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From Passion to Full-Time Impact in Nonprofit Work with Laura Bonnell | Nonprofit 411 Podcast · Nonprofit411 Podcast

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Hello and welcome to Nonprofit411, where we dive into resources and strategies that help nonprofits not just survive, but truly thrive.
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Welcome to today's episode of Nonprofit 411, where we explore resources and strategies to help nonprofit organizations thrive.
I'm your host, Sarah Barton.
And today I am joined by Laura Bonnell, who is the CEO of the Bonnell Foundation.
How are you today? Good.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
Yes.
I'm very excited to have you on.
So before we get started into our conversation, can you answer the fun question that I like to ask everyone, which is what is your favorite hobby? I have a lot of hobbies, but I, my favorite one that kind of encompasses everything else I love is taking photographs.
And that's either with a still camera, a digital camera, or my cell phone.
I love seeing.
know, a beautiful bright leaf or, you know, a cute dog or just when my kids were playing sports and things like that.
So I love that.
And then of course you have to frame them even though I think I have 15, 000 photos on my phone.
So, yeah.
So I love that.
I actually.
I have done photography as part, as a hobby.
I did digital scrapbooking for probably eight solid years where, you know, you're turning those into scrapbooks and then I would print them up.
And so I really enjoyed that.
So that's a great, it's a great hobby.
And my husband has really, he's embraced, and that's definitely his hobby is, you know, taking pictures and you're right, cell phones are amazing.
Our cell phones are just as good as our 3, 000 camera.
A lot of times.
And they're always with you.
So every time he wants to invest in a new lens or something, I'm like, Oh, well, you really take the majority of the pictures on your cell phone.
Right.
So true.
Yeah.
So great.
Well, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and about your work at the Bonnell foundation? Absolutely.
So I have two daughters, Molly and Emily, who have cystic fibrosis.
And I was a news reporter in Detroit for 25 years.
And after my daughters were born with cystic fibrosis, I thought I need to start a foundation to help other families in Michigan and across the country with financial assistance related to having a rare disease.
And I didn't do it for a while because, you know, you're raising kids and you're in the midst of a disease and things are very busy and I have a full time job and all of that.
And then I started in 2010.
In 2019, just before the pandemic, I decided to do my foundation full time.
The timing couldn't have been better because, uh, being a news reporter in the midst of a pandemic sound, didn't sound like any fun to me, but it transitioned at the right time.
And now I do the foundation full time and could not be happier.
It is so fascinating to, as you say that, you know, so many of my guests, like that was kind of the timing, you know, and it was before the pandemic, it wasn't triggered by the pandemic.
It was like right before the pandemic, they made the big change and then the pandemic happened and they've been able to kind of, you know, explore and expand in that, in this new world.
This new realm that we live in.
So very exciting.
So, so you started the foundation in 2019 or you just went full time on the foundation? I started the foundation in 2010 and then went full time in 2019.
Yeah.
So did it have other full time employees from 2010? Like on, like how big was it? When did it start to really grow when you took, when you, it was always growing and it was always volunteers.
Myself, everyone volunteered and we did a lot of fundraising to get money out so we could give financial assistance to people.
I think that once I was able to devote full time, it grew a lot more.
We just had our largest fundraiser, uh, about a month ago.
So, I think that helped being able to do it full time, but it's always been growing because, you know, it's just always been a love of mine.
So, yes, that is actually, I love working with nonprofits because they are passion driven causes.
And they always meet the need of someone who couldn't meet that need otherwise, you know, whether human or animals, like, you know, or the environment, like that need would not be met if somebody wasn't really passionate about it.
So that's what, that's one of my loves about the nonprofit sector just in general.
So, and I love that yours is centered around something that you know, you have a lot of experience with because you have these two wonderful daughters that, you know, have experienced cystic fibrosis.
So, tell me about your biggest fundraiser that you just had.
It was great.
You know, it's always hard to get people to RSVP and everybody procrastinates and I completely understand that.
So it's a lot of hounding people.
Two weeks before the event, I thought, Oh my gosh, we're, we're only going to have 70 people.
And I'm just, I, we have a text system so I can text people.
Hey, don't forget, you know, sign up and people were so generous.
Even people that couldn't come would buy tickets.
And and then the day of we had 125 people.
So, so that was lovely.
And.
The atmosphere was so full of energy.
It was a Latin theme.
We had speakers speaking English and Spanish.
It was just beautiful.
I actually, you know, on my wedding day, I remember before I got married, people saying, don't forget to enjoy it.
Like really take it in.
And I have to say, I felt that way during my event, I actually stopped and I looked at everyone, this room full of support and wonderful humans.
