Small Nonprofit: Fundraising Tips, Leadership Strategies, and Community-Centric Solutions for Canadian and American Nonprofits

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With everything that’s happening in the world right now, work can feel heavy and onerous. How can we bring back the joy in our work and feel aligned? On today’s podcast, business coach extraordinaire Lianne Kim shares with us her insight and tips on how to show up to work with a joy oriented mindset.

Get your copy of Lianne’s new bookhere Building a Joyful Business a 15% percent discount code exclusive to our listeners. Simply enter the code GOOD when you’re checking out to get the discount. 

Self-talk that Lianne wants us to walk away from:

1. “What should I be doing today?”: Rather than operating from the place of asking yourself what you should be doing, try to shift to what you would like to do. That simple mindset shift will bring more joy and meaning to your day to day.  
2. “I have no control during these unprecedented times.”: Yes. We don’t have control over how and when many things are happening in the world, but we do have control on how we respond to them. Our response is a choice that we make. 
3. “I have to serve everyone.”: You don’t have to serve every donor, client, or person in the world. Honing down in your strength and being very specific about the community of people you serve is going to make your work that much more aligned and joyful. 

Lianne’ tips on bringing back joy in our work:

1. Learn to let go. Learn to say no to projects, clients, donors that do not align with your values and vision and make space for things, people and tasks that truly matter. 
2. Cultivate the mental awareness for the mindset trap of “I am not enough.” Often when we spend so much time and energy in doing the things we think we should do, we are informed by the mindset of not-enough-ness. Building awareness to the existence of this mindset is the first step to put some distance to it. 
3. Stop playing the comparison game. Pick a lane, focus on your strength, doing things the way that you’re great at and feeling great from it. Don’t pay so much attention to what other people or organizations are doing. Think about how much you can accomplish can do with the time and energy that you spend on playing the comparison game. 

Favourite Quotes from Today’s Episode

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“Every single choice that we make can bring us closer to joy or further away.”

“I'm a big proponent that mindset really does need to be the foundation for all success. There’s no one tactic or strategy that is going to overcome a crappy mindset.” 

“It’s in the letting go of the stuff that really isn't serving us, the stuff that is going to serve us shows up.”

Resources from this Episode

The Good Partnership

Lianne Kim

Get your copy of Lianne’s new book Building a Joyful Business with our 15% percent discount code GOOD 

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As part 2 of Collecting Courage, we invited several white leaders in the sector to talk about how to be real and active allies for anti-racism work. On the podcast today are Mazarine Treyz, Fundraising Author and Coach, Chris Conroy, Partner at the Wellspring Group, and Scott Russell, Chief Executive Director at the Alzheimer Society of Toronto. 

Mazarine, Chris and Scott’ tips on being active allies: 

1. Commit to lifelong learning and listening. Allyship and anti-racism work is not a quick fix - it’s a lifelong commitment. Look for resources to help yourself learn and talk to people around you. 
2. Stepping Back and Calling Out. When you’re invited to a panel or speaking engagement that includes only white people, do the work to ask questions, call out the organizers, and step back. Acts like participating in all-white panels is perpetuating the system at work that disproportionately supports white voices over other’s. 
3. Get comfortable with confronting your own complicity. We are all complicit one way or another in participating in a system that is racist. Get comfortable with the uncomfortable feeling of coming face to face your own complicity. 

Favourite Quotes from Today’s Episode

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“Highlight people of colour and their work. Pay them if you’re inviting them to speak. Ask the questions that people don't want to ask. Like, why is the sector not a safe or good space for a lot of people of colour?” -  Mazarine

“We have to be willing to go deeper and to look at things with critical eyes and questions. We have to be honest with ourselves that we don't see our bias and complicity very well and see it very clearly.” - Scott

“Getting comfortable with getting uncomfortable is about getting comfortable with letting go of your own empowered worldview, which has come at the expense at the oppression of people with different world views and differing identities, which whiteness has itself framed and named and defined for itself.” - Chris

Resources from this Episode

The Good Partnership

Connect with Mazarine

Connect with Scott

Connect with Chris

Feral Visions Podcast

The Mother of All Questions

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On today’s podcast, editors of the book Collecting Courage: Joy, Pain, Freedom, Love -  Nneka Allen, Camila Vital Nunes Pereira, and Nicole Salmon - share with us their insight and wisdom on how to confront systemic racism in our sector by starting with speaking up and sharing stories. 

