Scaling Impact

In this episode, Community Engagement Officers from DreamSpring, Shaundra, and Meghan, share insights on the importance and impact of community engagement in small business growth. They discuss strategies for effective outreach, trust-building, and partner stewardship. The hosts also highlight the benefits of partnerships and the significance of investing in relationships for long-lasting success. Additionally, they touch on measuring impact and taking care of oneself and their ecosystem while growing a business.Join Shaundra Jacobs and Meghan Rauker on this episode as they share their remarkable career journeys. Shaundra's experience spans roles at AT&T, Lyft, and BakerRipley, leading to her current position as a Community Engagement Officer at DreamSpring, where she fosters relationships to support entrepreneurs. Meghan's expertise lies in strategic communications, program management, and business development, showcased through her roles at PeopleFund and as a Business Development Lead at TÁPI Story. Together, they offer invaluable insights into community engagement, nonprofit organizations, and business growth strategies. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Scaling Impact:Community engagement is about long-term and sustainable outcomes, building relationships, and meeting the needs of priority populations such as minority entrepreneurs, women entrepreneurs, and veterans.Engaging effectively with communities involves asking why and offering services of value, being location-based, and using technology effectively. Consistency and genuineness are also essential.Building sustainable partnerships involves asking directly, “What do you need?”Regular touchpoints and checking in with partners can pay off down the line.Partnerships can help solve similar challenges and complement each other's roles.Community engagement is a vital part of small business growth.The company is rapidly expanding and offers a monthly entrepreneurial resource newsletter called Springboard.Resources:DreamSpringDreamSpring NewsSpring Board NewslettersBusiness Resource BlogNxtStepPodcast ChefConnecting with Shaundra Jacobs and Meghan Rauker: Shaundra JacobsMeghan RaukerConnecting with Sean Boyce:LinkedInEmailQuotables:03:33 - “Money is not always the answer. It is more to educate and empower people to be able to start a small business, be entrepreneurs and sustain themselves and their family, create generational wealth. That is our goal with this engagement role.”17:36 - “I just love to see it in a chart form and say, oh look at all these people I've connected with and let me see exactly where my, you know, how I've interacted and engaged with people. So that's how HubSpot does help us. That's our little way. And then we do have other things like Domo that'll show exactly the impact, and it pulls it into charting and shows you how many people you've impacted and all of that.”08:28 - “That's the other trick I'd also add to organizations, if you can find other people who have titles like community engagement or community manager in their role, they're much more likely to respond to you. And it's also really great to have like a peer in that space if that's your job. And you're just kind of starting to navigate that space.”24:12 - “So kindness goes a really long way in connecting with people even after they've left the organization. Especially if you get along, and you're passionate about the same things goes a super long way. Again, it's a long game, a super, super long game, it's a marathon for sure. You have to make sure you take care of yourself and the people in your ecosystem while you're doing it.”24:36 - “You want to invest in these relationships and the more you invest in them, the more likely you're to get out of it as well too. As such, the community benefits as well. So I love the partnership angle for a whole bunch of reasons. Just great to be able to kind of grow together, find folks who are trying to solve also similar challenges, and maybe they play a complimentary role to what it is that you may be doing as such. You can grow together, right? Rising tide raises all ships kind of 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/.