And I thought, this is, this is everything I could leave the room now.
Like there's so much joy and hope and giving generosity, friends and family in this room.
And it all happened.
You know, it's so stressful up to that point, but it all happened.
So it was wonderful.
I was so glad that you said that, that you said you took a moment and you took it all in, you know, for a lot of people in the nonprofit sector, you're grinding, right? It's, it's a lot of grinding, but.
If you don't pause and take in those moments, it's so easy to forget that it all matters, right? It all mattered up to that point.
It all mattered.
And it's going to matter beyond where you are right now, because because you voiced this thing into the universe and the energy is growing around it.
And so all of those people that came now we'll speak about it and it goes out.
And so, So I'm really glad that you said that.
So you start, you know, I work with a lot of small to medium non profits, and you've really worked from the ground up.
What do you, what would you say are some of the biggest things you've learned along the way that, like, if you were, if someone else was starting and you wanted to give them first time advice, that you'd be like, here, you need to know this.
Well, and people want advice all the time, right? You know it so well.
So when people ask me, I always want to hear first what they're thinking.
And it's very telling people who, well, I just, I really need to make this salary and I really need to.
And when I hear that is the first thing someone's thinking about.
You just need to back that back it up and think, why are you doing it? Like the salary is wonderful and necessary, but.
You have to think about what you're doing.
It is.
So my advice is perseverance.
I work on funding for my, it's usually in September, but it was in October this year.
I start days after that event ends for the next year.
It took me a year to get a commitment for funding and sponsorship.
From one sponsor, but I called him, emailed him, sent him letters for a year.
Don't forget.
And it was 1, 500.
It wasn't like it was a ton of money, but that's 1, 500.
I still wanted.
And.
I would say it's perseverance and it's relationships, of course, like you can't just ask people for donations.
You want them involved.
You want them to be at your event and experience it and meet other people.
So I think it's perseverance.
It's really building relationships because and connecting people at my event this year.
I had pre med students, I had doctors, scientists, pharma, friends and family, basically, is who I had, and people, parents who had children with cystic fibrosis.
So, I made sure that the pre med students at the table met the doctors, and they There was mentoring going on and connection and I saw them all on their phones exchanging information and my heart was so full Yeah.
And they're always gonna remember they were at my event doing this exchange and how they met.
So I think it's continuing to build relationships and help connect people and being this community resource, it's really important and not, you know, you feel so good making a connection for someone else.
and growing your community.
And it's always emotionally benefited me more.
And I think everyone knows that when you give to someone else or you help someone else, you always are the person who gets the most out of helping someone.
Cause you feel good about it.
You know, if you're yelling at somebody or arguing, you always feel safe.
sick after you always feel terrible after I would, I would hope so anyway, you know, so I guess that's my best advice is to make really good contacts, be persistent.
And and, and, and even when people couldn't sponsor this year, certain companies had issues.
I still support them.
How can I help you? What can I do for you? Uh, I still want you to come to my event.
Please be my guest.
Like it's important to let them know they're still valued.
I mean, they must feel terrible if a company can't donate or if this is just a year they can't attend.
You know, sometimes a family member's sick, or maybe they're worried about losing their job at this company, like all kinds of things go on.
So it's just really important to treat people like humans.
Yes, yes, I agree with that so much.
And I think that generosity, you know, sometimes our nonprofits get caught in a trap, not of their own making, Because of a misunderstanding of what nonprofit work is all about, because it really is about the heart, but it is a business too.
Absolutely.
However, that generosity, helping people perpetuate generosity is a gift you can always give.
And I think that as fundraisers.
We can, you know, we can be proud of that gift that we give other people that, that gift to be generous, you know, whether it's to us or to some other organization, but being generate generous back to them, because when we're generous to others, it just is a ripple that keeps on going.
Right.
And so I think that that's one of the beauties of being in nonprofit work and being in fundraising is you get to see that ripple.
On a regular basis, but what you're talking about and being that generous nonprofit too, and saying, Hey, you're really valuable.
And I want to be able to continue to help you, even though at this point, you know, it's, it's me helping you.
Right.
It, that, that, that matters.
Right.
Right.
It does matter.
And I just, I think then it literally pays off for you.
We, you know, like I said, we started in 2010 up until a couple of years ago, no one was getting paid.
Now I'm the full time employee.
I have six employees.
six or seven other part time employees, which is wonderful.
And honestly, sometimes I sit here in my office and I'm same thing I did at the event.
I think I am employing, I think it's seven people.
I'm employing seven people, you know, so, It's very, it's wonderful.
