Scaling Impact

In this episode, Senior Executive Director of GreenLight Fund, Melissa Luna, discusses the organization's mission to remove barriers to inclusive prosperity by launching and scaling proven programs that address community-identified needs, GreenLight Fund's approach of investing financial resources and providing long-term sustainability support to partner organizations, and the significance of community engagement and learning from past data and trends within the GreenLight Fund portfolio.

Melissa Luna is an experienced Managing Director with a demonstrated history of working in the philanthropy and nonprofit industry, who is skilled in Nonprofit Management, Program Design, Politics, Policy Analysis, Event Planning, and Evaluation. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Scaling Impact:

• The programs that the organization launches and scales that meet community-identified needs.
• The multi-year funds and on-ground support that Greenlight Fund invests and provides for portfolio organizations.
• The KPIs are outlined to determine reasonable and high growth for organizations over four years.
• How brand visibility, partnerships, and unlocking investments are important for growth and expansion.
• Why successful scaling requires a step-by-step approach and managing risk with the unexpected that may come along.
• How Greenlight Fund helps nonprofits to scale up in the Greater Boston region.

Resources:

• GreenLight Fund
• NxtStep
• Podcast Chef

Connecting with Melissa Luna:

• LinkedIn

Connecting with Sean Boyce:

• LinkedIn
• Email

Quotables:

• 15:20 – “I'd love to talk a little bit more about that too because obviously the theme of this show is figuring out how to help people that are making amazing change, but maybe it's just hyper-local at the moment, but it's something that, you know, the needs that you described, the mental health challenges, the disproportionate level of access for people of color, those types of things, those are not hyperlocal problems, right? Like they may be varying levels of degree of severity, but those are ubiquitous. These problems exist everywhere. So obviously we want to see what we can't do about taking those to programs that have been successful in local communities and making them as accessible as possible so that people that are experiencing them everywhere can get access to the same level of help. That was really the inspiration behind the creation of this podcast interviewing professionals like you who have done this successfully over and over again”
• 17:38 – “So from the very beginning it is about setting it up for success. Part of what we do also with the organizations when we do select them is we outline KPIs. So key performance indicators over those four years to determine what is reasonable growth and what is high growth. Because we want for there obviously to be reasonable growth, but we also want to shoot for the stars and make sure that we're going for high growth.”
• 19:54 – “And so our job at Greenlight is to ensure that they're learning the right lessons in those first two years that they're pivoting, that they're applying what we're learning and then helping them to figure out, now that we know what works in our market, how do we grow that? What are the partnerships, what are the public funding sources and what ways can we continue to elevate the local leader so that we are bringing in these opportunities to continue to grow the program.”
• 20:58 – “Building their solution to be sustainable is probably one of the biggest challenges facing the future success for nonprofits and impact-related organizations that have even some track record of success, a fact that their programs work. I've read countless stories in their, they're such a rollercoaster because they're amazing to learn about problem that they wanted to solve, the improvement they wanted to make in their community”
• 25:38 – “And I think that when we talk about our community, it's really centering on what they need and what they want. And I think those are two very different things. And so I think in particular as we think about the dignity of people who are using our programs, if we really center what they both need and want, we can deliver really infected programs with a transformative change.”

If you'd like to learn how to scale impact at your nonprofit organization by more than double in less than half the time, I'd encourage you to sign up for my free 5 day email course at https://nxtstep.io/impact/.

This episode, The GreenLight Fund’s Vice President Casey Johnson talks about the venture philanthropy space, why funding should be unrestricted, and the different types of personalities you need in an organization to scale successfully.

Casey Johnson has over 20 years of program management experience for various non-profit organizations, including five years focusing on implementing and refining literacy programs in the United States and globally in 10 developing countries.

Casey also has over 10 years of experience working in venture philanthropy doing strategic grantmaking, deep diligence on potential portfolio organizations, and local community landscape analysis work.