In this episode of Scaling Impact, Sean Boyce hosts Anne Haynes and Marisa Barrera from DreamSpring to discuss their mission of supporting entrepreneurs and driving economic and social change. They explore the meaning of impact and the importance of equitable access to capital. Additionally, they delve into the role of nonprofit boards in fundraising, building a partnership with CEOs, and maximizing positive change. Marisa Barrera is the Chief Impact Officer at DreamSpring, bringing over 27 years of experience to her role. With a background in public and international affairs, Marisa is dedicated to driving economic equity and inclusion through her work. Anne Haines, the CEO and President of DreamSpring, is a recognized leader known for her commitment to ethics and excellence. Under her guidance, DreamSpring has become one of the top-performing nonprofit microfinance institutions in the United States, providing funding and support to small businesses across 27 states. Anne's vision and impact have earned her numerous awards and accolades, making her a respected figure in the industry. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Scaling Impact:Equitable access to capital is essential in empowering entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds.Regular communication, exposure to the organization's work, and in-person meetings keep the board engaged.Dream Springing transitioned from a larger board of directors to a smaller one to enhance governance and leadership excellence.The composition of the board is carefully developed to best support the organization's short term and long term strategic goals.Technology expertise has been brought onto the board to support the development of Dream Springing's in-house software.The board's role is to align its membership with the organization's strategic goals and ensure impactful outcomes.The episode provides valuable advice and insights for other organizations looking to achieve similar success.Resources:DreamSpringNxtStepPodcast ChefConnecting with Marisa Barrera:LinkedInConnecting with Anne Haines:DreamSpringConnecting with Sean Boyce:LinkedInEmailQuotables:05:08 - “So as a nonprofit community development organization, we're very committed to putting capital into the hands of underserved entrepreneurs and historically underserved communities. For us to make the broadest space economic and social impact, we believe that combining passion and heart and technology to support the scaling of impact are all critical inputs into some of the desired outcomes.”13:52 - “Nonprofit boards are also responsible for being advocates for the organization for ensuring sufficient financial resources for an organization, which means nonprofit board of directors mostly do need to get involved in fundraising. I think there are very few nonprofit boards where there isn't, you know, some kind of fundraising responsibility that is actually a core part of a nonprofit board role.”25:57 - “And so we do find that it is important to cultivate through the board's nominating and governance process, really mindful identification of board members who bring the experience, the networks, the background that are needed for a nonprofit's mission fulfillment.”06:32 - “And when we are working with small businesses, it's so important that every entrepreneur around the country, no matter what their background is, men, women, entrepreneurs of color, individuals with a disability, whoever that person is, if they're dreaming of starting a business and have the tenacity and grit to launch it, we wanna make sure that they're championed and have access to capital to start that business or to grow the business.”16:19 Sean: “So how do you keep the board engaged in the work that's ongoing so that they can also maximize their impact and track progress?” .. Anne: “Certainly it begins before somebody becomes a board member with a series of really thoughtful conversations. There should be a committee of the board of directors or if it's a very small board to start with, it could be the full board that evaluate who might be potential candidates that would be great for the organization, where the organization would be great for who they are and the passion they have.” 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, Amber Kani, Head of Stakeholder Engagement at Dream Springing, talks about their approach to using technology to overcome challenges in scaling impact for underrepresented communities. She emphasizes the importance of analyzing donor journeys and addressing pain points through technology while staying open to changes. Dream Springing also adapts to pandemic challenges by providing self-paced options for donor engagement.Amber Kani is an experienced professional in the field of stakeholder engagement and philanthropy. She currently serves as the Head of Stakeholder Engagement at DreamSpring, where she has successfully implemented comprehensive business development and stewardship strategies to advance the organization's mission. