this to happen.
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: We did a core competency analysis, like what are we really good at and what are we really bad at, and then like what are our assets?
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: And when I say assets I mean, you know, the humans, I mean the computers and the desks and kind of more importantly, like the intellectual property.
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, what are the reports, what are the learnings, what's the research, what you know, the whole.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: We have a very robust grant system, you know, in terms of what we brought to the table.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: So what are all those assets?
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: And then what of those assets can someone else take and use versus what really is only going to apply to us?
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: And then I think, like doing the same analysis with our prospects to the best of my ability, so going out and literally having coffees and asking, you know, before saying like I want to do a merger, like asking these other leaders and saying, like, what's your vision For 10 years from now?
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: What do you want to achieve?
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: And then really looking at like, would our program add value to that?
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: And if not, we wouldn't be mutually aligned.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: You know, our incentives would not be mutually aligned.
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: So, really, looking at like, are we mutually aligned in terms of not exactly the exact vision, but in terms of how we can make each other better.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: And quite a few people self selected out right away because their vision was, you know, and what they needed in order to be able to get to their vision, we were not going to be the right contributors to that, which is great.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: And that's great information to have.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: Like, if we're not a good fit, let's move on.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: Let's find somebody who's a better fit for you and we need to move on.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: I think that's healthy.
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I tell our entrepreneurs this all the time like your job is an entrepreneur and I think quite frankly, in some ways is if you're a development person or an executive director like your job is to collect nose and then use those nose as learning for how to get to yes, and every no is a step closer to a yes.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: Heck to the S.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: One of our values is play the long game too, and so I just think, like going in and talking about somebody's 10 year vision, I always hear like the quote, like you can never accomplish as much as you can, as you think you can in a year, but you can do so much more in 10 years than you'd ever dream possible.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: And I think those kind of conversations get into like that space, because this is not to just help with a short term budget thing, this is not to just help us get through the next year.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: It's like what, literally how can we make systemic change by locking arms and over a longer horizon?
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: This is not just a quick fix.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: This is a want to do this together and what will be so much better as a result, which does get us out of scarcity and into like abundance and a better place to activate and dream from.
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think you know it's so funny because when I hear the word abundance, I can't tell you how many times I have taught on abundance mindset and how many times I have lectured on abundance mindset.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: But like I'm not going to lie, like that was a really hard thing for me to think about in the context of this.
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the mountain seems so big, you know yeah, and, like not most of most of the entrepreneurs that I work with do not have the privilege of an abundance mindset and most nonprofits, quite frankly, don't have the privilege of inherently just having.
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: You have to, like, work so hard to build that mindset.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: I think to your point of not not being walled in in terms of how we do things.
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: I'm the type of person like I cannot follow a recipe.
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: You give me a recipe I'm like oh, here's the ingredient.
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: You know like what feels good or like what tasted good last time?
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: Like what do you write?
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: So I think, like, just from a personality perspective, that's an important part of being able to like see beyond the walls and and really saying, like what rules are around because they need to be?
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: Whether that, you know and I'm not for breaking a lot and it means, but like what?
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: Like normative rules are around because they need to be, in which ones aren't?
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: And I think to that point, like there's a lot of normative rules around abundance mindset in the nonprofit sector, or the lack of abundance mindset that we had to really like hacker on brains around of how do we get over that?
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: You know, another, I think, way that it kind of manifested is I'm the type of person like I set a really realistic budget and then, like I'm always trying to be under budget, like you want to see someone who is frugal, like I will set a very realistic budget, here's what we actually need and then, every time that there's a moment to like cut a dollar, like I will, because the fear of not having several months of runway to pay my staff, it's real, it's.
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: It's that is like triggering.
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: As someone who, like you know, I was on a fixed income for the majority of my 20s.
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: So I think, like as a nonprofit leader, that translated to like sure, I want to like, I want to like step in, I'm going to like fake it till I become it from an abundance mindset perspective, but like live in the reality of where we were and I think that was really important as as a transferable skill for the merger to.
