Scaling Impact

What I talk about in this episode:

• History of Habitat for Humanity
• The difference between an organization and a movement
• How many people they've inspired since 1976
• What it means to turn hammers into votes
• Why building relationships matters
• How to find your movement
• How to scale impact at the highest level

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

Episode Transcript
0:00  
Hey everyone, Sean here and today what I want to talk to you about is Habitat for Humanity. 

1:18  
Now, this organization was founded by Millard Fuller back in 1976 and the original vision that Fuller had was to rid the world of homelessness. He wanted to provide adequate housing solutions for the needy the world over. So he had a big aggressive goal, and they've made quite a tremendous amount of progress towards that goal, which I'm going to talk about today. 

1:43  
Now, if you're unfamiliar with Habitat for Humanity, how that organization works and how it provides the impact that it drives, is it looks to provide housing solutions for the needy, but they typically do is they get those that need homes or housing solutions involved in the process of improving or building a home then ultimately, they are also able to pay for that home and they provide an access to be able to do that through a zero interest loan, which is a really cool solution and I can speak specifically from my own experience because I've been involved as a volunteer for numerous Habitat for Humanity events where we're literally swinging hammers, we're building the homes, we're putting them together, and we know who we're building them for, which like I've talked about before on the show, is an unbelievably inspiring experience. Being able to be immersed in what the organization actually does, and do the work has been really a really great experience and left quite an impression on me. 

2:52  
Information regarding the level of progress that Habitat for Humanity has made over the period of time since they've been founded - they have inspired and had involved in at least one of their projects, more than 13 million volunteers worldwide, which is incredible, just an unbelievable amount of impact provided by this organization. In fulfilling that mission of ending homelessness the world over and provide housing solutions for people that need it. In particular, those that are from low income families. So not only did I attend multiple volunteer events where I was swinging hammers myself for a while I also served on the board at Habitat for Humanity, which was a great experience as well also, I got to leverage my skills and expertise in software and technology to help them figure out how to continue advancing their mission with scaling impact. 

3:50  
Now, other there's so much to talk about when it comes to Habitat for Humanity, incredible work that they've done, the progress they've made since inception, but I want to specifically focus in an area related to how their influence evolved over time and how they continue to scale impact at different levels, despite the fact that I've already talked about some ridiculously impressive numbers. Now I want to talk to you about the original inspiration from the founder. So in forces for good Leslie Crutchfield talks about how Fuller didn't set out to build an organization he set out to start a movement and inspire everyone to get involved, which is a pretty compelling statement. When you think about it in terms of who's planning on doing what as it pertains to scaling impact. That's super interesting to think about it from that perspective, because it levels up everything that they're doing, and has a also a greater level of influence in terms of inspiring others around that mission to get involved and to help. 

5:00  
But even more impressively, after they had achieved all of the progress and success that they've had with through through the organization. They looked to turn essentially hammers into votes, where they evolve their level of influence over the course of Habitat for Humanity's success. They've definitely continued to get recognition from high level or high ranking political officials, like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, over a over the period of time that they've been doing the work that they've been doing. They've used those relationships that they've built, and they've used the success that they've had upon scaling impact to leverage that to create influence over policymakers and politicians to change policies, which can enable and them make even greater progress and scale their impact at an entirely different level than they had been before. Which is super impressive as well. Also, it's not for the faint of heart. Obviously, there's a tremendous amount of work time and effort that goes into that, but that's Habitat for Humanity doing what they need to do. To inspire people at an even greater level, to get involved as it pertains to making policy and then implementing it. 

6:26  
So there's so much to talk about when it comes to the impressive results of the organization Habitat for Humanity and what they've done. I wanted to share with you some of the more interesting elements over the course of their history, so that you can figure out how to learn from what they've done so well inspire you to make these positive changes at your organization. 