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Scaling Impact:Dream Springing is a nonprofit that provides small business owners and entrepreneurs underrepresented in traditional banking access to capital, education, and resources.Technology is key to scaling impact by reducing friction points for clients and donors alike, enabling Dream Springing to capture data to improve outreach for clients and fundraise more effectively beyond traditional networks.Map out the existing workflows to identify challenges and select appropriate technologyUnstick stakeholders by adding a touchpoint into the process and identifying needs to hire appropriate staffKnow your process and deploy your team intentionally.Crafting innovative solutions using the resources available.Technology enables stakeholder engagement to be more impactful.Resources:DreamSpringNxtStepPodcast ChefConnecting with Amber Kani:LinkedInEmailConnecting with Sean Boyce:LinkedInEmailQuotables:09:12 - “And by leveraging technology we're able to take our digital assets, client features, videos, things that tell our story better than I ever could face-to-face or in a letter and get them in front of people that go beyond the networks of anyone on your fundraising staff. You know, capacity is always a challenge for nonprofits, and leveraging technology can let your fundraisers and your partnership builders and your executive teams do what they do best. And it also enables your clients to have a voice in the process.”11:24 - “I mean, the great thing about technology is you're constantly getting data on what is working and what isn't, and it enables you to pivot and change as you need. And it would take a long time to figure that out with face-to-face and meetings, certainly at the scale that we're trying to do it.”11:45 - “Because in terms of cost-effectiveness, I've seen a lot unfortunately of nonprofit organizations that have developed amazing local programs but then they kind of collapse, or they stall under the weight of the growth that they want to try to achieve as they're trying to scale because they haven't taken into account just how expensive time-consuming, how much effort is going to be involved and what it's going to be like trying to manage that at scale.”19:36 - “Because you're expecting the process that worked yesterday to work for the process of tomorrow's world. That's unlikely to be the case, even if it does, it's going to be significantly less effective. So you're going to need processes to improve those as well too. It isn't like they're going to have to adapt, they're going to have to evolve, and your tools should evolve with you as well too.” 13:27 - “Sean: You'd alluded too as well to the data that you've used to kind of better understand where to apply technology, software, any of these other tools that can help you with scaling more efficiently. What does that look like? What is DreamSprings' process for that? Like how do you know where to apply it next that would also be good for, you know, other nonprofit leaders to learn from in terms of what you've done successfully?Amber: Yeah, I think the first thing is you need to put your head down before you can put your head out. And you know, we really looked internally at who are our donors and partners, and aspirationally who are we trying to attract? Because like you said, the folks who are supporting you in your backyard and your community are absolutely essential.” 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, 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 FundNxtStepPodcast ChefConnecting with Melissa Luna:LinkedInConnecting with Sean Boyce:LinkedInEmailQuotables: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 FundNxtStepPodcast ChefConnect with Casey Johnson:LinkedInEmailConnecting with the host:Sean Boyce on LinkedInSean Boyce by EmailQuotables: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:BravenNxtStepPodcast ChefConnect with Aimee Eubanks Davis:LinkedInConnecting with the host:Sean Boyce on LinkedInSean Boyce by EmailQuotables: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 mostThe 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 FundThe Center for Effective PhilanthropyLean ImpactNxtStepPodcast ChefConnect with Margaret Hall:LinkedInEmailConnecting with the host:Sean Boyce on LinkedInSean Boyce by EmailQuotables: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 HomeThe American Cancer SocietyEntrepreneurs' Organization PhiladelphiaBloomerangNxtStepPodcast ChefConnect with Paul Isenberg:LinkedInConnecting with the host:Sean Boyce on LinkedInSean Boyce by EmailQuotables4:59 - “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 EndowmentTara Health FoundationThe XX edge unlocking higher returns and lower riskDiversity Matters: The Role of Gender Diversity on US Active Equity Fund PerformanceTelltale signs of higher returns? Gender mix could be oneEthos ESGNxtStepPodcast ChefConnect with Patience-Marime Ball:LinkedInConnect with Ruth Shaber:LinkedInConnecting with the host:Sean Boyce on LinkedInSean Boyce by EmailQuotables3:56 - “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 AmericaHow to Staff Your Nonprofit for SuccessLeveraging Fractional Staff To Confront Common Nonprofit ChallengesNxtStepPodcast ChefConnect with Vicki Burkhart:LinkedInConnecting with the host:Sean Boyce on LinkedInSean Boyce by EmailQuotables14:18 - “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 SolutionsCrazy and the King PodcastHubSpotNxtStepPodcast ChefConnect with Julie Sowash:LinkedInTwitterInstagramConnecting with the host:Sean Boyce on LinkedInSean Boyce by EmailQuotables9:19 - “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 CapitalLean ImpactNxtStepPodcast ChefConnect with Markita Morris-Louis:LinkedInConnecting with the host:Sean Boyce on LinkedInSean Boyce by EmailQuotables: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 SchoolNxtStepPodcast ChefConnect with Brian Adamczyk:LinkedInConnecting with the host:Sean Boyce on LinkedInSean Boyce by EmailQuotables4:09 - “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.” 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/.