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: It's like let's live in the abundance mindset of where you want to be in 10 years and then like what are the things that are actually going to work between us?
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: And like hopefully you can get there.
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: And what's really important for me and one of the things that was really important for me is, you know, I joke all the time you mentioned you mentioned my, my kids at the top.
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: Like I joke all the time that I had four under four at one point.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: So lunar was my first baby.
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, oh, oh, geez.
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: I launched the nonprofit.
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: I had my first daughter.
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: I launched a venture fund.
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: I had my son, so, so I was running two companies.
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: I had two kids at home.
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: I was like you know, in this, in this position of how do I, how do I be the mom?
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: You know, my mom was such a good mom, how do I be the mom that I had?
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: But, like she was a say it all mom, I'm working two jobs, and so I think that you know the context of all of those things, like we really tried to like the idealistic values like abundance, mindset, like work life balance.
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: Like you know, meeting people where they're at that was another thing that really aligned in terms of our businesses and how connect up, really thought about their staff.
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: So it was just yet another example of we were like, ok, we're going to do our best at bringing these two entities together.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: The most important thing at the core is the entrepreneurs.
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: It's like, how are we supporting these entrepreneurs?
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: And so every time we hit a hurdle in looking at like, ok, what's the what's the financial systems are like, what are the assets that we want to transfer or not transfer?
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: Or like, how do we literally do a transfer at all.
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: I had had the privilege of spinning our nonprofit out of another entity.
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: It was it was a project to start and then I founded it as a nonprofit.
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: So I got to kind of see that in reverse and like leverage those experiences you know in the acquisition.
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: But simple things for for nonprofit leaders who are always doing all the work, like how do you transfer a Google workspace?
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: How do you like?
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: We had, you know, an e-trade account that was tied to REIN and my social security members so that we could get securities donations Like does that transfer or not?
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: Or our 401k I learned some dev lessons about 401ks and they do not transfer very easily and like what that looks like.
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: And so I think a big part of our process for the merger was every single thing that we did.
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: I literally just had like an Excel sheet of like here's our tech stack, and it was not organized.
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: It sounds, you know, hindsight, you can like organize your thoughts better in hindsight.
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: So, like in the process it was absolutely messy and imperfect.
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: But because I think I included a lot of people in the process, I got to see where there were holes and gaps or opportunities to evolve, and I also like one of one of our big soft skills that we teach entrepreneurs is how to ask for help, and so I tried to remember that yeah yeah, it is not a skill set.
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: I think, especially for women or for folks who have just been required to like be tough or resilient in their lives, that were like necessarily taught I joke all the time it's like a muscle.
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: You have to exercise it and sometimes you're going to ask for help in a bad way and it's like, well, that was a bad leg day, but like that, and so I asked for help a lot.
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: You know, I had some friends who were like ex, like whizzes at Excel, and I was like, hey, I have this really ugly, you know list of things Like how would you organize this, you know, and then got to spend time doing that.
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: So I think it really it was like being able to put that whole list together and then figure out how do we organize it into a way that's an actionable plan.
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: Was was really helpful.
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: So that you know, I know, I know about grant reports, I still have to do for that entity that are due next month.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, by the way, by their.
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, I know what those things are because we like documented them all and we were able to therefore more effectively delegate, and that seems like basic from a leadership perspective, but there's just so many moving parts.
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: Sometimes it's important to be reminded like oh, we can simplify this.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: I mean we agree there's always too many moving parts let's be clear in the nonprofit space.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: But you've laid groundwork for this question that keeps bubbling up my head, because we talk about the power of a strategic plan, a refined, short strategic plan that people can be on the same page with Actionable way to actually use.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Yes, Absolutely so.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: We talk about that on the show, but I think, especially at this time of year, if you're thinking and looking at doing this, doing a merge or doing an acquisition, something like this, how do you effectively strategically plan and make sure that this is going to move forward?