Wow.
So that's a lot of growth that you've had since you started in 2019 full time, like to have seven employees now, that's really, really exciting.
Do you recall like what the catalyst was for that moment of growth? Because I, I interact with a lot of nonprofits who are Early in their journey, and I always tell them that you need to capacity build so that you can have your full time employee, you need to really work towards that right that one full time employee, your executive director, whatever, you know, whatever that position is.
But then, how do you know it's time to go to the next level and and start bringing in other people.
There were a couple things for us.
So we have a CPA, a treasurer, a bookkeeper, all that stuff that you should have.
And then we went to a financial strategist because I wanted to know where every single penny was.
We knew where everything was, but.
With a financial strategist person, we were able to plan where do we want it to go and where how do we want to grow? And yes, you know, we knew that maybe whatever it was, I'm just throwing out 150 in office supplies.
Well, what exactly office supplies did we have? Like, I wanted to know.
And I was talking to my board and I said, can you tell me all the money we have? Do you know where it's going? What's, you know, and not everybody could answer.
And I said, we cannot grow unless we know our point, our financial plan.
We can't just say we want to help people.
And the other big thing for me was I got over feeling that To be a nonprofit, it had to be all volunteer.
I had a lot of guilt about that.
I didn't want to pay myself.
I didn't want to pay anybody.
I just wanted everything to be volunteer.
And then I thought.
We need to change the tone of what a nonprofit is because we can help so many people and impact the lives of others.
It's okay.
That there is an income because we're, I mean, I work more hours in this job than I ever did for when I was working for ABC news or CBS or whatever.
And I thought it was working a lot of hours then, but now it's constant.
It, it can be 15 hours a day.
I can start at seven in the morning and I can still be going at midnight.
I work weekends.
I'm constantly.
So I think it was that combination of things and, you know, we are constantly going after grants and.
So it's not we're not wasteful.
I mean, you have to be very you have to be very driven as to what you're doing.
You don't want to be wasteful.
You don't want to, you know, be frivolous or anything like that.
You have to, you know, you're helping other people.
You have to, you know, Know what you're doing financially.
So for us, I would say that was the turning point.
We had a lot of money and we needed to figure out what it all meant in a more strategic way.
Yeah.
I love that you say that.
So as a fundraising strategist, it's really the key piece that we start with is like, where is your money and where is it going? Because a lot of times nonprofits that are not started like other business.
efforts, but a nonprofit is a style of business, right? It's a type of business.
And so we kind of organize it backwards when we do a nonprofit.
But I think you're so right.
Once you knew, then you, then, you know, not just what, where your money is currently working, but where you truly have need.
Right.
Right.
And so, and then as a, as a grant writer I, I teach great writing strategy now, but as a grant writer, when I know those pieces, I can be so intentional in my grant writing.
I'm not just creating.
A project and not taking into consideration exactly what the organization needs.
I'm saying, Oh, the organization needs this.
We can do this, this type of project.
But if we're going to do this, we actually have to strategically build in.
We need computers.
Sally's struggling and she can't get on the internet.
And we need you know, we need to make sure that we have somebody at the door when we open for this event or for this, you know, for this opportunity.
And that's going to cost this much money.
And we have to know that we're going to have it.
And then, you know, having that strategy, not just for the grants, but then what do we do? We're not going to get rid of that person who was our front person when that grant ends.
We need to have a plan, right? And so I think that that was such a smart way to grow.
I agree.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, so I, I love that.
I love that you are coming in and, and this is the, the path that we've gotten to talk about because I really do see.
This is often where when a nonprofit is ready to grow up, that this is you, you know, you entered into that next stage.
And what are your plans for the next three to five years, then it's getting I think educating more and growing more, we've started mentoring programs.
And so as a parent of two children with cystic fibrosis, I know the stress of that.
So we're kind of expanding more toward talking to parents.
I've done a CF masterclass and CF global masterclass using my media background and in.
our podcasts also, but the CF masterclass, like any parent can go on there and say, Oh, Tom's talking about faith and cystic fibrosis.
And Kim's talking about losing one of her two children to cystic fibrosis.
And then another parent is talking about why I chose not only to have one kid.
I couldn't, the thought of having more than one child with CF, I couldn't do.
And just a range of different ideas that maybe A person doesn't want to say it out loud or they don't want to talk about it to someone yet, but if they can just, you know, hit record or hit play on something we've recorded, I mean, that's a beautiful thing.
The other thing is sky's the limit.
I'm hounding Melinda Gates, like, come on, sister, I need some help here.
And I need to, I'm we're working on global awareness about accessibility.