She is currently the Vice President of The GreenLight Fund which helps transform the lives of children, youth, and families in high-poverty urban areas. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Scaling Impact:

• The unique approach of GreenLight Fund.
• The venture philanthropy space.
• How to get funding to scale and grow.
• The benefits of unrestricted funding.
• The due diligence involved in acquiring funding.
• The different types of personalities you need in an organization to scale successfully. 

Resources:

• GreenLight Fund
• NxtStep
• Podcast Chef

Connect with Casey Johnson:

• LinkedIn
• Email

Connecting with the host:

• Sean Boyce on LinkedIn
• Sean Boyce by Email

Quotables:

• 6:49 - “We raise dollars in each of our communities and then invest those dollars back into our communities through investments in nonprofit 5013C organizations who are doing work to move the needle on economic mobility for residents families individuals experiencing poverty in our communities.”
• 10:31 - “We’re investing in something that’s not there but could come in there and be really successful and putting a lot of momentum behind that really amazing thing and then you think all that takes 12 months just to get to that point of making that decision but our real work it’s almost like the tip of the iceberg is what you see when you’re making this selection but our real work is what you don’t see at that iceberg, it’s 4 plus years of portfolio management and partnership.”
• 16:12 - “I know we’ve heard a lot about trust-based philanthropy that’s definitly a buzz words these days in our spaces and in the social sector but this is truly leaning into partnership and leaning into trust and saying we trust that you are going to use our dollars well we’re going to hold you accountable in these ways but we’re also going to support you in these ways which means we’re going to help unlock some doors for you, we’re going to introduce you to our network, we’re going to do all those things that make it difficult to come into a new space and set up shop right out of the gate on your own, and I think it becomes so critical to remove barriers and hurdles wherever you can and one of those is absolutely removing restricting dollars, guess what paying the light bill is just as important.”
• 20:42 - “I think it’s so important for an organization to have the gas pedal maybe one maybe a couple of people within the organization, the leadership theme, the board that are the gas pedal that are let’s go we’ve got this we don’t have everything figured out who cares we’ll figure it out as we go, are willing to take risk and just move at the speed of lighting or would like to if they can.”
• 26:40 - “Scaling is not easy and I know you’ve covered this ground with some of the other amazing leaders you’ve had on Sean for this phenomenal podcast but it’s hard and I don’t think we truly acknowledge that of how hard it can be and I think it can also be hard to think about when is going to be the right time for my organization to do this, and also be ok with if there’s never that right time because you just want to focus on the area where you’ve started this amazing thing.”

If you'd like to learn how to scale impact at your nonprofit organization by more than double in less than half the time, I'd encourage you to sign up for my free 5 day email course at https://nxtstep.io/impact/.

This episode, Founder and CEO of Braven Aimee Eubanks Davis talks about the challenges underrepresented youth face in the labor market, what graduates need to be successful in the workplace, and the ways Braven measures its impact and plans to scale.

Aimée Eubanks Davis is the founder and CEO of Braven, a national nonprofit focused on ensuring that underrepresented college students are able to put their education to work and land strong first jobs upon graduation.

Since 2013, Aimée has led a talented team of regional executive directors as well as the heads of product, technology, development, external affairs, and staff to ensure the best possible experience for Fellows.

In partnership with university and employer partners, Braven is providing a systemic, sustainable, diverse talent strategy for our nation and has served more than 3,295 college students in Chicago, the Bay Area, Newark, New Jersey, New York City, and Atlanta. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Scaling Impact:

• How to get underrepresented young people into the labor market.
• How Braven helps underrepresented youth in higher education.
• How organizations can focus on the impact they have.
• How to measure the impact of an organization.
• The key metrics Braven uses to indicate their impact.
• What graduates need to be successful in the workplace.
• The technology challenges organizations face as they scale.