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: At the same time, you're pursuing and exploring this thing that could change everything for you at the same time, how do you balance that tension and how should organizations plan effectively in light of that?
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: It's a really tough question, especially when we all know that nonprofits are at this nexus of a really rapidly changing philanthropic sector.
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: So you have to be responsive to that.
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: Those are your dollars, those are your funders.
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: You've got to be responsive there.
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: And then the experience of your beneficiaries oftentimes is also equally changing.
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: And then you have all the humans that are inside and the processes that are inside of your own nexus and how those are shifting and changing.
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: And someone's dad is sick, life keeps lifeing for nonprofit leaders and you have to be responsive.
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: And so I've always used the strategic plan as the source of truth.
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: Yes, you need to be able to have it be responsive in ways to either beneficiaries or the funders, but in the chaos, you need to be able to have everybody back on the same page about what's our source of truth and keeping people focused.
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: When it gets too crazy or when you feel like you're being pulled in all the different directions, looking back and saying, okay, what is our priority?
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: So I think strategic planning is critical.
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: I also think it can get over-engineered really easily for nonprofit leaders Like can you come back to like three strategic priorities, which is really hard.
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: We're all trying to do all the things right.
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: I hate that.
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: I hate it.
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: Like every part of my body is like yeah, yeah, yeah, those are three priorities, but we also have these other 15.
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: I know that, but if we have at least three, that everyone is rooted on and everyone's centered on, and we have what our execution is underneath that, I think that was one of the most effective things that we did in our strategic planning, because when then it came time to say, okay, we need to figure out, like what is the future of this organization?
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: Sustainability, like merger, acquisition, everything else we were rooted in that unified strategic vision of where we were going.
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: The board, you know, had literally like approved it with me, right, and had co-written it with me.
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: In some ways, our staff was involved in it, our founders were involved in it.
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: Like everybody was at the core of what we were trying to do and where we were trying to go, and we knew what we were best at.
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: I think knowing what we were best at made it so that I could really like hang our lantern on that whenever conversation got challenging or something.
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: Or a founder would say you know we're thinking about, like this strategic shift.
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: I'm like great, you can do that.
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: Here's where we're going to be.
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: If you want to support us and you want to support our entrepreneurs, this is where we're going and it's a really important negotiating tool, I think as well.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: I love it so much.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it goes back to what you were saying about being confident and finding your voice, and I cannot put enough bold underlines under this concept that you have been promoting about soft skills, and it's just not anything that has been wired into our professional development, into habits, into how we grow.
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: And yet we know, because we're all centered on building meaningful, meaningful relationships, that it's the nexus, it's the connective tissue that holds everything together, and so I think that's such a great challenge for everybody out there.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: Like what do you feel uniquely primed to know exactly what?
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: Can you confidently walk in and say this is who we are and this is what we need?
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: Because you know what Our programs, our beneficiaries, our people, they are worth fighting for.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: That is why we get up.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: It is why we're not paid.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, because we're here for something else I'm not saying I agree with it and we are here to try to fight systems and institutions that keep us in poverty, because imagine what could be unlocked if we started pouring into those soft skills, if we were paid a living wage, if we had conversations at this level.
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: The equity and the power just gets completely upended in the best way.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: So thank you for all of that, and you've listened to the show enough to know we got to bring the humanity into this and we want to know your heart and your humanity.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: Take us back to a moment in philanthropy that has stayed with you, and how you define that is up to you.
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: It doesn't have to be a gift.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: It could be an act.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: Think about something in your life that really profoundly stayed with you, and we'd love to hear that story.
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: I will tell an old story.
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: So when I went down to Peru, I was working with an organization called the Indian Alliance for Sustainable Development and at the time there were millions and millions of dollars getting poured into Peru specifically addressing malnutrition and looking at interventions that were meant to, I think, address malnutrition for specifically indigenous populations.
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: And what I witnessed and what I saw was the organization I was working with, the Indian Alliance.
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: They were in the community.
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: They'd been living there for years already, part-time now.