In the Middle East to vitamins, enzymes, nutrition, just basics, you know, in Thailand and India, there are so many undiagnosed people with cystic fibrosis around the world.
And.
It's just, it's so sad that because where you live impacts if you live, it, it makes me crazy.
So I'm, I'm going really big.
I'm thinking, you know, why not? Why? I mean, for me, Melinda Gates, is the person.
This is what she does in general for women's groups.
And so she's kind of someone I really want to talk to about kind of our next phase and how we can help people globally, at the very least, to raise more awareness.
Because people I talk to now have no idea that someone in Egypt or Jordan or Turkey or, you know, somewhere, sometimes even Canada, cannot and does not have access to, To a drug, you know, and it can be super surprising.
Yeah.
So I think continuing with our programs and making them bigger and better, but with purpose, something doesn't need to be big just to say it's big.
It needs to have purpose.
It needs to grow and benefit.
You know, it just doesn't.
It just doesn't need to be big.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Expansion.
Expansion isn't always the pathway, right? Sometimes depth is the pathway.
I love what you shared about You know, the opportunity for parents to get in and just maybe silently be able to give words to their trauma.
You know, we, and I, I am a, I'm trained in, in trauma response and trauma coaching and, and the word you said trauma, you know, as you talked about that, you talked about kind of the trauma of, of parent, it's.
It's traumatizing parenting a child with any special needs.
Just because you, you want to do the best for your child and it's so difficult, but then you also want to reduce suffering of others.
And I think, you know, sometimes you get universal echoes and that idea of reducing suffering is definitely like my light is being drawn to I hear it over and over again.
It seems like wherever I go, you know, to be able to reduce suffering.
And there are such simple ways sometimes to be able to reduce suffering when people just don't know, they don't know that there's help out there or that there's Potential help out there.
So that's awesome.
So I love that.
So before I ask you our last question how can people learn more about the Bonnell foundation and get in touch with you if they would like.
They can go to our website, which is the bonnellfoundation.
org.
And that's B as in boy O N N E L L.
Or they can email us at the bonnellfoundationatgmail.
com.
And we're on.
Every social media platform.
We're on TikTok.
We're on threads.
We're on Facebook and Instagram.
And what did I forget? LinkedIn.
We're, we're everywhere.
So yeah.
All right.
I will make sure that I put some of those links in the show notes.
And then our last question of the podcast is always, what is one piece of advice that you would like to give our listeners before we exit? Yes, that is my philosophy.
Don't say no, ever.
I mean, it can be hard, but that's kind of everything I've said yes to.
It just grows into something else.
Do you want to speak at this family day? Yes, I do.
I go to the family thing.
I speak the next day I'm home.
I get an email.
Hey, I heard you at the family thing.
Oh my gosh, I've got this connection.
Or do you want to speak here or.
I go to D.
C.
and I'm advocating and someone will ask me, Hey, do you want to speak at this legislative, whatever it is? Yes.
I just, why would you say no? Find time.
If you think you don't have time, find time or do it on zoom or something.
I just think you really need to manifest things growing and getting better and saying yes, because your whole.
Karma or whatever spiritual things you believe in.
It's just open.
And then I can't tell you how many times because I've said yes, somewhere.
That I've gone somewhere and someone else connected me to someone else.
It just keeps going.
Everything just keeps going.
So I highly recommend that.
I love that.
I love that.
Say yes as often as you can.
So, yeah.
And I think sometimes we even dread it up to the day it happens and then we're like, Oh yes, that was the right thing to do.
Right? That is so true.
I have dreaded things before.
Like why did I say yes to this? Sometimes in the winter, especially because I'll have to drive there, but and it's icy and flying seems easier for some reason, but yeah, I really have never regretted it.
Yes.
That's great.
Well, thank you so much for being on the show.
I have really enjoyed our conversation and I want to thank our listeners for tuning in today.
We hope that you join us next time when we explore more resources for your nonprofit organization.
See you then.
Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Nonprofit411.
I hope you found today's conversation as insightful and inspiring as I did.
Remember, building a healthy nonprofit requires a holistic approach.
There are many resources available to support your staff and we're dedicated to helping your organization access what it needs to thrive.
One key to creating a thriving organization is a diverse fundraising strategy.
While grants are an important part of that strategy, they're just one piece of the overall puzzle.
If you're looking to strengthen your grant writing skills as part of this bigger picture, I've got a resource to help you get started.
Download my free grant writing guide, packed with practical tips and best practices to help you craft proposals that align with your overall fundraising goals.
You'll find the link in the show notes.
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Until next time, keep pushing forward and making a difference.