As a nonprofit, it's hard to make a difference in the community when your finances are holding you back. With Maxis by Freed Maxic, you can navigate complex challenges with the right people, processes, and technology. Learn more about Maxis and schedule a complimentary consultation at Maxisbyfm.com/nonprofit. Welcome back to the Nonprofit Hub Podcast. I'm your host Meghan Speer, joined today by industry leader. I'm going to use that as the overall transcriptor, Beth Fisher, the founder and CEO of Fisher Strategic. And she is joining me on the podcast today. Beth, welcome in. Hi. Thank you, Megan. I'm happy to be here. So introduce yourself a little bit to our audience and tell them about your journey working with nonprofits and kind of your passion point there. Yeah, I'd love to. So when people ask, it's always interesting because I try and say it in as few words as possible, and then you live enough life and you do enough things. You're like, I don't know how to make this short and sweet, but I'll do my best. The first part of my career, I spent 25 years in corporate sales and I was selling software and consultancy services that basically went into organizations of all shapes and sizes and automated business processes. So I got to be the person that would go in and say, tell me about how you're currently running your strategy and tooling and systems and your people. And they would tell me, and the first thing I would say is, I hope it in my head, I hope I don't get kicked out of here because my immediate response is, why are you doing it that way? That makes no sense. Yeah. And often when I would ask that question, they would, I'd say, why are you doing things like this? Yeah. And they say, we don't know, we've always done it that way, which is the immediate killer and clue as to, wow, there's so much potential here. So I did that for 25 years of my life. And I moved, I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I moved here about seven and a half years ago in the first place I went. And I still had that job, that sales job. But I went here to a local mission to meltrader ministries to volunteer. I just wanted to be a volunteer and to teach devotions. I had gone back to school many years ago and got a couple of master's degrees in theology because I'm always, again, why are we here? Why do we matter? Why do people matter? And I just found my heart really moved by spending time with people in unexpected places, especially people who have been marginalized and judged as we all have been. But yet to find that commonality in the humanity. I took a sabbatical from that sales job to write a book and had every intention of going back to that sales career when the folks at Meltrader who knew me from volunteering said, hey, you know how to raise money, right? I said, yes, how can I help? I thought it was another volunteer opportunity. And they said, no, come on staff. So I transitioned into the nonprofit space. In January of 2020, I became the, at that time, the vice president of advancement and then followed by the chief advancement officer. So communication, development, volunteers, basically all things that fueled me in terms of my heart for helping, but also my business strategy. And again, I love that. So anything with marketing and words and getting people to say yes and developing cultivating, et cetera relationships as I know that we all know about. That's where I spent three and a half years. At the same time, I had started actually in 2018 or so Fisher strategic, which you mentioned, which honestly, I started to do coaching. I started the LLC to help personal professional development. I do a lot of coaching and development, particularly of women teach them how to use their voice in nonprofit space, primarily, but all over. And so I love that. And now we do consulting for virtuous implementations and strategy and workflows and everything that we implemented at Meltrader when we ditched Blackbot after 17 years of being there. That's great. Well, I want to go back to something that you said in your introduction, because it's going to be the focus today. And that is, man, that phrase. Well, that's how we've always done it. The death killer of every organization. I've heard it so many times that I know that you have as well. Well, that's just how we've always done it. And so we're stuck with, and that is across the board. That can be in the way that we do our fundraising campaign. It can be in the way that we talk about the organization. It can be in our processes. It just infiltrates culture so quickly. And so we're going to talk a little bit about that today and the idea of being proactive instead of reactive in our communications and having actual strategy instead of just either living in crisis mode or living in. That's how we've always done it. So let's use that as a jumping off point. If somebody is in a culture right now, trying to lead their organization or their department or whatever it might be in a culture steeped in. That's how we've always done it. What's the first piece of advice that you would have for leaders in that scenario? How do we break out of that? Yes. Immediately. So please, yes, but