6:45  
But if I were to leave you with anything or challenging with something today, it would be what is not just your mission, but what is your movement? How do you want to create a movement and inspire others to get involved and get behind that movement? And then how can you leverage the progress that you have made that you've used to scale impact before or perhaps that's what you're doing now? How can you leverage that to have a greater influence at a different level as well to like for example, influencing policymakers and politicians.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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/.

Crystal Evans is a Former Business Banker and the President at Money Talks Edu, an NGO focused on providing educational platforms that “Combat Generational Poverty," and empower youths and adults through Financial Literacy. 

Over the past decade Crystal has partnered with several Career-Link Centers, the New Jersey District Courts New Re-Entry Program, and social service agencies; securing job opportunities through private multimillion-dollar contracting opportunities and non-profit projects. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Scaling Impact:

• The importance of having financial literacy.
• How to improve your financial literacy.
• Ways financial literacy is being made affordable and accessible.
• How Crystal is maximizing the impact she has on children.
• The benefits of using an app to complement other resources.
• How to measure the impact you’re having.
• Ways to leverage technology to scale impact.

Resources:

• Money Talks Edu
• Road to Riches
• Zoom
• NxtStep
• Podcast Chef

Connect with Crystal Evans:

• LinkedIn
• Email
• Instagram

Connecting with the host:

• Sean Boyce on LinkedIn
• Sean Boyce by Email

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/.

In this episode, I talk about:

• The origin of Teach for America
• The vision of Founder Wendy Kopp
• Teach for America by the numbers
• How Wendy made teaching in a public school "cool"
• How Teach for America recruiting results compare to investment banking
• What Wendy is up to now (solving the problem globally)
• The BIG goal you need to set to scale impact at your organization

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

Episode Transcript
0:00  
Hey everyone, Sean here and today what I want to talk to you about is the case study that is Teach for America

1:14  
Originally founded by Wendy Kopp and Wendy had set out to solve one of the largest problems our country has ever faced in education reform and her organization has arguably made the biggest impact ever of any organization that trying to tackle this problem. If you're unfamiliar with Teach for America and what the concept is, how it works is the organization matches college seniors with some of the most challenging public schools in the United States in order to spend a year or two teaching the students there and making a pretty considerable impression in a school typically without the kind of resources it really needs in order to help students. 

2:01  
This organization Teach For America that Wendy founded, started with extremely humble beginnings. She started when she was a senior at Princeton, she was studying at university and this was 1989. And she did so on a very tight budget and it borrowed office, but then it grew rapidly from there, due to her dedication and all of her hard work and the results are dramatic. In terms of what it accomplished. We talk about scaling impact. This is a excellent case study, in impact that was delivered pretty dramatically. So I mentioned she started in 89. By 1995. They had grown so fast that at the time, they were already at 10 million. And then by 2011, same organization was now at 240 million. So if you're keeping track of those numbers, that's obviously exponential and pretty aggressive growth in a relatively short period of time. 

3:01  
Now, even beyond the numbers in terms of what Teach for America has accomplished, one of the things I find most impressive and this is when this story had resonated so dramatically with me was kind of the changing of as you may hear Wendy say this if you ever listen to her speak, she said the changing of like almost a consciousness of the country and that they made such a dramatic impression on how the country thinks about school. What I mean by this is, their organization shifted the landscape to make it cool to teach at a public school in America, which is remarkable, just remarkable, such a mindset shift from what it had been previously the impression that they made on that, for so many people and there's a lot more in terms of tangible results of their efforts as well too. 

3:58  
The the way the story goes is that on Ivy League college campuses, when it came to recruiting some of their graduates or undergraduates to come work at the various organizations that do their recruiting at that level. Eventually Teach For America was in a position where they were beating out some of the most prestigious firms that people wanted to work at in investment banking and finance, management consulting as well. Whereas the Teach For America booths would be the most crowded and which received the most applicants when compared with some of those other extremely popular but you know, in industry type options that the students had available to them. So pretty dramatic results there as well also to give you an idea in terms of what the results kind of are now in terms of where Teach for America is. 

