Nonprofit Mastermind Podcast

Welcome to our first Mastermind Spotlight! In this series, I’ll be showcasing and celebrating organizations in my Accelerator program - lifting up their mission, their work, and their personal stories of leadership. 

It means a lot to me to kick off this new part of the podcast by shining a light on a truly phenomenal organization - STEM From Dance, and a truly inspirational leader - Yamilee Tousaint-Beach. 

STEM From Dance works to get girls of color excited about STEM through dance by fusing STEMs spirit of innovation and experimentation with the creativity and fluidy of dance.  Their programs aim to amplify young girls confidence and voices as artists, and to show them how they can use their ingenuity and passion as innovators, engineers, scientists and techies.

In this conversation, Yamilee, the founder and current CEO, shares her founding story -- how deeply she has been inspired by her father, and how she drew on her experiences as a dancer, as a student at MIT, and as a middle-school teacher to start STEM from dance.  She talk about its vision of increasing the representation of black and brown girls in STEM fields, and their plans for explosive growth as then head into their second decade.

It’s a great conversation and I hope you enjoy it!

Want to work together?

Apply for the Next Level Nonprofit Mastermind, a high-touch coaching and training accelerator for established organizations with $1M+ budgets that are ready to design for impact sustained at scale.  

Budget under $1M? Join Elevate and get proven step-by-step playbooks + coaching support to build each of the core elements of your nonprofit's operating system - strategic clarity, a fundraising engine, a high-performance team, and an active and engaged board!   

Connect with me!

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Christal Cherry is a board whisperer, founder and CEO of The BoardPro, and a children’s book author! 

She is a nationally recognized nonprofit executive and professionally trained fundraiser - she’s spent the past 2 decades in the sector, raising millions of dollars and getting buy-in from multiple stakeholders for big missions and projects. Along the way, one thing that has always been part of her work - which is what she leans into now - is moving people to action. Christal has interfaced with, guided, trained, and collaborated with boards made up of as diverse stakeholders as politicians, corporate CEOs, and religious leaders -- and is a master at helping boards achieve and govern from a sense of shared purpose, deep mission affinity, and belonging. 

And she breaks it all down for you all today! You get just a glimpse of what makes her such a powerful and effective board coaching and trainer. 

Want to work together?

Apply for the Next Level Nonprofit Mastermind, a high-touch coaching and training accelerator for established organizations with $1M+ budgets that are ready to design for impact sustained at scale.  

Budget under $1M? Join Elevate and get proven step-by-step playbooks + coaching support to build each of the core elements of your nonprofit's operating system - strategic clarity, a fundraising engine, a high-performance team, and an active and engaged board!   

Connect with me!

• LinkedIn
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• YouTube

This week I’m talking with Lakimja Mattocks, Chief Equity and Learnig Officer at Non[profit NY, Fundraising Consultant at Cause Effective, and visionary, powerful leadership coach. 

This conversation has a different origin than some of the others on this podcast - I was inspired by a very specific event. Lakimja posted on LinkedIn about what she calls her personal board of directors. We talk a bunch about this in the conversation, so I won’t go too deeply into that here, but what I will say is that she wrote with such passion and joy about having this network of people to support and sustain her along her professional journey, that I was moved, inspired, and really interested in pulling back the curtain on the how. 

As many of you may have heard me speak or write about in the past, I often reference how important I think it is to build structured networks of support and accountability as professionals. I’ve talked about peer coaching and Masterminds, and Lakimja talks about a related but subtly different - and more expansive - strategy for structuring a network of professional and personal support. 

This is exactly the kind of conversation that the Virgo in me loves - a great mix of personal and practical! 

Want to work together?

Apply for the Next Level Nonprofit Mastermind, a high-touch coaching and training accelerator for established organizations with $1M+ budgets that are ready to design for impact sustained at scale.  

Budget under $1M? Join Elevate and get proven step-by-step playbooks + coaching support to build each of the core elements of your nonprofit's operating system - strategic clarity, a fundraising engine, a high-performance team, and an active and engaged board!   

Connect with me!

• LinkedIn
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• YouTube

Recently, there’s been an increased focus - in earnest not just talk - on the importance of making sure that people who are most directly impacted by experiences and issues are an authentic and meaningful part of addressing those issues. 

There are so many ways to go about that, and one of the most powerful is actually also one of the simplest -- make sure that people have the information they need to participate in the process of advocating for themselves, to make informed and smart choices, and to tell their own stories.  