Resources:

• Braven
• NxtStep
• Podcast Chef

Connect with Aimee Eubanks Davis:

• LinkedIn

Connecting with the host:

• Sean Boyce on LinkedIn
• Sean Boyce by Email

Quotables:

• 7:24 - “We’re really looking for that full quality employment which means it is worthy of the bachelor's degree that there are health and wealth benefits so they get a 401K they get access to strong benefits that there’s learning and development in their role and finally that there’s a pathway to promotion in their role as well so we really want to make sure students have that kind of an economic opportunity because if they don’t there’s a scarring effect on the backend.”
• 11:04 - “Just as long as you’re in higher ed you’re going to come out strong, that is not the case you actually have to get ready to come out strong, and if you don’t have parents and friends at your living room table at your dining room table or at your living room armchair giving you this advice and getting you ready then you’re actually not getting ready and people don’t know that.”
• 24:51 - “People believe at moments to volunteer or to make a commitment to a young people is so significant like I just can’t find the time and I get it people are busy I really do and yet one person can do a mock interview for 2 hours during the semester at one of our campuses and make a real connection with the student that actually could help the student see where they might go next or where that volunteer is like oh my gosh this young person is completely great my cousin runs this other company or is in the Government and works on this issue that their interested in and I can just make a quick LinkedIn connection and so the power of one is really real in our world”

If you'd like to learn how to scale impact at your nonprofit organization by more than double in less than half the time, I'd encourage you to sign up for my free 5 day email course at https://nxtstep.io/impact/.

This episode, Co-Founder and CEO of The GreenLight Fund Margaret Hall talks about what makes a non-profit successful, how non-profits can avoid restrictive funding, and how she prepares organizations to deliver their mission effectively.

Margaret Hall is the CEO and Co-Founder of The GreenLight Fund which raises and invests funds to open opportunities for children, youth, and families facing barriers to prosperity through an innovative, locally-driven approach that targets social innovations where they are needed most

The GreenLight Fund currently operates in ten cities and is expanding at a rate of one community per year. Across its sites, the GreenLight Fund’s portfolio now consists of 44 high-performing nonprofits reaching more than 565,000 low-income children, youth, and families annually.

Before co-founding the GreenLight Fund, Margaret was a Fellow at the Center for Effective Philanthropy, and earlier served as Associate Director of the Georgia Center for Nonprofits, where she launched the public policy program. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Scaling Impact:

• How to prepare organizations to deliver their mission effectively.
• Ways to engage people in an enterprise.
• How to fund organizations to help them be impactful.
• The different ways of measuring impact.
• The importance of taking an evidence-based result-orientated approach.
• How non-profits can avoid restrictive funding.
• What makes a non-profit successful.

Resources:

• The GreenLight Fund
• The Center for Effective Philanthropy
• Lean Impact
• NxtStep
• Podcast Chef

Connect with Margaret Hall:

• LinkedIn
• Email

Connecting with the host:

• Sean Boyce on LinkedIn
• Sean Boyce by Email

Quotables:

• 8:15 - “What we want for our communities is impact, for residents who are navigating poverty and have identified ways they need support navigating out of poverty and so impact for us means measurable observable change. So if the issue that’s been identified is college persistence and graduation we don’t want to know just how many people are participating in a program, we want to know how many people are actually staying in college because of the program and graduating from college because of the program, so we do that in a couple of ways.”
• 13:31 - “We want to be as effective as we can with where the investments going so we should be able to leverage things that we see elsewhere even outside the non-profit sector in terms of what delivering those results ultimately looks like so I love the evidence-based approach because that can really boil it down into the numbers that say where have we really been able to drive impact drive impact and as such which have been the most effective that may also be warranted for additional investment into that to drive even greater results.” 
• 17:44 - “Even the best non-profits with great leadership, great models, well executed, evidence that they’re working, don’t necessarily get where they’re needed they don’t spread and scale at the level that we need to have the kind of impact across the country and cities across the country at the level that we need them and a big part of that is you can build capacity at the national organization to scale out but when you hit a community all the dynamics at the community level are at play, you don’t know folks there this is a very relationship-oriented enterprise, funding is based on relationships partnerships are based on trust and relationships at the local level.”

If you'd like to learn how to scale impact at your nonprofit organization by more than double in less than half the time, I'd encourage you to sign up for my free 5 day email course at https://nxtstep.io/impact/.

Paul Isenberg is the Co-Founder and CEO of Bringing Hope Home which helps families dealing with cancer through financial assistance and other resources.