4:54  
Wendy was being interviewed sometime last year. I've watched that video recently and they talked about how, at the moment Teach For America receives I think it's more than 10 applicants for every position they have available. So essentially a greater than 10x in terms of how many applicants they get for every available position, and they have over 30,000 alumni, which is also just amazing. 

5:21  
I can speak to my own personal experience. I didn't fulfill this role myself but I was contacted I think by one of the recruiters back when I was at the university level and they were asking me about my level of interest in teaching at a public school in New York. I think it was I went to University in Philadelphia I studied engineering, but they were asking me about teaching math, which personally for myself was always something I had kind of wanted to do because it was a subject I really enjoyed, especially in high school. But I remember thinking how cool that would be to do that and subconsciously, I didn't even realize the transformation I was making even though it was something that I was interested in, I'm going to credit some if not all of my reaction there to what Teach for America did. I probably didn't even recognize it or realize it but the all of the tremendous work that they've done has likely had an impact on what my reaction was that and this is crazy number of years ago. 

6:24  
So unbelievable amount of progress and scaling impact that Teach for America was capable of in terms of making all of this positive change which is incredible. Now if you want to know more about what Wendy is up to lately, the Teach for America organization has been so successful that other countries have reached out to her about wanting to do the same thing in their own country. So as such, she's now running an organization called Teach for All where she's trying to take that same model and apply it globally. Even more impressive so trying to solve this problem now the world over since she's already made a dramatic impact on it in this country. Pretty ridiculously impressive, and again, Wendy started this program from very humble beginnings, right, in 1989 on a extremely tight budget and a shared office to you know, fast forward to the early 2010s and they were approaching a quarter of a billion dollars in annual annual revenue, which is just unbelievably impressive 30,000 alumni now and a 10 to 1 application rate to fulfill the roles that they have available. So pretty dramatic results. 

7:40  
I hope you got value out of this story. I know I love reading case studies like this because I try to extract lessons from people like Wendy and Teach for America in terms of the incredible things that they've done so you can learn from it and apply it at your own organization. So my challenge for you as part of this episode is what is your big aggressive goal. What is the transformation you would like to see happen in your industry, similar to how Teach For America made it cool to teach in a public school? What does that look like for you? How would you define it? How would you articulate it and how would you make progress against it in order to scale impact at your organization?

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/.

What I talk about in this episode:

• Problems are growing faster than we can solve them
• Incremental change won't help us catch up
• How to think BIGGER
• Why your new goal should make you uneasy
• How to think differently to achieve this new goal
• Leveraging the power of your team to innovate solutions

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

Episode Transcript
0:00  
Hey everyone, Sean here and today what I want to talk to you about with is putting yourself in the mindset of scaling impact. 

0:35  
Now, the reality of the situation that we're facing today is that the problems that leaders and nonprofit organizations and their teams are attempting to solve are growing faster than we can solve them, which means we're going to need different solutions in order to be able to meet that growing demand. So this show is all about figuring out how to scale impact. So I want to share with you a thought process that you can use with your team to put you put yourself and your team in the right mindset and prepare yourselves as best as possible to put you in a position to be able to in fact scale impact. 

1:12  
So let me talk to you a little bit more about what I mean by that. So because these problems are growing so fast, the previous way that we've been attempting to solve them, which is typically some form of an incremental change, isn't going to cut right and so because of that, we need to think differently. We need to be thinking on a significantly larger scale and that alone will help us with the process of scaling impact. What I need you to to do is think about what your previous growth goals were before and better understand how much you were expecting those to grow over your previous baseline or the benchmark that might be 10% or 20%, or something like that. Now, if you truly want to scale impact, it's not going to be able to be done 10% at a time, you really need to do something that is an exponential step change. So I'm thinking somewhere between 2 and 4x, like 200% and 400%. As in how can you help more than double the amount of people that you're helping right now? Right and when you're setting these goals, you're already scaling up impact. 