At its core, that is what Briefly helps nonprofits do. I’ll let Adam get into the details, but suffice it to say, Briefly gives nonprofits and legal service providers the tools to make the complex legal issues facing their constituents and their own staff simple - from helping organizations break down the intricacies of domestic violence law for their community members to helping nonprofit lawyers translate arcane areas of the law for their clients to helping social enterprise founders understand and explain to their staff, the laws surrounding hiring and HR and contracts. 

And it does it using the power of video . 

Want to work together?

Apply for the Next Level Nonprofit Mastermind, a high-touch coaching and training accelerator for established organizations with $1M+ budgets that are ready to design for impact sustained at scale.  

Budget under $1M? Join Elevate and get proven step-by-step playbooks + coaching support to build each of the core elements of your nonprofit's operating system - strategic clarity, a fundraising engine, a high-performance team, and an active and engaged board!   

Connect with me!

• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• YouTube

At its core, organizational design is about the intentional choices you make in designing your organization’s structure, culture, and processes. You can organize the building blocks in different ways to address different challenges, ask different questions, and position yourself for growth and stability in the future. 

The idea is that we don’t build our organizations at 30,000 feet. Instead, we design them by being intentional about what’s happening on the ground and then building up from there. 

We make decisions as we move along about each of the building blocks, and they add up to an organization that we are proud of.  

So why am I talking about this topic? Because running an organization can feel scary and overwhelming sometimes - like a massive undertaking. How do we create and nurture the culture that feels right? How do we get our board to work together? How do we address issues of power and authority as roles shift on our team? 

You address these questions by notching down - by examining and thinking about the more basic elements of your organization’s design on a more granular level. 

So I’m going to walk through the building blocks and then share a resource to help you use them as a tool in your organization. 

Want to work together?

Apply for the Next Level Nonprofit Mastermind, a high-touch coaching and training accelerator for established organizations with $1M+ budgets that are ready to design for impact sustained at scale.  

Budget under $1M? Join Elevate and get proven step-by-step playbooks + coaching support to build each of the core elements of your nonprofit's operating system - strategic clarity, a fundraising engine, a high-performance team, and an active and engaged board!   

Connect with me!

• LinkedIn
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• YouTube

For this week’s episode, I reconnected with an old friend from graduate school, Adriana Dakin,  and her business partner, Abigail Ahoude. I’ve been excited to talk with them about ImaginePod, the company that they co-founded to help social impact organizations and movements use cutting-edge marketing strategies and tactics to drive more impact. 

Anyone who does social impact work knows that in order to truly have impact - to bring about the change we wish to see in the world - we need to move in concert with others - we need others to take positive action.   Whether it’s signing up for one of our programs, partnering with us to work in a community, signing a piece of legislation, or donating money, joining our board, anything that we do or create is - at its core - rooted in our ability to move people to action. It’s a critical organizational growth skill and capacity. 

That’s what Abigail and Adriana do with the organizations that they coach, train and support through Imagine Pod.

Resources Referenced
www.imaginepod.com 

Want to work together?

Apply for the Next Level Nonprofit Mastermind, a high-touch coaching and training accelerator for established organizations with $1M+ budgets that are ready to design for impact sustained at scale.  

Budget under $1M? Join Elevate and get proven step-by-step playbooks + coaching support to build each of the core elements of your nonprofit's operating system - strategic clarity, a fundraising engine, a high-performance team, and an active and engaged board!   

Connect with me!

• LinkedIn
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• YouTube

Trish Tchume is the Director of Liberatory Leadership Practice at the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, and Ericka Stallings is the co-ED of the Leadership Learning Community. Together, they co-facilitate the Liberatory Leadership Project, which works to explore, define, and support approaches to leadership development and organizational capacity building that prefigure a world where all of us can thrive. 

In this wonderful conversation, Trish and Ericka talk about what it actually means to practice liberation…  

We talk about why it’s so important - as a leader - to be intentional about the way that we design the spaces that we are leading - how we use time, how we use language, how we build systems to support our actual values, rather than build the systems we think we’re supposed to have as high impact organizations. 

They share the questions that they use to guide their liberatory leadership work - because really, practicing liberation is as much about continuing to ask ourselves and one another the right questions to allow our whole selves to show up in our work. 

Finally, they talk about liberated zones - what they are, and how we can each create spaces of liberation in our own lives. 

We talk about so many things - the theory, the practice, and how to bridge to two. It’s a conversation with such depth, and exactly why I love doing and sharing this podcast with other leaders. 

Want to work together?

Apply for the Next Level Nonprofit Mastermind, a high-touch coaching and training accelerator for established organizations with $1M+ budgets that are ready to design for impact sustained at scale.  