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: Now they're full-time down there.
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: They had been building connection and community with the mayor and with the women's groups and working with the men's groups and volunteering in the schools.
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: And there was great data and science that demonstrated if you put greenhouses in communities, you can address malnutrition and malnutrition in those areas because they really like the climates.
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: It's tough to grow veggies at 15,000 feet and in that cold right You've got to have a greenhouse to be able to do it.
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: So they were mostly subsistent on potatoes.
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: So they took a community-centered approach and I got to see what that looked like in action.
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: So they were in the community and they said what do you all want or what do you all need or what are your barriers to being able to use a tomato.
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: Do you know what a tomato is?
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: Do you know what lettuce is?
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: How would you use it?
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: How does this fit in with your indigenous context and culture and how does it not?
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: And how can we use what works for you in order to build better and faster?
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: So at the time, there were 35 greenhouses that went up around Peru.
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: At the same time, millions and millions of dollars to put these greenhouses together.
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: This organization had almost zero dollars.
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: They were not one of the recipients and they went to the mayor and they said hey, we have an idea.
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: We've talked to the school and we've talked to some of these other folks and we think that putting the greenhouse at the school, integrating it from an educational perspective with the children, having them harvest and learn about the different things and take that food home at the end of the day, in addition to getting meals prepared for them at lunchtime, because you're already preparing meals for them, is going to be really impactful.
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: And the mayor said great, that's fantastic, good luck with that.
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: And they were like oh no, we're not paying for this, you are.
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: And he said what I'm not paying for, that You're international development You're supposed to pay for that.
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: And they were like we need you to own this.
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: We're going to do it with you, but we need you to own this.
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: And I think the impacts of that, the domino effect that that had, is the community members owned the work and the community members owned the process, and we worked with them on asking for help with us on what that looked like, and I think that we did a equivalent of like a chef's competition, you know where we created.
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: Most of the women that we were working with were illiterate or only spoke Katchua, and so we created these cookbooks that were just drawing, so like, here's the tomato and you cut it like this and you put it, you know, in the front right.
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: So we responded to what they said.
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: They were like oh, I can't read, I don't know how to follow recipe.
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: Like, well, if we had a book that was pictures, would you do that?
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're like.
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: Well, do you want to color the book?
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: Like, so they had ownership in every single piece of it.
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: And so I got to like literally see what it meant to provide community with solutions but not drive the solutions, and what the impact of that was, of those 35 greenhouses.
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: You wanna know how many are left?
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: There's, there's the only ones left.
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: 10 years later, they're the only ones left.
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: And now they're taking that same work.
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: They've got other integrated farms.
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: They've got coffee collaboratives that they're working with.
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: They've really taken this idea of, like community-based development to the next level and they've been really successful.
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: And you know what?
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: Usaid still isn't funding them.
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: You know major donors around the country still aren't funding them.
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: But like, at the same time, I think like that, the other, the other cycle they broke for that mayor and for some of those community members with was this cycle of, like, the lack of self-sufficiency, because people have been coming in for years and telling me you don't know how to do this, we're gonna fund this and we're gonna do this.
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: So they thought they didn't know how to do that.
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: And that's what we need to do with all of our beneficiaries is really testing, like, what do you actually not know how to do?
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: Versus what would it be?
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: Just, people have been telling you you don't know how to do right, like I tell entrepreneurs all the time yes, you need to learn how to ask, yes, you need to ask for advice and to get help, and your network is everything and the reality is is all the tough decisions you have to make.
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: Like the wisdom's in your body.
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: The wisdom is there, and the same is true for the nonprofit leaders.
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: The wisdom was in my body that this acquisition was the right strategy for us and, most importantly, for our entrepreneurs.
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: I didn't know that, like that's, we have to really like trust ourselves and trust the folks that that we quote unquote say like, think, need help, and if they don't need our help, like maybe we shouldn't exist.
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: And I think that's the other thing that that I learned in.
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: That is, every year that organization would ask themselves, like, do we need to be around?