2:26  
These goals should make you feel somewhat uneasy, because there will be more uncertainty when you're thinking about your growth goals that are this much larger than they have been previously and the reason why they should make you uneasy is because the solution should not be obvious and that is the whole point of this exercise. If the solution is not obvious, and you know what you've done before, is unlikely to work to solve these problems or challenges or help you reach these goals and it's going to challenge you and your team to think differently and that's exactly what we want. 

3:02  
That's the point, right? Think differently in order to scale impact. So if you set these aggressive goals and you need to think differently, in order to scale it you're going to have to consider any and all possibilities in order to help you get there. Now what this turns into and what I'll leave you with today is this will turn into a great opportunity to meet with your team and do some brainstorming to lay out the problem and the challenge that you have in front of you to talk about the kind of results that you're looking for. To get everybody on the same page with a goal of scaling impact. And to think through how you might actually be able to get there after everyone is on the same page and understands that what you've done before isn't going to help you get to where you need to go now.

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/.

What I cover in this episode:

• Why you shouldn't consider the for-profit sector the enemy
• How to think about the situation differently
• How partnership can lead to inspiration
• Examples of what you can do with more resources
• Examples from the Environmental Defense Fund

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

Episode Transcript
0:04  
Hey everyone, Sean here and today what I want to talk to you about is that you shouldn't consider the for profit sector as the enemy. 

0:36  
A lot of people that are scaling impact and doing wonderful things in the nonprofit or mission driven world might see what's going on in the for profit sector as the exact opposite, that kind of epic good versus evil battle and I understand why you might, there's oftentimes a lot of bad press that comes from for profit organizations, doing largely what they shouldn't be doing and taking shortcuts that we've just a wake of bad decisions and massive impact to the environment or humanity. 

1:17  
However, having said that, in my opinion, there's a better way to think about this and combine efforts, which will also help scale impact and oftentimes at an even more significant level. I want to explain a little bit more about what I mean by that, instead of putting yourself in a kind of opposed stance to the for profit sector. What I might recommend or consider instead is to think about different ways that you may be able to partner with them or get involved to help interrupt what may be happening there that you know can happen better with some changes, which will dramatically reduce or significantly improve the overall results. There is a possibility of a win win scenario here. 

2:02  
I also don't want you to necessarily always consider the fact that the for profit sector is always looking for ways to take shortcuts, regardless of who it will affect. I would like you to at least consider the fact that there's certainly the possibility that in the for profit sector, there are some instances where they're simply moving too fast and making decisions too quickly, to really realize or recognize what all of the effects of that might be in every instance. 

2:30  
Now I'm not saying that organizations haven't deliberately made poor choices, and that hasn't led to catastrophe. It has time and time again and that's obviously horrible and that should never be the case, but I don't want to discourage you from getting involved and helping improve this situation because you are exactly who can make this better and I want to keep you motivated to want to be able to do that. As opposed to trying to ignore it or just kind of go your own way to make impact with the organization and resources that you have. If instead you consider the alternative of looking to potential partnerships or getting involved with them, instead of only fighting them. You might be able to make significantly more impact than you ever thought you could and I've got some examples that I can share with you as well also. 

3:24  
Now, again, you are the perfect person for this project. And when I say project, this is kind of what I mean. There's a ton of examples out there, but I'll just focus on one or two in this case. So the EDF are the Environmental Defense Fund, which for decades now under the leadership of Fred Krupp has been focused on looking for ways to protect the environment and reverse any of the damage that's been done in a multitude of areas and they've done some pretty incredible work. In this case, I'm going to focus on two examples where the EDF again led by Fred Krupp they took a different approach to this scenario and instead were willing to partner with for profit organizations and two in particular led to some pretty dramatic results. The one was that they partnered with FedEx, which is kind of the packaging distribution shipping and logistics company. They partnered with them and the ultimate result of that partnership was that they were able to enable them to convert all of their midsize trucks to hybrid instead of gas powered vehicles, which ultimately led to a dramatic reduction in carbon emissions, which is significantly better for the environment, right? We're talking about unbelievable amount of trucks are being driven essentially constantly, right? So pretty dramatic impact being scaled there. 