Ways that Nneka, Nicole and Camille encourages us to confront systemic racism:

1. Recognize that we are all part of a racist system. Centre the conversation on the system, and recognize that we all live and breathe in racism. Good people or organizations trying to do good can be actively participating in reinforcing systemic racism too. 
2. Recognize that both action and inaction have impact. Not only do words have an impact in making changes or perpetuating harm, silence also can have significant impact. Think about what your silence means and reinforces. 
3. Leverage collective power for change. Collective courage and power will mobilize changes. Click the links in the resource section to join and support the community of Black fundraisers or host a book club at your workplace. 
4. Show commitment to philanthropy and community that do not subject to the tradition of Western and white philanthropy. Don’t let the tradition of Western and white philanthropy speak for all philanthropic and community endeavour. The Black communities’ love for community, making a difference, and connecting with people through giving predates Western philanthropy. 

Favourite Quotes from Today’s Episode

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“The word racism is so charged because we've attached a good, bad binary to the word. And that's problematic and false. Racism is the water we swim in. So we're all infected. The question is what are we each going to do about our own infection?” - Nneka Allen

“The impact of your action and inaction lands somewhere. Words you use have a lasting impact on people.” - Nicole Salmon

“When I joined the collective, I was looking for a community, because most of the time you feel alone and you feel like you're the only one. We’re here. This is an invitation. If there's any, anyone out there in the nonprofit sector, and you're looking for a community, a place to really feel like you were at home, connect with us.” --Camila Vital Nunes Pereira

Resources from this Episode

The Good Partnership

Collecting Courage

Donate to the Black Philanthropy Fund

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On today’s podcast, David Love, seasoned fundraiser also known as the Godfather of Good, shares with us his take on the role of fundraisers in achieving change in the world. When we centre our work around the mission and the journey that we are on as an organization and how that aligns with the journey our donors are making - we can impact meaningful and lasting change in the world.

Myths that David wants us to walk away from

1. The nature of a fundraiser's work to raise money. What fundraisers actually do is create value and make connections - connecting donors to the causes that matter deeply to them. 
2. Less people are donating nowadays. Donors are stepping up again and again for different causes. Less people are donating just for a charitable receipt, but more people are giving to causes they are deeply passionate of regardless of the tax receipt. This is why we don’t yet have a great metric on the current state of philanthropy.

David’s tips on working with donors:

1. Recognize that the donors’ journey already started and you’re here to support them on their journey. No hard sell is needed. There is a reason that a potential donor is interested in the organization's mission and vision. You’re just here to support them on a path that they’re already on, guided by their own values, interest, and passion.  
2. Help them to find and support initiatives that speak to their values and the changes they want to see in the world. Ask questions or guide the donors to hone in what is it that will make them feel the spark or the connection with the impact that matters to them. 
3. Show passion and authenticity in your communication with your donors. Do away with aloof and formal language and focus on showing that you too deeply care about the mission and vision that your donors are invested in. 

Favourite Quotes from Today’s Episode

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“It’s a fallacy to think that fundraisers raise money. What fundraisers spend their lives doing is creating value. Fundraisers make dreams come true. Small organizations with difficult causes need to find ways to make the values that are at the heart of what they do come alive in a donor’s soul.”

“Donors are already on a journey. We as fundraisers didn't actually start that journey. They come to us because they're on a journey and they're actually trying to find out whether the road that we’re showing them is one we want to go down or not.”

Resources from this Episode

The Good Partnership

Connect with David on Linkedin

David’s new book: Green Green: Reflections on 51 Years of Raising Money for Nature

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How do we recover from the exhaustion and pain of the pandemic? How do we lead our organizations into the post-pandemic world with responsible leadership in service for our communities? On today’s episode, social impact leader Chi Nguyen gives us the real talk on how to approach our leadership and the way we show up with a feminist and inclusive lens. 