again, you and I talked about this, which it's great to say in theory, but again, how in practice, because we can all talk about it. We can all talk about these grandiose ideas and we know we should do things differently. But like, where do we start? Yeah. And my answer is always with the lowest hanging fruit that has the biggest impact because I feel like when there is a small win organizationally, then that momentum begins to build and people who have been the loudest skeptics of change. We'll say, okay, well, maybe, maybe there's something to this. Maybe that makes sense. Or they'll continue with that skepticism and say, okay, well, maybe they got lucky with this one. Let's see if they can do it again. So, you know, you've got people sort of that are on either side of that fence. The optimists and the pessimists and sort of the naysayers. And in either case, you've got to have somebody who's bold enough to say, we're going to do this. It will be okay. Here's where we're going to start. Clarity reigns supreme, as always, but especially in particular during change. And so I would start where we did it. Mel Trotter was in development, one that's because it's where it's where I was. But also, as I mentioned, the lowest hanging fruit with the highest impact in terms of revenue is in development. This system has been in place for 17 years and it's not resulting in any kind of results that we wanted other than the same results. We've always done it this way. We're always doing the same revenue-ish. But yet, every year, people sit in the same room and say, wonder why there's so much turnover. I wonder why we're not having more donors come to us. I wonder why our messaging is falling flat. I wonder why anybody cares. I wonder our volunteerism is going down. Well, okay, well, because we're doing the same thing. And meanwhile, the world around us is not doing the same thing. So we need to absolutely say, this is where we're going to start, and it can be such small doses that it doesn't feel as scary, and it becomes more palatable for the entire team to buy into. In our case, when I took over that team in 2020, boy, I knew right away that- I mean, first of all, what a time to try and take over anything in the midst of all that chaos. Okay, after a 25-year career, and I thought, what did I just do with my life besides blow it up? No, but, you know, I loved that challenge, and I'm a big believer that we all are where we're supposed to be if we can embrace that fear that we all have. And especially leaders, I often feel like leaders have this sort of imposter syndrome right beneath the surface. Boy, I hope nobody finds out that I have no idea what I'm doing right now. And for me, that is another good sort of part B to this, which is, I've always been a person that leans into the obvious states, the big elephant in the room. I feel like in the past when I would have been the girl that always said what people were thinking. It used to get me kicked out of high school classrooms, but to serve me well a little bit in terms of leading, because I think you guys, we know that our donors know this. But why are we not saying it? What are we afraid of? What are we afraid is the worst possible thing could happen? And the answer is always, "Well, they won't donate." Well, they're not donating it anyway. They're not donating in the amounts that we need, or we want, or we are trying to lead them to. So weird is a stalemate. We are basically our own worst enemies at this point in the conversation. So I leaned into uncomfortable, and I said, "Okay, hi, hello. I'm the new person here at Mel Trotter. This isn't going to be sexy language, but we just ripped out a CRM." And people are like, "Why are you telling the donors this?" Well, visibility, transparency, good stewards of their dollars. And it doesn't always have to be that we are feeding people, which is absolutely what we're here to do. But yet, these behind the scenes systems and processes and proactive strategy are also happening and they matter. Yeah. So let's talk about the proactive pieces. Because I do think natural human tendency is just towards the maintaining status quo until something happens, and then I have to react. And so natural human tendency has us in that crisis mode. But if we can function from a place of, as you say, strategy and just being proactive, that's a mindset shift, for sure. Yeah. But when somebody wants to live in that way, I'm assuming the benefits are going to trickle down. So if somebody is a leader and they're trying to bring that kind of energy, right, when I'm being proactive about these changes instead, talk to me a little bit about the mindset that has to shift as they're in their thinking. And then how do we get out of that? How do we get out of that constant crisis mode thinking? Yeah. It goes hand in hand, right? The mindset shift and what do we do about that is we first have to say this is what we're doing. So our mind goes from, I'm no longer going to walk in the doors every day and wait until something happens to me. I'm going to walk in the doors every day and I'm going to do something. And that shift, telling yourself, this is now