4:54  
In another instance, (the EDF) partnered with the McDonald's Corporation to help them eliminate essentially 150,000 tons of packaging waste which again, is amazing. Like, that's incredible. Both of those are pretty dramatic results. And without those partnerships, we wouldn't have seen those results. So regardless of the motivation, right, your mission, ultimately is highly likely to be aligned with the outcomes related to scaling impact. I imagine that's why you're probably consuming this content. But I want you to consider the possibilities of what you might be able to do if you were to instead, get involved. 

5:36  
So the kind of the reaction that I would be looking for or how I would encourage you to respond to these situations instead of seeing any of these examples that may be out there of people doing the wrong thing. Instead of getting angry and fighting it in a different way. I would say instead of getting angry, get involved and help change it.

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/.

What I talk about in this episode:

• The importance of collecting data
• Why user experience (UX) is so important
• Why your tool needs to be super flexible
• Why your tool needs to work great on a phone
• The power of connecting your tool to anything
• Leveraging a long list of integrations
• A real-world example of scaling impact with Typeform

If you would like to learn how to scale impact by more than double in less than half the time, sign up for my free 5 day email course - https://nxtstep.io/impact

Episode Transcript
0:18 - Hey everyone Sean here and today what I want to talk to you about is one of my favorite, no code or low code tools of all time, and that is called Typeform. 

0:28 - Now I'm going to explain more about what this tool is, but before I get into that, what I want to share with you is that most of the time when organizations are looking to get data from someone, a key part of what they want to do in terms of scaling impact, if they're looking to leverage software and technology, I've talked about the importance of considering what's become this vast and diverse world of really flexible, powerful tools that you can use without writing any code or knowing a lot or really anything about software engineering and Typeform is one of the best examples of that, in my opinion, and it serves one of the most important needs when it comes to what it is you may be trying to do using software technology and that's get data from someone.

1:12 - Now in this case, we may be talking about your clients, the beneficiaries of your nonprofit programs and if you're truly trying to scale impact, chances are you're probably trying to reach a wider audience, software and technology can help you do that. And as part of that process, oftentimes you need data from them. So how are you going to get it? Chances are you've considered trying to do so from a survey tool. Now, there's plenty of them out there. But my favorite is Typeform. I'm going to going to talk more about why. But key is you're trying to get data from them. So a survey tool makes a lot of sense. Something that can be done online, from a phone from a computer from a laptop, whatever. 

1:56 - Some of the important elements here to consider is how important what's considered the user experience or UX in this case, the more intuitive it is to use which essentially is a better way of saying how easy the tool may be, the better, right? We may have users or clients that have vastly different levels of familiarity with technology and so the easier it is to use, the more successful you're going to be able to get that data or for it to serve whatever purpose it is that you need. 

2:25 - Now, another key element here and this is particularly important when we're talking about the nonprofit world is it needs to be flexible across platforms. Now when I say platforms, what I mean is different types of devices, internet connected devices, someone might use to access your form, in this case, and what's most typically considered is either a laptop or a desktop or a mobile phone or a smartphone device. Now, the reason why this is obviously so important is because there are many clients, the terms of who's going to be benefiting from your program or what it is you're trying to do to scale impact that may only have access to a phone they may not have a laptop or a computer. We've seen this before and the work that I do with a nonprofit organizations that I help scale impact through software as we have to handle for these considerations. So being able to work on a phone is critically important if you want to reach many clients that do not have access to a laptop or a desktop. So the ability to operate on a phone and look good on a phone is really important and not all tools do that. Some tools claim that they do that but they don't do it particularly well. So that's critically important when we're considering this and Typeform in my opinion does it better than most. It is a very intuitive, very user friendly tool to use and it looks great on a mobile device. It gives you a similar experience of using a native app or a native application on the phone. But it isn't it's still web based, which is even more convenient for you. So having said that, like I mentioned there's a lot of tools out there that claim to do a lot when it comes to surveys and forms like Google Forms for example, but I find that the one that provides the most value and best features is Typeform.