Chi’s tips on approaching leadership from a feminist and inclusive lens:

1. Caregiving is deeply feminist. Caregiving translates into leadership at all levels of our society. Leaders who understand the value of caregiving have the potential to transform how we are organized and governed. 
2. Purpose and responsibility driven. Think about responsibility not just for ourselves and our immediate community, but our collective responsibility for this planet and future generations. 
3. Show up as our whole selves. We carry what’s going on in our lives, our identities, and our values to the table and so let our authenticity and experience shine through our decision making and leadership. 
4. Be ok with the discomfort when wrestling with power. Disrupting systemic privilege and power structure is uncomfortable but a necessary part of the work in service for our communities. And it’s not just about disrupting power structures outside of our own organizations and our sector. We have to be able to look inward as well. 

Favourite Quotes from Today’s Episode

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“When I think about inclusive leadership and feminist leadership, it's about bringing that whole person and all of the weight of that into decision making, into how we run our organizations with lots of forgiveness and resiliency, and frankly, real humanity.”

“The best community programming and best response to community initiatives is a program that is for us by us - fundraised, led, designed, implemented. That is the model for ownership of community solutions, but it is not how our systems have been built. We need to move from a charitable model to collective impact model.”

Resources from this Episode

The Good Partnership

Chi Nguyen 

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How can I close that sponsorship deal? This is the question that keeps many fundraisers and Executive Directors up at night. On today’s episode, Charmaine Hammond, partnership development expert at Raise a Dream, shares with us an easy-to-follow, 7-step framework for building long lasting partnerships.

Myths that Charmaine wants us to leave behind

1. You have to shoehorn your nonprofit into a partnership. Have a discovery call with a potential partner and assess if there is an alignment before proceeding further. You don’t have to pursue a partner that has no value and impact alignment with your organization.
2. If there is a problem with partnership deliverables, let’s not report the problem until the point of no return. Engage your partner early on with the problem and invite them to be part of the solution. Your partner is invested in the success of the partnership just as you are. 

Charmaine’s tips on building partnerships

Listen for the full episode to get all of Charmaine's tips and the complete 7-step framework. 

1. Go beyond the obvious for partnership research. Try to see where your partners are speaking at, what social media engagement they are doing, and what campaigns they are involving themselves in. 
2. Let the partnerships/sponsors tell you what to include in a proposal. Ask them explicitly what would be helpful to include, what should not be included, who else will be involved in the decision making process and viewing the proposal etc. 
3. Continue to consistently engage your partners after the partnership is concluded. Get in touch with partners and see how they’re doing. Keep tabs on what initiatives they’re engaged in. Share program updates from your side. Keep in touch with them like your friends and the relationship will flow organically. 

Favourite Quotes from Today’s Episode

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“I don't want any surprises when potential partners read the proposal and contract I send over. So when a potential partner asks for a proposal, I say absolutely, I can put it together and ask these questions: what would you like me to send you? Who else is going to be looking at it just you? Okay. Oh, you've got to bring in some other team members, what will they want to see? How many pages? What do I not need to cover? What do I need to ensure is in there for you to take this forward and sell it?”

“What I have learned is the earlier you bring a possible issue forward to a partner, the more support you get in the solution, because nobody at this point wants to see  failure. Everybody is committed to make the partnership successful. So, let people be part of the solution.”

Resources from this Episode

The Good Partnership

Raise a Dream

Connect with Charmaine on Linkedin

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We’re so busy taking care of everything that often we forget to take care of ourselves first. How do we create space for ourselves in our day to day so that we build resilience in the long run? Tune in to this amazing conversation with Komal Minhas, a resilience educator with a mission to help people rise through adversity 

Myths that Komal wants us to leave behind

1. We need to build resilience or learn to be resilient. You’re already resilient. We’re all resilient by being able to live through life and overcoming difficult things. Believing that you already have resilience in you is the first time towards building an even more resilient system of habits and behaviours for yourself. 
2. We need to avoid burnout and low points in life. Instead, accept that we will inevitably experience burnouts and low points in life, and focus on when we do experience those difficult periods, what is the system in our life that will help us get back to baseline, and how fast. 