Lindajoy Jackson is the Director of Business at Hopeworks and has a demonstrated history of working in the government administration industry.LindaJoy is skilled in Coaching, Management, Leadership, Risk Management, Strategic Planning, and Business Development. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Scaling Impact:What an antipoverty organization does.The opportunities having tech knowledge gives you.How to measurably drive the impact an organization is having.What it means to scale impact.The implications of scaling impact.How to leverage technology and software to reach a wider audience.What being trauma-informed means and why it’s important.Resources:HopeworksNxtStepPodcast ChefConnect with Lindajoy Jackson:LinkedInEmailConnecting with the host:Sean Boyce on LinkedInSean Boyce by EmailQuotables2:36 - “If you’re between the ages of 17 and 26 those are our only parameters for joining the program 99 percent are unemployed and making 400 dollars or less a year the goal is to get them into a stable living wage or above job so for us on average people are making 43 thousand dollars a year when they come out.”4:39 - “You don’t necessarily need a postsecondary degree or anything like that to get into the field so that’s a great place that entry-level tech space we know that people can make a good salary and then with some soft skills as well as actual some actual tech skills that can really open up a door for them where not only can they get in at a really great place there’s also a tremendous amount of growth that they can have in their careers as well.”12:02 - “For impact I think a huge piece is being able to serve more people when we talk about scaling so that means our physical facilities have to be different we have to have more space.”23:42 - “It’s so easy to keep moving a million miles an hour sometimes we can forget how important it is to just take a step back and take a breath and hear somebody out in terms of how’s everything going, everybody's so focused on pushing and moving forward but if you don't take that time and take those necessary precautions then that can set up some form of failure or setback at a later date which you could have prevented.”24:42 - If you had had a brief conversation and someone just said I need two days off to deal with this you could have avoided turnover or whatever that might be and what we have found is that it has made us more successful not less successful, our numbers are getting better and better as we turn into a trauma-informed organization impact, success, KPIs went up.” 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:Why overhead is vilifiedWhy it really shouldn’t beWhy a higher overhead is a sign of progressWhere the focus really should beHow to position your performance to avoid this trapIf 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 TranscriptHey everyone, Sean here and today what I want to talk to you about is why overhead is consistently vilified, or why it shouldn't be because it matters when it comes to scaling impact. Now, overhead is everyone's favorite line item on the balance sheet to pick on, especially when it comes to nonprofits. The public and other people seem to have this impression that if you're doing what you're supposed to be doing or you're making the most of the dollars that are contributed towards you, and your overhead should be extremely low or near zero. For a whole multitude of reasons. This is just wildly impractical, and in my opinion, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of what overhead represents. Now, while we might not all love the fact that we have to have and manage overhead, it doesn't mean it isn't important. Your overhead is a key element of making sure that you have a strong team. If your overhead is being kept ridiculously low deliberately so then that is going to impact the strength of your team and what your team is capable of. I love the saying that goes if you want to go fast go alone and if you want to go far go together. The reason why I like that is because it really highlights the fact that you can't do this alone, and you can't remain ridiculously lean to the extent where it affects your performance. You need a strong team if you're going to have a strong team. That means your overhead is not going to be ridiculously low or near zero and people need to understand that. But what I would recommend doing instead of focusing on overhead especially if people are trying to beat you up over that is to readjust their focus and reposition the conversation around impact. Right because I've heard these heartbreaking stories about nonprofit organizations who overhead has grown. And people have just kind of run with that as a story and then made them out to look like they were doing something they weren't supposed to be doing. When in reality their overhead was growing because their impact was scaling. And they were making significantly greater contributions over time. So the overhead played a key element in that but it was correlated to what was most important and that was the impact that they were generating. So if people are taking a closer look at your overhead and they really want to know why that number is growing or getting bigger, then I would encourage you to refocus them around where the performance really should be and why that overhead is going up because your impact is going up, ideally even faster. So that's what matters more than most and that should help you avoid this as a trap. 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 on this episode:What jobs to be done is all aboutHow it works in practiceWhy it’s important to drive innovationThe mistakes you make if you skip itHow your organization should use itRead the book - Competing Against LuckIf 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 TranscriptHey everyone, Sean here and today what I want to talk to you about is a framework referred to as jobs to be done, and how learning more about it can help you with scaling impact. Now the jobs to be done framework comes from an author by the name of Clayton Christensen and it's talked about in detail in his book that's called Competing Against Luck. Now, in this book, they talk quite a bit about how people ultimately decide to or not to make the kind of progress that they want to in their lives. That's kind of what you could consider to be a high level description of the jobs to be done framework is all about. It tries to put the emphasis on figuring out how people are determining whether to use or not use certain products in their lives. And it puts it in this context of what job are you hiring that product to do. And if you think about it from this perspective, I think it immediately might seem a little bit confusing but in reality, when you think about the products you use in your lives or whatever it is your laptop, your car, you may or may not have had pair of headphones, I'm just looking around at some of the stuff that I have on my desk here I'm holding a pen, right the two different products that we use, we use them for specific purposes. And that's the point of this framework is to figure out