4:14 - So obviously for the first part of it, it's about getting the data from your clients and we want to use the tool to be able to do that, but then it quickly becomes what are we going to do with this data? What are we connecting this to next? So that's the other side of this equation and that's another reason why I'm a big fan of Typeform because it integrates with so many systems and platforms and it is one of the most flexible and versatile tools for connecting it and the data that you're getting with another system. They've got a ton of native integrations supported right through the tool and even if you don't have a native integration that you can connect to directly from Typeform, that list is growing and expanding every day. It natively integrates with Zapier, which I've talked about another episode as well too, which you can kind of think of is this universal connector and another no code tool. So you can use Zapier to connect anything to anything and they have an even bigger inventory because that's their specific purpose. They're designed to take system A and connect to the System B. So Typeform has a bunch of their native integrations but it also connects to Zapier. So if it what you're trying to connect to you don't see it natively supported directly through Typeform. Chances are you could find a way to connect through Zapier so that basically just explodes the amount of the list and in terms of the number and the volume of other systems that you can connect to which is makes the tool that much more valuable for you and what you're trying to do in scaling impact. 

5:48 - So I talked about a couple of things that I think are really important when considering a tool like this. It serves a very important purpose. It's got great usability, and it's super versatile in terms of what it integrates with. I want to share with you an example of how I used a similar tool type form in order to dramatically scale impact. A client of mine wanted to take essentially the enrollment process in terms of how they were enrolling clients into their nonprofit program from offline to online. We ended up using a tool like this in order to be able to do that and Typeform provides a great example in order to give you the ability to achieve something like this for all the reasons that I previously mentioned and long story short, the results that we were able to achieve in a very short period of time we were able to get a tool like Typeform up and online in a matter of days to weeks. So we're not talking about months or years. We're talking about a very short period of time. Ultimately, after we review the results in terms of what we were able to do, it resulted in us being able to enroll 200 to 300% more clients in less than half the time. So if you're keeping track of the multiples there, that's anywhere from four to six times or 400% 600% improvement when you consider both the volume, the multiple of clients that were able to enroll and the dramatic time savings and that we were able to give them more than half of their time back which is just unbelievable. So that's that's kind of the idea here, right? And that's the idea that you may be trying to achieve or something related to that terms of scaling impact at your nonprofit organization. And that's how a tool like Typeform can help you do it without needing to know...

What I talk about in this episode:

• Why you should be ruthless in your focus
• Execution should exclusively be about impact
• Why nothing else really matters
• Why people will be uncomfortable at first
• How to make them feel more comfortable
• What to do when the results start rolling in
• The question to ask to know exactly what to do

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

Episode Transcript

0:02 - Hey everyone, Sean here and today what I want to talk to you about is why I want you to be ruthless in protecting your execution related to impact if you truly and successfully want to be able to scale it. 

0:27 - Now, the reason why I say this is because nonprofit leaders get busy and become burdened by so many things that they're expected to manage at any given point in time. But if what you're doing and investing time and resources into isn't going to help you drive or successfully scale impact, then why are you investing time in it? 

0:50 - This is a pretty radical mindset shift that nonprofit leaders might have to undergo in order to be able to shift to this type of strategy, but it can be one that can be done very successfully and we've seen many examples of that in books like Forces for Good where they follow the leaders of a dozen large nonprofit organizations that started small and rapidly scaled impact over a relatively short period of time. It was strategies like these that enabled them to be able to do that, where they were very protective over their time being invested and focused on execution. Everything that they were focused on being related to helping them successfully achieve a greater level of impact. At that point, none of the other things that you're potentially investing time into, if they don't drive impact are really all that important, by comparison, but again, this is a big mindset shift. 