how I'm operating inside of these four walls, inside of this department. It's similar to when people say, you know, I want to change the world. Great. Start locally. In an organization, start in your department, start your office. It doesn't matter, but then branch out from there. And so when you do that, you say, I'm going to shift my mindset as a leader. Here's what I'm doing. Then you need to write it down. Then it needs to actually be put into a living, breathing document. You know how people say, well, journal to get your thoughts out and some people just skip that. It's like, yeah, why? Because it's all in your head and until it comes out somewhere, it's never going to be in practice. And so for me, we had whiteboards and I'm like, this is what we're doing this week. And this is where we're going to be in three months and all of these check-ins happen. And it does seem like tedious and people are like, one more meeting. But guess what? They're having meetings about nothing anyway. So let's have meetings about something. And that something is going to be where we're going together as a group. And so we would have weekly to start the week off. This is what we're doing this week. This is where we're going to be next week. This is what this month is going to look like. And then every day I'd have these little intermittent huddles with people specifically. Hey guys, this is what we said we're doing today. How's it going? Check-ins throughout the day because our days fly by. And I think unless we have those proactive, intentional check-ins, people just forget. They're like, yeah, that was a great inspirational meeting that we had at 8.30 on Monday morning, but like it's Wednesday at 3. I'm dragging. So you've got to continue to be proactive in that. And it just changed the culture, right? It changed the mindset. It changed operations. And then it laid the foundation, the groundwork for when a new system, a physical CRM software system came into place or we put a new volunteer system and whatever that was, that seemed less scary because they already had those mind shifts and the operational sort of habits that they didn't have before. Yeah. So in that kind of scenario, when an inevitable crisis comes up, when something does happen to you instead of just sitting around waiting for it, how do we handle that in those kind of environments? Well, priorities. And so you absolutely have to say, okay, this is crisis. This does need my attention. This is what I'm going to do. But then it is a matter of bringing in a team to say, I know that's going to be everybody once, but you say to somebody, this has come up, here's what I was supposed to be doing right now. I don't think it needs done or I will do it in two hours. Basically, you're looking for accountability in those moments. You're moving to the crisis that needs you, but you're not doing it alone. You're saying to somebody, I know I was supposed to be doing this thing right now. I'm committed to doing it. It's going to have to wait an hour or I need you to do it in the interim. I'm not going to forget about it. So to me, words and actions always need to align. That's the biggest way that trusty roads. And so if you've said and have committed to, especially in this case, a team, like a weekly team direction, you've got to tell somebody if that's changed. You can't just say, oh, next Monday, oops, sorry for God. That's not going to fly because that also has a trickle down effect. So you just tell people, you look for accountability. You go to the crisis at hand, if it demands your attention. And sometimes I would say, have we mislabeled the definition of crisis? Everything can feel like a crisis, especially with the former operating mindset. Like just because we're in human services or just because we're in nonprofit. Does that mean that everything by proxy is a crisis? No, it does not mean that. But yet we've always thought that way. We've always done it that way. Every time somebody comes to me, I have been conditioned to drop everything. Well, no, you teach people how to treat you. So teach them differently. Maxis by Freed Maxic is an innovative financial advisory solution for nonprofits. Backed by over 60 full-time professionals dedicated to serving nonprofits, Maxis helps you address short-term talent needs and achieve long-term financial stability by letting you outsource and automate accounting tasks so that your team can focus more attention on mission-driven growth. Learn more about Maxis and schedule a complimentary consultation at maxisbyfm.com/nonprofit. I love what you just said about you teach people how to treat you. Expand on that a little bit for me and help our leaders understand what that looks like to teach someone to treat you well. Sure. And also, I'd like to go on record and say that was not my brilliant thought. I give all the credit to Maya Angelou. She's one of my all-time favorites. She's attributed to saying that. But it's so true. If you allow bad behavior, we'll persist. If you allow people to come into your office when the door is closed, they will keep coming in. Versus if somebody comes in when your door is closed and you look at