why people ultimately decide to use certain products and also put into context any of the other products they have decided not to use instead of that product. And that's what jobs to be done is all about. So this framework can be particularly helpful for you to get a better understanding in who it is you're looking to learn more about so that you can figure out which problems they have that you can help them with right and if we put this through the context of what your organization is likely trying to do in scaling impact. If you're, for example, nonprofit organization, you can think of this, you can leverage the jobs to be done framework to figure out how to best scale impact by first getting a better understanding and who you want to help. That's the place to start. Once we know who that is, right? Maybe that's your nonprofit program client. Maybe that's the members of your organization, whomever it is, we need to be specific about that. Right? Because we need to be talking to the same type of person, as we're figuring out how to leverage this framework to figure out how to scale impact now if we're focused on your nonprofit program, clients might be figuring out how to help them more with whatever the mission is of your organization, like ending asset poverty or helping cure education problems and things like that. If we're focused on your team, it might be around how to enable them to increase their leverage so that they can help more of your clients, right? Maybe we're talking about getting them time back, or enabling them to do more with less, whatever it is, right? Those might be some of your high level objectives. But once you figure it out who you want to help, now you start leveraging this as a framework. By spending time with those individuals and focus on something called storyboarding. That's where you learn all the things of unrelated to what it is is going on at the moment in this individual's life as it pertains to the particular topic or problem that you ultimately want to help them with and that problem is either going to be a major issue or minor issue or somewhere in between for them. But you're only going to get the context that you need by interviewing them, and better understanding the kind of impact that problem may be having on their life. Then once you're talking to them about that you can learn more about how they're trying to solve that problem today.  Is to help them improve, right and there's a lot more about this framework that helps you understand how to leverage it in order to continue to pursue investing in some of these innovative strategies. And in particular, because it's what we talk about on this show different ways to help your organization with scaling impact. This is a more advanced product concept, or strategy, but I want to share it with you because if you want to dive in further and learn more about it, I've got resources to share with you there as well too. It can be particularly helpful in establishing the right mindset, which will help your organization think through how to leverage different tools and resources for scaling impact more effectively. It really prevents a number of different problems which might arise if you don't have a framework like this to guide you. Like for example, building a solution for a problem that doesn't exist. We see that a lot in the product world. So if you just start with whatever it is your idea to try to solve because you think that problem may be out there if you're not in the target market and you haven't done this discovery work and you haven't done the storyboarding, then you're probably likely to miss and if you miss, you might invest a lot of time and money into a project which ultimately doesn't deliver the results that you're looking for, as an organization. So if you want to learn more about the jobs to be done framework, and I'd highly encourage that you do so if you're trying to scale impact your nonprofit organization, get a copy of Clayton Christensen's book called Competing Against Luck. 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:What storyboarding is all aboutThe purpose of storyboardingWhy you need to know this level of detailHow to get started at your organizationWhen you’ll know you’ve found an opportunityIf 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 TranscriptHey Everyone, Sean here and today, what I want to talk to you more about is a concept called storyboarding and why it's so important to do well, in order to give your organization the best opportunity to scale impact. Now the concept of storyboarding, for me comes up when I'm thinking about a topic related to what's called jobs theory, which is another concept you can use. That is helpful for figuring out how to leverage products and particular software products. In order to scale impact. Jobs theory focuses on this concept of better understanding what job the person that you're trying to help is trying to solve, in order for their problem to be resolved. Now storyboarding plays an important element in leveraging jobs theory to achieve success by using different types of products. And that product can be virtual. It can be software and technology in this case, as as is often a lot of the work that I do to help nonprofit organizations with scaling impact. And storyboarding is a concept of really getting to understand that person very well, and what's going on in their life, to better understand anything that might be standing in the way of them leveraging a new product or a solution in order to help solve their problem, which should be related to the impact that your organization is trying to drive. Storyboarding is a concept is really figuring out everything that's going on in said individual's life, so that you have a better understanding and what might be standing in their way of leveraging certain solutions. And you can also figure out where there are genuine opportunities for you to take advantage of by helping them in a way that they may not be actively searching for a solution themselves. Some of those instances they have problems where they don't have solutions. Other instances they have problems where they do have solutions, but those solutions are falling short. And you need to know as much as you can about this in order to figure out how to best help them and how to scale impact. So storyboarding is concept of figuring out how to be able to tell from start to finish, everything that's going on in the individual's life that you need to know in order to figure out what they're doing before, during and after. When they're experiencing whatever problem is you're intending to help them solve. That's because there might be something standing in the way of them ultimately leveraging a solution you may want to provide. And if you don't have that context, they'll be prevented from being able to leverage your solution and benefit from the value you're trying to provide for them. I'll give you an example. If you'd like to provide some form of tech solution to let's say, some of your nonprofit program clients, and it's only available on a workstation or a laptop or a desktop