1:48 - In the beginning, when you try to do something like this or you try to nudge any of the members of your team in this as a direction it'll be relatively uncomfortable for them. So you might get some resistance and pushback through questions. People may appear to be experiencing a little bit of discomfort because it's a shift potentially in terms of the way they've always been doing things. It's at the very foundation or the core of what it is, other members on the team in terms of how they've done work before. Maybe shifting under them ever so slightly. And that is a scary feeling or scary proposition for someone who has always held that as constant it's always been a consistent, foundational kind of element for them. 

2:27 - Now, the work that I do as a consultant, as a soloist at NxtStep, where I'm helping nonprofit organizations with scaling impact through software, I am able to kind of reduce how significant the forest through the trees problem can be for someone like me, because I'm often an outsider, especially when I first start working with a nonprofit organization. So I have the benefit of having the perspective of the outside looking in and this is why I'm protective over that type of arrangement between myself and my clients. It's because that perspective is healthy and valuable. For the period of time in which I am not considered kind of an internal team member or I'm not within the walls. I'm not going through the nine to five I'm not doing the day to day kind of stuff. I'm able to kind of have that outsider perspective and see with relatively unbiased or take an objective approach and ask questions like that and it's not as jarring for an organization because I'm an outsider, right? So they might just be thinking, well, he doesn't get it. He doesn't understand how things work here. That's probably not necessarily the case in almost every instance it isn't, but they're more open to that kind of feedback under that type of an arrangement. So I've been there plenty. Actually I'm there constantly, and it's one of the things I enjoy most about the work that I do. 

3:51 - What I'm trying to share with you is that you can achieve the same mindset and you can do so as a leader in a nonprofit organization, anywhere from if you're just starting with the organization all the way to and through if you've been with the organization and you want to shift your mindset because you really want to help your organization make greater progress and scale impact this is a strategy that can work very effectively, but it's got to be one that is done confidently and you have to be able to explain to the members of your team, why this is so important and why you're doing it now, despite all of that, what might become discomfort for the team in this kind of more of an aggressive or direct shift in the beginning. 

4:31 - Ultimately when the results materialize and your efforts pay off. That will speak volumes and it will connect the dots for everyone that might have been cautiously optimistic all the way to and through skeptical that this new direction or this push is ultimately going to lead to results. That's why it's also very important for you to share those results with your team and you can also go back and you could say hey, remember when we were deciding whether or not to go left and go or go right and we had always traditionally gone left and this time we went right and there was some skepticism or some uncertainty from people when we were deciding to do that? Well, here's why we did that. And here are the results. Right? This is what we're actually trying to do, right? We're not trying to hold as many meetings as possible, right? We're trying to cure childhood illiteracy or trying to pull people out of poverty. Right? That's the mission of the organization. Your results may vary depending upon what your mission is, but there's a lot of organizations that get bogged down by some of the output related stuff and aren't focusing as intensely as they should on the successful outcome component. 

5:41 - So this leads me to a question I think will be helpful for you if you're excited by the potential of this strategy, but you're unsure in terms of how to kind of get started or how to determine whether or not something you are doing today or your team is doing today whether or not that's driving impact or you know, which which should you drop in favor of focusing ruthlessly on scaling impact at the execution level. Ask yourself this question. Whatever it is, you're considering X, Y, and Z. Do these things drive impact?  Does focusing on and investing time and resources on these drive impact? If the answer to that question is no, or uncertain, then chances are you should probably stop doing it. If it's uncertain. You try to validate it and if you can't, the answer is no then it's rather simple from there. It's stop doing it and focus on the things that do drive impact.

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/.