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: And I don't think that that gets asked enough.
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: That's like a big juicy story.
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: That like was super, super pivotal to me, that I reflect back on all the time in my decision making and in my like.
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: You know the question of like, are we being performative or are we being supportive?
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: Is this value add or is it?
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: Am I still just responding to what the funders want?
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: And sometimes you respond to what the funders want because that's what you gotta do to survive for that day, but can you get back against?
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: That's the strategic planning.
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: To go back to that Like can you get back to that, that core of what you're doing and who you're helping and how you're helping them and how you are with them, like making sure it's not compromising for always?
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: I think that's, that's another soft skill, and I think we also have to have grace with that, because you can't get that right all the time.
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: Daniel Steger, I like you so much.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: I really do.
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: I'm so glad you're in the world.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: I like you all.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: Thank you, that's very generous, I agree.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: I mean this.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: I think the principles extracted from that story are like everything, and it's something that we don't see every day, but when we see it, it's like that is the beacon.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: That's how this work has to be done.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: That does center community in a way that's it's just not as clear.
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: You know it's.
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: It's a more messy, it's more, it's harder to pull off but, it's like it's the right, dignified way to do it, and so thank you for for sharing that, and that's one that's going to stick with me too today so we ask all of our guests for a one good thing.
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: How do you distill you know, your experiences, or maybe just what you're feeling today that you'd share with the community can be a habit, a piece of advice, a mantra what's your one good thing?
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: I think something that I'm known for if it's not clear already is that while I believe in the statement, like I am enough, I always believe is there a better way?
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: And so I think the willingness to say how we've been doing things doesn't mean it's how we need to keep doing things, whether that's myself and my parenting, or how I show up with my husband, you know, or how I operate as a now a VC or formerly a nonprofit leader.
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: Like is there a different way?
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: And I don't want to be over qualitative about like it always has to be for sure better, but like I'm doing something regularly.
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: Could it be different?
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: And I think that that constant questioning has helped me to improve impact, operations, efficiencies, I think leadership, throughout my, I think, both personal and professional career.
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: But I think that that has been really at the core of how I've been able to show up as my best self every day, even if best looks different every day.
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: And it feels so healthy to have that moment of discomfort, because it says we're checking ourselves every single day and that it's not just about us and my beliefs and my lived experience, because the problems are deeper than me.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: They're problem.
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: They're deeper than what I can see, and so I like that, just as a habit, to kind of extend everybody, and so I know people are gonna wanna connect with you.
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: Give us the details about the best place to find you on socials.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: Where can they connect with lunar startups?
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: Just give us all the goods?
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely.
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: So.
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: I am probably most active on LinkedIn.
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: Danielle J Steer is my handle there.
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: You can find lunar startups on LinkedIn or lunarstartupsorg and maybe more appropriately now, as a program of ConnectUp Institute, so it's connectupmncom.
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: Lunar startups does have an excellent Instagram that has done us a great job at showcasing our founders, which are the great joy of my life is the founders that we work with, so I highly recommend going and seeing all of the fantastic, mission-driven folks that are building great companies in our community and beyond.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: Amazing.
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: I imagine you're surrounded by just the most incredible people.
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: This conversation has completely filled our hearts.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: We'll link all this up in the show notes.
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: So glad to know you in this world and the amplify that work that you're doing.
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: Oh, thank you.
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: I appreciate you both.
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much for you and the work they're doing in your community.
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: I'm so grateful to be a part of it.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for being here.
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: Friends, and you probably hear it in our voices, but we love connecting you with the most innovative people to help you achieve more for your mission than ever before.
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: We'd love for you to come join our good community.
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: It's free and you can think of it as the after party to each podcast episode.
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: Sign up today at weareforgoodcom.
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: Backslash hello.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: And one more thing if you love what you heard today, would you mind leaving us a podcast rating interview?
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: It means the world to us and your support helps more people find this community.
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much, friends.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: Can't wait to our next conversation.