computer. But your nonprofit clients don't have access to a desktop or a laptop computer they're never going to be able to use your solution. So that's a barrier to them to be able to leverage your product and get the value out of it. Regardless of how well it might ultimately solve their problem. If they can't access it, then that's going to prevent them from being able to use it. That's why in a lot of work that we do, were quite a bit of our nonprofit program clients that don't have access to workstations. We leverage mobile solutions because many of them do have access to cell phones or smartphone technology. As such, we can make products work on that platform. To be able to ensure that more of our clients are able to access that as a digital solution. So this is something that would come up if you were performing storyboarding, where you're asking them all these questions about what they're doing before, during and after, whenever they're experiencing a certain problem. So that you know everything you need to know about what type of experience that you're trying to create for them. And that word experience is very important when leveraged in this context, because it's thought of as something that's comprehensive, right? And it's all encompassing. It's not just a product that I flip on like a switch and I use for a period of time and then you flip it off. That might be how your nonprofit program client ultimately uses your product. But what happens before that and after that is very important. And storyboarding helps you capture that. So I want you to dive a little bit deeper into this as a concept and learn it really well because it's going to be very important for figuring out how to scale impact if you only have a piece of the story, then you may be missing a lot of context, which is going to prevent you from having the success that you want and being able to reach the kind of scale and impact that's going to be important for your organization to be successful in helping your clients or your team or whomever it is you'd like to help with what you're trying to solve. 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/.

On this episode I talk about:What product management isHow nonprofit organizations can leverage product managementThe skills that make a good product managerHow to upskill your team into the roleWhat to have them work on to maximize impactIf 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 TranscriptHey everyone, Sean here and today what I want to talk to you more about his the work that I do and how you can leverage it and your organization to scale impact and what I mean by that is product management. Now, you may have heard this phrase before, you may be somewhat familiar with this role, or you may have never heard of anything even somewhat related to it and that's okay. This episode is intended to explain to you more about what product management is and how at your nonprofit organization you can leverage the skills of a product manager, both from any of the team members you already have or someone you can potentially add to the team at a future date in order to greater scale impact at your organization. So if you're unfamiliar with product management, it often gets confused with more common terminology like project management or a project manager. And it's slightly different than that, but I usually try to explain things whenever I can in the context of another familiar concept that people are aware of like project management, for example. So I'll start there. If you've heard of Project Management before, you're probably somewhat familiar with what goes into managing a project, right? There might be timelines and might be people that might be setting the goals and measuring progress against them that might include managing budgets as well also, everything of and related to that project and the project can really include anything. It doesn't really matter what it is from building anything somewhat tech related to building houses or working on a project at your organization, right, whatever that is. A project manager can oftentimes help you with keeping everything organized and making that progress that you would like to now the way that I like to kind of describe what product management is, is I'm going to I'm going to compare it to your project manager. Now whereas a project manager is keeping track of all those things that I mentioned before, the difference between that and a product manager that I would say as a product manager is often doing so exclusively with some type of physical or virtual product. Now in my world, it's mainly these virtual and digital products. So that means software and technology. So when I say that that might be a website, that might be an application, that application can be web based, that application can be mobile, whatever it is, most of the work done in product management is affiliated with managing an application. So a digital product that is either accessible via a web browser or a mobile device that has a specific purpose. Now these products you can consider to be essentially almost anything like an app on your phone, like Gmail, for example that you might use to access email to a website application that you might use as well to like Google Documents. For example. Any of these examples these are all considered, quote unquote products. Even though they are digital, they're not physical. They're considered products and product managers organize the efforts related to some of the project management responsibilities, but specifically for these products, as in, they will be managing, basically what features and capabilities to these digital products have today? And what should they have in the future in order to be better for whomever uses them, right? And that's usually the target market customer or the user. In this case, product managers are going out and they're interacting with his target market user to better understand what the needs are that they have that are currently unmet. Then they figure out how do we get functionality built into those products to better address those needs, and solve any of those problems or challenges that those users have. So product management and how it relates to your world, which is likely related to running a nonprofit organization. Scaling impact, or having some type of mission driven or social impact objective. Product Management can help in all of these areas by figuring out how your organization can leverage technology and software in order to greater drive impact at scale. Because technology and software are so good at figuring out how to do what you want to do faster, more cost effectively. All of those types of things. What a product manager can likely help you do is figure out how to leverage those tools and resources to make even greater impact in a shorter period of time. So that's what I want you to walk away with from this perspective in terms of really being inspired and thinking about how a product manager or someone with product management skills can help your organization greater drive and scale impact. Now, last thing I'll say before I wrap