Bringing Hope Home is a recognized 501c3 organization that has helped more than 6,400 families in the mid-Atlantic region, provided over 7 million dollars, and is now expanding into other areas to help even more people. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Scaling Impact:

• The ways Bringing Hope Home helps families with cancer.
• How Bringing Hope Home has scaled its operation.
• The values that go into building a good team.
• What the future plans are for Bringing Hope Home.
• How Paul uses data to win grants.
• How Bringing Hope Home’s fundraising works.
• How to track the impact your organization’s having.
• The importance of thanking your donors.

Resources:

• Bringing Hope Home
• The American Cancer Society
• Entrepreneurs' Organization Philadelphia
• Bloomerang
• NxtStep
• Podcast Chef

Connect with Paul Isenberg:

• LinkedIn

Connecting with the host:

• Sean Boyce on LinkedIn
• Sean Boyce by Email

Quotables

• 4:59 - “If you noticed I use the word family a lot, we don’t help patients, we help families and if you use the patient word in our offices it’s a dollar fine because they’re patients to everybody else they’re not patients to us they’re our family and we work really hard to try to remember that.”
• 8:07 “We raised 2.8 million and helped 1030 families and that is an amazing number to me for a lot of reasons I think number one we scaled from 10 families to 1000 plus families we scaled from raising 125 grand to raising 2.8 million but the most important thing is I think I hope I believe is that we did it the right way by having these families still feel cared for.”
• 22:07 - “I don’t think we do anything earth-shatteringly new, we’ve not discovered anything we just try to leverage what’s out there, our marketing is predominantly social media driven we have somebody in charge of that, our fundraising is relationship driven very event-driven very personally touched driven. Whenever we have an event at the end of the year our development team we just sit and make phone calls for a day that could be 2 400 phone calls not to mention writing letters, receipts all the personal stuff you should do I personally think it’s really important to say thank you directly to someone.”

If you'd like to learn how to scale impact at your nonprofit organization by more than double in less than half the time, I'd encourage you to sign up for my free 5 day email course at https://nxtstep.io/impact/.

Patience-Marime Ball is the Founder and CEO of Women of the World Endowment and is deeply experienced in capital markets, including debt and equity financing, large-scale infrastructure investments, distressed assets (restructuring and settlements), deal structuring and negotiation, interpretation of laws and regulation, as well as investment in early-stage companies.

Ruth Shaber is the President and Founder of Tara Health Foundation where she promotes health, well-being, and opportunity for women and girls by strategically investing financial and human capital in innovative, evidence-informed programs.

Ruth partners with nonprofit organizations and other like-minded foundations, choosing financial investments that have a social impact and advance their mission. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Scaling Impact:

• The benefits of having a gender-diverse team.
• Investing through a gendered lens.
• Why women leaders make a difference to financial performance.
• How women leaders act differently than men.
• Why gender-diverse teams outperform gender-dominant teams.
• The rise of impact investing and how it’s scaling.
• How gender drives performance.
• The fintech component in leveraging impact investing.

Resources:

• Women of the World Endowment
• Tara Health Foundation
• The XX edge unlocking higher returns and lower risk
• Diversity Matters: The Role of Gender Diversity on US Active Equity Fund Performance
• Telltale signs of higher returns? Gender mix could be one
• Ethos ESG
• NxtStep
• Podcast Chef

Connect with Patience-Marime Ball:

• LinkedIn

Connect with Ruth Shaber:

• LinkedIn

Connecting with the host:

• Sean Boyce on LinkedIn
• Sean Boyce by Email

Quotables

• 3:56 - “Gender diverse teams tend to bring about more resilient companies, companies with better risk infrastructure and over time companies that actually outperform was emerging, we notice that companies with gender diverse teams coming out of that crisis were able to emerge a little quicker relative to their peers, every company suffered but those with gender diverse teams on their boards and in the C-suite navigated that crisis a little bit better.”
• 8:14 - “When we decided that a book needed to be written about the value of gender diversity and investing we weren't sure what we were going to find we knew from our personal experience both Patience and I have had quite a bit of experience as investors and using what is called a gender lens in making our investment decisions and we knew that in certain markets and in certain types of capital there was definitely an advantage but we weren’t sure what we were going to find when we started our research.”
• 10:13 - “Women tend to be more collaborative, they tend to have a lower ego, they also tend to analysis risk differently and we pulled some of our research from the gambling data and we know that men are much more likely to take risks to be pressured by social influences to gamble to be more likely to be problem gamblers and if you think about the types of decisions that boards often make or particularly start-up companies there's a lot of risk involved and women are not adverse to risk they certainly take risks but they analysis risks differently and they also tend to be more interested in the long term outcomes of the decision they make and less influenced by short term gains.”
• 18:36 - “Who allocates capital determines its purpose and that money can do more a single dollar can do more than one thing at any given time. It can provide you incredible returns, Ruth just gave the example of the 47 base points that you can pick up just from picking the right team to manage assets but it can also do the right thing by the people on the planet what we invest in matters and what we invest in can give us profits but can also address some of the challenges that the world faces today whether its climate change, healthcare, these pandemics coming our way.”
• 23:01 - “All investments have an impact, it’s not just some niche over here it’s every single investment decision you make, every single consumer decision you make, every time you decide what company you’re going to work for those are all impact investing decisions.”

If you'd like to learn how to scale impact at your nonprofit organization by more than double in less than half the time, I'd encourage you to sign up for my free 5 day email course at https://nxtstep.io/impact/.

Vicki Burkhart has over 20 years in working for nonprofits rising to VP/Director level and gaining extensive experience with major gift cultivation, board development, strategic planning, organizational development, and volunteer management.

Vicki founded the More Than Giving Co. with the goal of delivering innovative solutions to help more volunteer-driven nonprofits reach sustainability. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Scaling Impact:

• The unique challenges nonprofits have.
• Why it’s hard for non-profits to get the expertise they need.
• How nonprofits can solve common hiring challenges.
• The benefits of running a nonprofit with a fractional, fully-remote team.
• Expanding and building fundraising programs.
• The difference between fractional staff and consultants.

Resources:

• The More Than Giving Co.
• Kids'​ Chance of America
• How to Staff Your Nonprofit for Success
• Leveraging Fractional Staff To Confront Common Nonprofit Challenges
• NxtStep
• Podcast Chef

Connect with Vicki Burkhart:

• LinkedIn

Connecting with the host:

• Sean Boyce on LinkedIn
• Sean Boyce by Email

Quotables

• 14:18 - “A good place to start is to begin to look at team as the expertise that you need to bring into your nonprofit to make it work, to make it successful, to help it reach it goals versus the individuals that you need to have on board and I think it’s certainly a mind shift for the nonprofit organizations, I believe for-profit businesses have started down that road a lot more.”
• 17:01 - “When you hire a team and you’re giving out annual contracts you’re sort of set with those people when you hire a fractional team as our model dictates you can sort of sub in and bring in and out the people that you need to accomplish that.”
• 18:05 - “You can hire one position for 80 thousand dollars plus benefits of you can take 80 thousand dollars and build teams with that 80 thousand you may have four or five or six people that are coming in with different skill sets and still be under what they may cost in a single individual who you’re anticipating is going to do everything that this team of people is going to be, it’s not a model for everyone but I think it’s worth thinking about.”
• 25:48 - “Look at a team approach and a model to what you’re doing and how you’re staffing your organization that’s going to work for you as an Executive Director, going to work for the organization and going to make the most sense going forward. We’re seeing so much transition in the workplace right now the competition for positions is growing, I think there is a lot of benefit to looking at fractional staffing knowing that these folks are coming out of other clients and other worlds where they bring real-time expertise to your organization, it gets really difficult to get stale when you’ve got people coming in and out of the group.”

If you'd like to learn how to scale impact at your nonprofit organization by more than double in less than half the time, I'd encourage you to sign up for my free 5 day email course at https://nxtstep.io/impact/.

Julie Sowash is the Executive Director for Disability Solutions, where she works with federal contractors to assess outreach, hiring, and retention systems and policies in a company that impacts the organization’s ability to successfully engage and retain qualified job seekers with disabilities. 