What I share with you in this episode:

• Why you shouldn't only network within your industry
• Why different industries makes different levels of progress
• Why you need to build relationships outside your industry
• What you can expect to learn from other nonprofit leaders
• How you can apply them to your industry

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

Episode Transcript
0:39 - Hey everyone, Sean here and today what I want to talk to you about is a strategy that you can use to scale impact at your nonprofit organization by partnering with and building relationships with other nonprofit organizations leaders that compete in an industry that's different than yours. I'm going to give you a little bit of background here. 

1:35 - Now the key to this strategy is that different industries move at different levels of pace, in terms of their development, and the strategies and tactics they're using to scale impact and to grow. So because different industries move at different paces, that means that if you spent most of your time in industry A and someone else's spend most of their time in industry B then chances are you may or may not be aware of the strategies and tactics that are working successfully for each of you independently. You may only be familiar with the ones that have been talked about more regularly in your industry. 

2:11 - So whereas a lot of nonprofit leaders are building relationships with other nonprofit leaders, but within their industry, which is good as well, too. It's somewhat limiting for you in terms of what you can learn from outside your industry. Because what you're probably only hearing is how you're building relationships today for the most part, which is fairly common, then you're only likely hearing about what people are doing within your industry. 

2:38 - The reason why you want to get exposure outside of your industry is again because that key that I mentioned before, which is different industries move at different paces, meaning that there are other industries that may be trying things or have tried things, and they've worked successfully for them to see greater impact that you can take and then you can apply to yours. 

2:59 - So the strategy here is to start building relationships with other nonprofit leaders, but in different industries than the one of your nonprofit organization. For example, if we compared the finance and the healthcare industries together because of how much regulation there is around healthcare it has a tendency to essentially just make that industry move at a different pace when it comes to innovation. So if someone from healthcare is learning from someone from finance, who may not have as much regulation as healthcare does, or they may be moving at a faster pace, someone in healthcare could probably learn something and what they learned from them is something that they may very well be able to apply to their own industry, their nonprofit organization in order to scale impact in terms of what they're doing. 

3:59 - So there's a lot you can learn, if you kind of step outside of the relationships perhaps you currently have at nonprofit organizations, but in different industries than the one that you're currently operating. So that's the strategy here that I wanted to share with you an opportunity to scale and that can come from you partnering with and networking with and building relationships with other nonprofit leaders, executive directors, people that work in strategy or innovation, but nonprofit organizations that are different than the industry that which you are currently in. Leverage that whenever you can, in order to greater scale impact at your organization.

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/.

Brent Hutchinson is a successful executive with 26 years of experience in cross-sector leadership, coaching, training, team development, vision casting, program implementation, frontline fundraising, and relationship management experience in local, national, and international settings.

Brent earned a PhD in Leadership Studies, the Excellence in Nonprofit Leadership Certificate from Duke University, and was named an Obama Fellow by the Barack Obama Foundation, one of twenty civic innovators from around the globe, in 2019.

His main focus now is social sector impact, community development and organizing, issues around rurality in this age, team leadership, networking for good, and transformational change management. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Scaling Impact:

• How to drive impact through your organization.
• The best ways to invest in your team.
• How nonprofit organizations can advocate for their teams.
• How to build morale and prevent burnout.
• The problems with work environments classing themselves as a ‘family’.
• The challenging aspects of growth.
• Tools designed specifically for nonprofits.

Resources:

• Davis House Child Advocacy Center
• Taproot
• Salesforce
• The Bridgespan Group
• The Obama Foundation
• NxtStep
• Podcast Chef

Connect with Brent Hutchinson:

• LinkedIn
• Email

Connecting with the host:

• Sean Boyce on LinkedIn
• Sean Boyce by Email

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/.

What I share with you in this episode:

• What no code tools are
• How you can leverage them to scale impact
• An example of one I built for a nonprofit
• How it helped them scale impact
• How even I was fooled by the sophistication of these tools
• How your nonprofit can scale impact without any tech or software experience

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/.