up this episode is that oftentimes you don't necessarily need to go looking externally for this kind of stuff. This is the help that I provide to nonprofit organizations. And if you have any questions, you're more than welcome to always reach out to me and just ask them because I love interacting with folks that want to know more about this topic because I'm very passionate about it myself. But chances are you've had members of your organization that have some maybe even all of these skills already. They just aren't really doing this work or they aren't being referred to in this way. That is an area of opportunity I look for on a regular basis. When I work with nonprofit organizations. I try to figure out who has the capability and or the desire to want to complete this role as a function and is interested in getting better at that moving forward. Then we work on training, and I provide customized training for set individuals so they can kind of step up into that role. Whereas in the beginning, I might. I might do most of the work for me and my team at most of the work, but they're learning along the way. And the idea is for them to ultimately replace us stand up into that product management role. We might do more of a product strategy role, which is something I'll talk about in a future episode. So for now, I just want you to get comfortable and familiar with that as a role. That being product management and thinking through the exciting ways in which someone on your team with those skills can help you better drive and create impact at scale. 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/.

On this episode I talk about:How to generate revenue by solving your own problemPerforming discovery with future customersFiguring out what to actually buildHow to iterate quickly and cost effectivelyContinuing to make the product better from thereIf 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 TranscriptHey everyone Sean here and on today's episode, what I want to walk you through is a real world example of generating revenue by building a product that solves the problem that you or your organization has. Now, I've talked about this in a previous episode on I want to walk you through as a real world example. So one of my clients they had a need to want to scale impact by first enrolling as many clients as they could into their process, many more than they had before. Probably a multiple, which is usually what I recommend when we're talking about setting scaling impact level goals. We want to aim for doubling or more as opposed to increasing by something conservatively like 10 or 20%. That helps us think differently, and leverage different resources and strategy to try to reach a much more aggressive goal, which in turn should really help you with scaling impact. So in this one example, what we did was we built an enrollment portal to help them move their enrollment process from offline running in person events to online which was much more cost effective, required a lot less time and removed any restrictions, any geographical boundaries that they had in place before. Now they could enroll clients from anywhere as long as they could reach them. Now the results of that were pretty dramatic. What we're able to do was increase their enrollment by greater than 300% in less than half the time. So their team was over the moon about these results, and I was too that was the objective. That's what we were trying to do and we did it which was very exciting. Now what I want to talk about is in this instance, now they experienced that dramatic improvement, which is fantastic. But and sometimes when you invest in a project like this or you build a product to solve your own problem, more than likely, other organizations like you have the same problem and can't find that solution anywhere or are trying to cobble together something to provide a better solution than what they have available today. But it's still not great. as such. If you've built something that solves that problem for them, they're going to want to have access to it as well too. So as opposed to thinking through building something like this to help you with improving operational efficiency or scaling impact, like I just described, it can do even more than that. And what I mean by that is if you provide this solution to these other organizations like you, they're more than likely to want to use it and also pay for it because it solves an important problem that they have. And that's how this turns out to generate revenue. And that's what we're doing right now. We're taking that enrollment portal, my client and we're moving it from just them using it to making it available for the rest of the world to use as well too. So we are building it so that other organizations like them can have access to it. And they're ultimately going to be paying for using it because it's going to be solving an important problem for them. Now this opens up another entire world of possibilities, because this product is going to be able to be revenue generating now that what we're seeing potentially as maybe an operational efficiency improvement and treated somewhat as an expense is now much more so of an investment. Right? It's helping them scale impact dramatically. And now it's going to start generating revenue for them as well, which is going to become a funding source that they're going to have control over which is going to enable them to continue to even scale impacted even greater levels, which is super exciting. So now this will continue to pay dividends over time as this becomes a funding source of in itself. So I want to talk about some of the technical things you can do if you find yourself wanting to invest in a project like this or if you have a product and other organizations are asking you questions about whether or not they can get access to it. You want to perform discovery with these organizations as well to to better understand the context and everything around the problems and challenges they have, which are probably related to yours but might have some slight differences. And that might impact what you build into this product when it's ready for the rest of the world to use as well to you're gonna figure out which tools you might need to integrate, which workflows that are going to be important to capture and more importantly, where to start so that you can start small and don't have to build something big and complicated and expensive. That takes a lot of time in order to get it in their hands as quickly as possible, so that you can start generating revenue sooner rather than later. And then after you've made it to and through this phase, you can continue to make that product experience better by performing discovery with the users better understanding how well it's solving the problems currently, and what other problems they can solve next. Because remember, the bottleneck doesn't disappear. It just moves so as you help them alleviate one part of their process. They're going to want to help with you helping them solve the next part of that process. 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/.