Budget under $1M? Join Elevate and get proven step-by-step playbooks + coaching support to build each of the core elements of your nonprofit's operating system - strategic clarity, a fundraising engine, a high-performance team, and an active and engaged board!   

Connect with me!

• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• YouTube

In this episode, I'm talking about Mastermind Groups - or more generally, the why and how of building a structured network of support and accountability.  

 I feel really strongly about this topic.  Creating intentional systems of support may feel like a "nice to have" for so many people,  but it’s actually so, so deeply important and impactful. 

So often, when I talk to the Executive Directors and CEOs that I work with, and the topic of leadership comes up, I find myself in a conversation about how lonely it all can be. Even for people who have a great relationship with their team and a strong board of directors, so much of what we do as leaders requires us to be out on the proverbial limb, alone. 

This also feels like a really timely topic…  This feeling of - and in many ways, actual - isolation has only been exacerbated by the pandemic. 

So today I want to share what turned out to be one of the most impactful leadership strategies I’ve ever deployed - and I don’t say that lightly.  The ED Collective that I was part of for more than half my time as an ED changed almost everything about how I lead. 

You can also get a copy of a toolkit for building your own mastermind when you download the Architecture of Impact toolkit at https://richiebabbage.com/ArchitectureofImpactToolkit 

Want to work together?

Apply for the Next Level Nonprofit Mastermind, a high-touch coaching and training accelerator for established organizations with $1M+ budgets that are ready to design for impact sustained at scale.  

Budget under $1M? Join Elevate and get proven step-by-step playbooks + coaching support to build each of the core elements of your nonprofit's operating system - strategic clarity, a fundraising engine, a high-performance team, and an active and engaged board!   

Connect with me!

• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• YouTube

This is an encore presentation of a wonderful conversation I had with my friend and colleague Ana Polanco last Spring.  

Ana is an intuitive, international coach, storyteller, and wisdom keeper who helps culturally diverse women and social change organizations find new ways of leading.

She is a beautiful case study in how to do and lead deep social change work in a way that is aligned with one's values, past, and purpose.  

This conversation is about sustainable leadership, and about how leading from a whole-self perspective requires practice and replenishment. 

Ana and I get into the nuts and bolts of what it means to move through the world and as one's whole self, how to reshape our own leadership practices to make them more reflective of our whole selves, and most importantly, how to bring work and lead in ways that refill our cups rather than deplete us. 

Want to work together?

Apply for the Next Level Nonprofit Mastermind, a high-touch coaching and training accelerator for established organizations with $1M+ budgets that are ready to design for impact sustained at scale.  

Budget under $1M? Join Elevate and get proven step-by-step playbooks + coaching support to build each of the core elements of your nonprofit's operating system - strategic clarity, a fundraising engine, a high-performance team, and an active and engaged board!   

Connect with me!

• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• YouTube

This week’s conversation is with LaFrae Sci, a friend, colleague, and superstar in my Impact Accelerator! LaFrae is an accomplished musician, imaginationist, and Executive Director at Willie Mae Rock Camp, where she created the innovative and transformational Willie Mae Future Sounds STEAM-based curriculum.

I’ve been excited to talk with LaFrae on the podcast for a number of reasons. First, I think that her story of stepping into the ED role at Willie Mae at a time of flux and stewarding the growth of the organization through a pandemic, is instructive and inspirational for other leaders. As I reference in our conversation, the org has grown in budget and impact in the under 2 years that she’s been at the helm, and I’ve wanted to shine a light on her journey and experience as part of a broader dialog opening up and creating transparency about what leadership looks like in practice. 

The second reason I’ve been excited to talk to LaFrae is more personal. She and I vibe out via email and on some of our coaching calls, about the role that having intentional abundance and gratitude practices have played in our lives. She leads from a place of abundance and gratitude, and I’ve wanted for a long time to invite her to share what that means in practice, and how those practices have helped her stay grounded and avoid overwhelm during the craziness of these past years.

Finally, I just love shedding light on incredible leaders as part of this podcast, and LaFrae is an incredible leader. 

Want to work together?

Apply for the Next Level Nonprofit Mastermind, a high-touch coaching and training accelerator for established organizations with $1M+ budgets that are ready to design for impact sustained at scale.  

Budget under $1M? Join Elevate and get proven step-by-step playbooks + coaching support to build each of the core elements of your nonprofit's operating system - strategic clarity, a fundraising engine, a high-performance team, and an active and engaged board!   

Connect with me!

• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• YouTube