Komal’s tips for cultivating resilience in the long run

1. Celebrate what we have overcome. Celebrating moments that you have exercised resilience and perseverance to overcome difficulties is just as important as celebrating the positive moments in your life. Only when you start seeing and recognizing your incredible resilience that you can cultivate it further.
2. Create space in your day to day for yourself. Are you reserving time and space for yourself to move, eat, relax, breathe? Be a better friend to yourself every day, rather than waiting for your mind and body to be totally burned out to step up your self care game. 
3. Cultivate your identity and wholeness outside of work. Find joy and fun things that nurture your soul outside of your work so that work and productivity are not the only things that define you and confine your life. 
4. Build wellness habits that you enjoy and have an accountability buddy or community. The key is to focus on wellness habits that you truly like to do. Start with small things, and try to find a buddy or a community of people to keep you accountable. That will likely make the habits stick. 

Favourite Quotes from Today’s Episode

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“We often say celebrate your birthday; celebrate the promotion; celebrate the good things. How often do we encourage each other to celebrate those difficult things? But it's equally as important, if not more important, because we expect only positivity to be celebrated when in fact like that tenacity, perseverance, resilience we have for overcoming difficult things is really what makes those positive moments matter that much more.”

“How do we cultivate a wholeness in our identity outside of work when we are confined to our homes. This is the challenge we face in this pandemic. And if instead of feeling victimized by that, we can flip the switch and say, I'm going to rise to this challenge. I'm going to make game nights with my friends online or with my family. I'm going to constantly move my body, I'm going to find pockets of joy, I am going to turn off my laptop at six o'clock. I'm going to set boundaries with work. We can almost gamify developing our wholeness, outside of our productivity, and for me that's a big aspect of resiliency that we need to talk about in our work-addicted culture.”

Resources from this Episode

The Good Partnership

Komal’s website

Connect with Komal on Instagram

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We often think about branding for our organizations as something that speaks to communities we serve and stakeholders we answer to. We forget to count our staff and prospective staff in that list. How is your organization speaking to current and future employees? On today’s podcast, Laura Tolhoek, President of Essential HR, shares with us how to build your employer brand and recruit and keep the talents your team needs. 

Laura’s tips on building your employer brand

1. Understand and clarify your organization’s value proposition to employees and show that in your job posting.  What experience are you offering to your team? What are your values and what is your culture like? Answer these questions internally and make sure you communicate these in job postings. 
2. Build a pay compensation framework. This will help guide the leadership team in hiring, and if you are confident in your pay compensation framework, there is no reason why the organization cannot share salary range in job posting. Pay range transparency is what candidates look for as an indicator of the organization’s value in pay equity. 
3. Amplify what’s working and aligned with your employer brand. So often we focus on what is not working in our HR practice and our culture, and forget about things that are working. Lean into what is already working so well and amplify those aspects in your organization. 
4. Make onboarding a priority. The onboarding process can make or break a new hire’s experience. Don’t just hand off a bunch of documents and policies to the new hire. Make sure to have someone introduce the organization and be available to the person. If you are the hiring manager and you do not have the capacity, that’s ok. Assign this task to people in your company who are keen on doing this and love meeting new people. 

Favourite Quotes from Today’s Episode

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“If you can provide yourself with the pay compensation framework that you're confident in, and if you're confident in those numbers, then there's no problem providing those numbers to other people and include in job posting, because you can give the reasons why they're there.”

“Anything to do with HR, top to bottom, is about communication. There is no such thing as over-communication in the recruitment process.” 

Resources from this Episode

The Good Partnership

Essential HR

Laura on Linkedin

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More and more organizations are prioritizing diversity and inclusion as their strategic priorities. But how are organizations actually doing this work? On today’s episode, Trish Mandewo, Founder & CEO at Synergy on Boards Consulting Group and Coquitlam City Councillor, shares with us how to distinguish D&I tactics that are lip service and perpetuate harm from those that have a lasting and meaningful impact. 