them immediately with kindness, right? Speak the truth in love and be very clear. Sure. I see you. I can't meet with you right now. Does four o'clock work? And I've done that before. Honestly, Megan and people have said, no, I need to talk to you now and say, I know that's what you need. That is not what can happen right now. What's the next best option? And so I think that's just one example of many ways, but you're firm and you tell somebody the why. It's like parenting. Leadership is like parenting. Often when I do leadership training, I remind people that. And the very first question I ask when I do leadership training is, do you want to be liked or do you want to be a leader? That's pretty hard, right? That's a pretty rough and draft question for me. I had to do some introspection when I became a leader. Because of course we all want it. We want both. We want to leave. We want everyone to love us. Good luck, right? Because that takes some time to build the trust and immediately everybody's guard is up from a human nature standpoint. Anyway, you're coming in here. You're going to change how we do things. I might be found out. Now you're going to put a new system in place that might actually show with data that I'm not really calling on donors. I'm doing whatever I want to do. Again, they have been taught everywhere, presumably, that their behavior is okay because they're getting away with it. And it takes somebody to say, I understand why this might have worked in the past, but we're changing how we do things. And so you're going to have to change along with us. And if not, there's a different seat on the bus or maybe there's a different bus altogether. Yeah. Well, and I would think that it's going to inspire, I would hope anyway, that it's going to inspire people to take accountability for their own actions. Because you, at least in my seat on the bus, as people are trying to come in my door, 90% of what's coming to me are decisions that I don't need to be responsible for. That they have the authority to decide themselves or they have the authority to move that project forward or take the next step. But everybody wants that affirmation and nobody wants to take the accountability and the responsibility for those. So it's easier to brush it off, but in theory, a system like this could inspire people to really step up and own the piece of the puzzle that they are responsible for. That's absolutely right. And one of the things I would say is that to leaders who are trying to implement this way of thinking and change and don't know where to start, I would absolutely bring everybody in. And in the first point of encouragement to them is, you're not alone in this. And I want everybody here to hear me, as the leader says this say, it is okay to make a mistake. Your job is not in the line. There will be no gossip. There will be no discussion about it. If you make a decision that you are empowered to make to your point, like they don't need leaders to decide everything. If you make it and it's wrong, okay, it's not the end of the world. This organization has been around for 100 plus years. It's not going to close its doors tomorrow. You're one person who has the backing of a team, but how many people played sports and somebody missed a shot at the buzzer? Okay, guess what? There's still a season next year. It's not like the end all be all. So people need to keep taking the shots. You miss them all that you don't take. Take the shots. And with the ones that you do make, confidence will build. And then you become empowered. And people around you say, "Oh, maybe I can do that too. If there's no terrible repercussion that's going to happen." And most of the time, that's just made up narratives in our head anyway that, "Oh, if I mess this up, XYZ is going to happen, it never happens. It's fine." But that is a pervasive mindset in and of itself, right? If I misstep, if I make one mistake, the whole world is going to crash, everything's going to fall apart. I'm going to lose my job. The organization's going to go under whatever the case may be. It's really just not that big a deal. That's right. There's nothing that is that critical. You got it. And honestly, I do know there are situations and organizations. I'm sure there are people listening who say, "But you don't know my boss, but you don't know how we function here. But we have a culture of fear here. Then my strong encouragement is you're in the wrong place." A healthy organization with healthy leadership does not instill fear in its employees. It trusts its employees. So let's talk to those folks for a second then, because I'm sure that you're right. They're listening right now going, "You don't understand my situation." And so when this kind of mindset is not being driven from the top down, let's talk to the folks who are in the trenches kind of. But I would love to do that. That sounds like a great environment. I don't have that authority. Is this a mindset that can start from the bottom and grow? What does that look like for those folks? Yeah, it can. And I'm sensitive to answering this because I have been in those shoes over the course of my journey and career. And