The Disability Solutions team, including Julie, works with corporate leaders to build and implement, national to local hiring initiatives.

Julie’s current focus is working with the leadership of Pepsi Beverages Company in implementing the Pepsi ACT (Achieving Change Together), a national engagement to increase recruitment, hiring, and retention in the company’s workforce. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Scaling Impact:

• The importance momentum has in scaling impact.
• How to make jobs more accessible for people with disabilities.
• Misconceptions people have about hiring people with disabilities.
• How to quantify the impact you’re having.
• Managing non-profits in a fiscally responsible way.
• How to leverage technology.
• The power of automation.

Resources:

• Disability Solutions
• Crazy and the King Podcast
• HubSpot
• NxtStep
• Podcast Chef

Connect with Julie Sowash:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Instagram

Connecting with the host:

• Sean Boyce on LinkedIn
• Sean Boyce by Email

Quotables

• 9:19 - “About 31 million Americans are people with disabilities who are working age and about 20 percent of us also identify as professionals and as we see mental health crisis grow constantly in our country, especially in the post-pandemic world more people are recognizing that mental health and mental illness is a real part of the disability community.”
• 19:30 - “We also have a lot of automation around our invoicing systems, all of the pieces, anything that I can automate has really been automated including a lot of our sales process, we’ve been working on growing that portion of our business over the last couple of years and so getting a sales process in place through the use of technology has been a critical win and it’s one that’s been dear god so hard.”
• 20:18 - “Recognize when you need to be scrappy and recognize when you need an expert and so the big thing for us is we knew we needed to put technology into place and I wasted probably 2 years trying to get that technology and process in place without the expertise to save a few bucks and what I did was lose a lot of time and a lot of opportunity and eventually I had to stop and say you know what I’m not doing anyone a service by thinking that I have the expertise to do this I need to spend a little bit more money now to hire that sales leader that marketing automation person so that I can get a system that’s up and running in a functional way.”
• 21:15 - “Build what you can and recognize what you can’t build because there are pieces of our business structure that I don’t have the expertise to build and I need experts to do that and being willing to say that as a non-profit leader seems to be challenging when we need to ask for that help.”
• 23:25 - “Larger investments into technology earlier really pays off much more so over time so figuring out when to make those investments that’s a key observation that can really unlock leverage and scale at a level of efficiency that previously wouldn’t have been available to you.”

If you'd like to learn how to scale impact at your nonprofit organization by more than double in less than half the time, I'd encourage you to sign up for my free 5 day email course at https://nxtstep.io/impact/.

Markita Morris-Louis is an experienced Leader with a demonstrated history of working in various fields including the financial services industry, housing and community development, and the performing arts.

Markita is now the CEO of Compass Working Capital, a nonprofit financial services organization whose mission is to support families with low incomes to build assets as a pathway out of poverty and toward financial stability. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Scaling Impact:

• How to tackle poverty by providing access to assets.
• What an asset-building model looks like.
• How to create a culture focused on high standards.
• Different ways you can scale a business.
• How to fund a company's growth.
• How you can leverage technology to amplify your impact.
• Ways to expand bottleneck problems.

Resources:

• Compass Working Capital
• Lean Impact
• NxtStep
• Podcast Chef

Connect with Markita Morris-Louis:

• LinkedIn

Connecting with the host:

• Sean Boyce on LinkedIn
• Sean Boyce by Email

Quotables:

• 5:01 - “We all need assets in order to invest in our future and move our family forward but unfortunately many families with low incomes are living in asset poverty which basically means that they don’t have enough assets to cover even 3 months of basic living expenses without income so if you experience a disruption in income, you lose your job or your hours are reduced most families that kind of situation turns into a full-blown financial calamity.”
• 5:36 - “40 percent of Americans don’t have access to 400 dollars in case of an emergency and we’re definitely thinking about how can we change our society, change our economy, so that family with low incomes can have access to these assets that will allow them to move out of poverty, think long term, dream and set aspirations for their family.”
• 21:15 - “We were planning a launch of a remote service pilot and then the universe gave us the ideal laboratory to test all our remote service theories because we were trying to understand can we do our financial coaching work and service delivery work to family in a completely remote environment.”
• 25:14 - “One of the team members once they learned the work they were going to be doing at Compass the way they described it is like I can’t not do this work, I have to do this, this is so important and such a good fit for me and everything about what I want to do and I hear that stuff all the time from your team and I know that is a huge component of your leadership, the team that you built, all the amazing people at compass the way that you think about solving these problems on such a scale to drive amazing impact.”
• 33:15 - “There are traps to fall into which you describe so well, technology doesn’t make up for a broken or missing process, you have to have a process first and foremost that’s fundamental to everything that you’re doing, technology can help you do it faster, more cost-effectively, more efficiently to reach greater scale if you leverage it the right way you don’t need to go down those rabbit holes you don’t need to spend a lot, you can do a lot with a little so if you feel yourself spinning your wheels, getting stuck, budget overruns, it’s taking too long stuff like that if you’re experiencing any of that kind of stuff you’re doing it wrong.”

If you'd like to learn how to scale impact at your nonprofit organization by more than double in less than half the time, I'd encourage you to sign up for my free 5 day email course at https://nxtstep.io/impact/.

Brian Adamczyk has been an active performer throughout the east coast since 2005, doubling on all saxophones, clarinets, flute/piccolo, oboe, English horn, and ethnic woodwind flutes, and has performed with John Legend, The Who, Idina Menzel, Josh Groban, Sarah Brightman, Lindsey Stirling, and many more.

After initially being appointed as Director of Programming and Productions at the Brooklyn Music School in NYC, Brian became the Interim Executive Director, where he focuses on advancing the BMS mission of providing quality, accessible performing arts programming to all those who wish to receive it, regardless of economic or financial circumstances. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Scaling Impact:

• The mission of the Brooklyn Music School.
• How Brooklyn Music School was founded.
• Increasing the accessibility of performing arts programs.
• How to leverage music to drive impact.
• The difference between direct and indirect impact.
• The transformations students make going through Brooklyn Music School programs.
• How Brooklyn Music School extends access to people who have limited opportunities.
• Future plans for the Brooklyn Music School.

Resources:

• Brooklyn Music School
• NxtStep
• Podcast Chef

Connect with Brian Adamczyk:

• LinkedIn

Connecting with the host:

• Sean Boyce on LinkedIn
• Sean Boyce by Email

Quotables

• 4:09 - “It’s a very old organization, it’s 113 years old so that was something else that was very interesting to me, the history not only in the walls, the character, and the soul, the historic block that it sits on in Fort Green which is a section of Brooklyn just thinking about all the people that passed through the building and just having that history so the story goes that European immigrants came to Brooklyn specifically and I think it began as a small piano studio around 1909 we believe is the traditional founding year.”
• 8:08 - “Our programming, this is very important, ranges all the way from early childhood through senior citizens so we’re literally trying to hit every angle of one's life from start to finish and everything in between so we are now doing some work in foster care agency so as far as creating impact one big way is to generate what we believe is quality versatile programming that happens in our building and then we bring that programming through our outreach sector to many different types of partnering organization schools etc. so that creates a much larger impact.”
• 13:00 - “At BMS we’re not a conservatory mindset, we’re not trying to produce every single student to become the next Virtuoso or professional artist but what we want to do is we want to just create an introduction to all of these different performing arts and then, of course, we have very advanced students, we have talented students that do go into music or dance or some of these other disciplines and that’s great too.”
• 18:05 - “Many times not just once, I’ve got on the bus with a bunch of fifth graders they’re trying to figure out who this guy is, who coordinated the program because really they had a relationship with the teaching artist and they would just so openly say every once in a while yea Mr. Adamczyk I’m so excited to be going to this fancy club where the tall buildings are and what they were referring to is coming from the North-South areas of Phillidelphia maybe West they were talking about Center City where the highrises are and that’s where this club was and at least four or five different kids on five different occasion said I’m really excited too because I’ve never left my block before.”

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