Myths that Trish wants us to walk away 

1. If we have diverse representation in our leadership team and on our board, our organization will be inclusive. Tokenism is far from diversity and inclusion. As well, don’t automatically assume BIPOC people have the expertise or responsibility to push for diversity, inclusion and equity at the organization. 
2. We will do a D&I training and we will have done “the work.” If your mindset is that D&I work is something to be done within a short span of time with limited effort and resources, you’re already starting at the wrong place. Diversity takes time, and diversity, inclusion and equity is a commitment, not a temporary goal. 

Trish’ tips on building diverse and inclusive culture

1. When you recruit, look outside of your own circle. If you’re struggling to look for diverse talents, it’s not that there are none. Most likely, it’s because your organization has been looking at the same places or engaging the same exec search firm that doesn’t include diverse talents in their network. Get out of your familiar circle and cast the net wider.
2. Assess your inclusive framework with all kinds of inclusion in mind. Don’t limit your equity and inclusive framework and policy to inclusion based on race. There are many kinds of discrimination, gender based, age based, disability based etc. Look at everything with an inclusive lens. 
3. Don’t do preferential hiring based on diversity measures and then shove all the EDI responsibilities to those employees or board members. This in itself is perpetuating the narrative and culture of discrimination. No one wants to be seen, valued or hired solely based on their race, gender, age etc. Trust and value diverse talents for their competencies and apply true meritocracy. 

Favourite Quotes from Today’s Episode

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“We need to not wait to be invited to come to the circle. We need to invite ourselves into the circle. Because when you experience inequity over the years, you get to a point where you just think you’re just going to stand outside the circle and look in. Keep inviting yourselves into the circle.”

“Inclusion starts now, and diversity takes time. Show me that your company actually has an inclusion framework so that when the person that you're looking for comes in,  they're going to come into your place that’s welcoming, where they can feel like they belong. If your organization is just going to hire diverse candidates and do nothing else, then you might be bringing in people into an environment which is not ready or welcoming for them.”

Resources from this Episode

The Good Partnership

Trish on Linkedin

Synergy on Boards

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How can charities become “investment-ready”? On today’s podcast, Narinder, Managing Partner at Marigold Capital, shares with us what impact investors, grantors, and other funders, are looking for when choosing charity partners, and how charities can assess whether an investor or funder is the right fit for them. 

Myths that Narinder wants us to walk away 

1. We have to fit a program into funders’ objectives. If you are tweaking a program so much to fit funders’ objectives to the extent that it does not align with your organization's mission and vision anymore, you have to pause and ask yourself what is the long term value that this funding will bring to your organization. 
2. Never say no to money. It takes courage for the leaders of a nonprofit to assess any given funding is aligned with their mission and vision. Be very clear of what your vision is. If there is no alignment, it is ok to walk away. 

Narinder’s tips on becoming investment ready:

1. Do your research on similar charities in the space and highlight your unique value proposition. Your understanding on who else is doing similar work as your charity and rationale for why your organization’s work is different, unique or needed will show to the funders that you have a deep understanding of the space you’re in and what your organization’s role in the space is. 
2. Celebrate your leadership team’s lived experience. More and more, funders and impact investors are just valuing the leadership team’s professional experience. They also assess the lived experience of the board and staff to get a sense of their potential community expertise and perspective. 
3. Have a clear vision on how the investment will fit into your strategy, not the other way around. Constantly inventing programs to fit a funding requirement not going to work. Impact investors care about the sustainability of your organization’s business model. They would be less likely to invest in your organization if they don’t see themselves adding value to your work in the long term. 

Favourite Quotes from Today’s Episode

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“Asking a simple question of who else is doing what you're doing and how is your approach different sometimes is the most revealing. If what your organization is doing is unique that no one is coming close to what you're doing, but you don't have a sense of your neighbor who's doing a similar program, that tells me a lot about the actual work that you're engaging in and potentially the why.”

“As a funder, I most appreciate when the executive directors say - this is my strategy, and this is your funding bucket and this is how it fits into my strategy that I've already defined. That way you're not unintentionally getting into mission drift and find yourself creating many different programs that may or may not drive value for the organization.”

Resources from this Episode

The Good Partnership

Narinder on Linkedin

Marigold Capital

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