On this episode I talk about:Focusing on impactPerforming your own discoveryBringing a solution to marketMeasuring the resultsSellng it to others like youIf 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 TranscriptHey everyone, Sean here and today what I want to talk to you about is the advantages of focusing on solving your own problem when it comes to scaling impact and leveraging technology and software in order to do it. Now it can be tricky to achieve product success and I talk a lot about that on this show. But leveraged appropriately software and technology can really help you scale impact at an entirely different level than you may have before. If you've been leveraging people or mainly services.In order to take full advantage of what software and digital products are capable of. You really need to have a tight value proposition as you need to know what specific problem you're solving or which specific target market and how that solution is better than however they were trying to solve those problems today. I talk a lot about that, but in this particular instance, I'm referring to this as a sort of design pattern, which is common terminology you'll hear about if you're ever reading up on much in terms of product development or software engineering. It's essentially a pattern in which to follow where you're trying to solve a particular common problem. There oftentimes becomes a pattern that becomes developed that many can use and replicate in their own projects in order to prevent themselves from having to kind of reinvent the wheel when they have to solve a similar problem so it can speed up the progress terms of what it is you're trying to accomplish.This case I want to talk about the advantages of solving your own problem. Now if you want to leverage this strategy the way you should do it is you should first figure out how you can do so in order to maximize your impact, right, because that's the number one objective.Once you know that, you can perform the discovery that I've been talking about, but you can perform it within your own organization as opposed to needing to get access to anyone external to your organization. You could perform it with your own team and figure out what is slowing them down what are the biggest problems and challenges they are having in order to try to provide the kind of impact that you would like to to your clients, your nonprofit program clients.The results of this discovery should yield an opportunity for you to bring a better or an improved solution to market when compared with however your team is going about solving those problems today. So you may be able to find where they're losing most of their time or what challenge is standing in the way of them making even more progress presenting to you the opportunity in this case. Now, after you have identified how you would like to solve that problem in a better way with a form of a software or a digital product. You can build and bring that solution to market and then measure the results. Did it ultimately achieve what you had set out to achieve? If so, that's fantastic. And now you can look for other areas where you can expand the reach of this value proposition to others that might need it. One great example of that is other organizations like yours, more than likely, if you found a problem within your own organization, chances are high that in other organizations like yours, they have the same problem. They also are more than likely leveraging a similar existing solution, meaning that there's an opportunity to sell to them as well. So this means that what might initially feel like an expense because you're investing in building something, but for your own team, in terms of helping you become what you might consider to be only operationally more efficient, which is still most of the time a worthwhile investment depending on the numbers and how big of a benefit you're going to get. What you ultimately find out is if you stumble upon something that is also a problem for others, like you as well, too. You can take what you built, turn it around and start selling it to other organizations like yours, giving you the opportunity to turn what you might have thought of as an expense into more of an investment because now you can start generating revenue from it as you are selling that solution to others as well to so you can get a even more significant return than just the operational efficiency improvement. You can also bring in revenue and create an entire revenue stream from this. That revenue can then be reinvested back into your program as a funding source. to again help you greater scale impact. So there's a lot of benefits to solving your own problem. I wanted to kind of reiterate that process. And in a future episode potentially. Tomorrow I'm going to talk more about an example of where I've leveraged this design pattern in order to help a nonprofit client of mine better scale impact and go from operational efficiency improvement to start generating revenue for their organization, giving them the opportunity to reinvest it back into the programs and continue scaling 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/.