I know how hard it is, especially in some places. I need this job, right? I have a kid in school. I am paying for this. Whatever the case may be. So I'm sensitive to it. But I also want people to know that they do have agency and they do have decision-making power. And none among us is ever truly stuck. We all have choices to make. Having said that, if I heard you say, "People will think and this is true." I don't have authority. And I want to help people reframe their mindset. We have authority over ourselves. At the very bare bones minimum, we're in charge of ourselves. We lead ourselves every day up out of bed, out the door to the work. Whatever we're doing, we're leading how the course of our day and interaction. So we have a choice in terms of, "Okay, how am I going to show up? Do I stick my neck out? Do I make a decision? Do I try and find an advocate? Maybe it's a different department. Maybe it's many organizations and non-profit. Unfortunately, they're still kind of siloed. So maybe it's somebody in the different business unit that is experiencing the same thing you are. Maybe you guys start having lunch together or breaks together and you say, "Can we talk about this? Have an accountability partner?" And not in a gossipy. Let me just dump everything on you. Let me share what I'm going through. You tell me, are you experiencing something similar in your area of the operation? And what can we do about it? What ideas can we come up with and then share together in terms of a bigger picture organizational advancement going forward? Maybe some ideas that two people can bring seems less scary than one person brings. I love that because you're right. Everybody has the authority over themselves. That's sad to me because I was just going to say that feels really sad. Everybody matters. We all have a voice. It doesn't matter by title. It doesn't matter. We are here for a reason. For such a time as this, I love all the cliches. I can throw scripture all day long because I'm like, "Oh, it took me almost 30 plus years A to read the Bible." And then when I'm like, "Oh, this thing is a story. It's got some really good nuggets in here. This makes sense. There's a true line. I get it." And I couldn't shut up about it because it is so applicable when it is wielded with right intent and from the lens of let's help other people and also let's help ourselves. And not from a place of selfishness but selflessness to say, "I matter as part of the team with my giftings and skill sets. And so since I matter, I'm also going to leave myself in the best possible manner. I'm going to be as upbeat as possible. I'm going to be grateful. I'm going to figure stuff out. I'm going to find people who are on my side and who are also struggling. We are so much more unified than we are divided. We just have to believe that and get on that kind of side of the team." I love that. Beth, this is so good. I'm really so, so encouraged by all of this. So tell me, it seems like your heart, especially for these leaders is to help them be doing their work best. So what's your favorite part of your job in all of that? Yeah. Well, can we say "job"? Let me say a little bit. I love coaching. I also am a chair for Convene, which is a Christian Business Leadership Organization, similar to C12, et cetera. And then my day job, I work for a boutique marketing and advertising firm wherein we're working with people in the world who are doing research at the intersection of like religion and science and a lot of nonprofits as well. And my favorite part is especially for leaders because I feel like I'm wired to do a lot of things in the world. So many people are, but also the double-edged sword with that is that people who are either coming up in their career or who are not wired like that, quite honestly, will look at quote leaders or people who are doing a lot of things and go, "Oh, they don't need help. They got it under control. They're the boss. They're in charge." And I love pouring into leaders because honestly, leaders are some of the loneliest people and I know. Yeah. And we always hear, frequently hear, often hear of people at the departmental level or perhaps are not leading a team or who are disgruntled or for whatever reason. We hear about their loneliness and sadness because that's very true too that exists. But I think that leaders in particular are overlooked from that because we're supposed to be the ones with all the answers. And sure, we're not. We need people too. We need people to say, "I see you. You matter. Thank you for leading well." And again, I was very blessed where I worked at Maltrada at a fantastic team and they spoke those words to me frequently. And I just, I can't overstate how much that kept me going and how much I needed to hear that. So that's why I am really passionate about helping leaders because leadership matters. It matters if you're a parent, it matters if you're leading yourself as we talked about. Being a good leader is so imperative because it then directs decisions and pretty much the rest of your life and the lives of others that you're showing up every day to have a positive impact in. I love that. So good. So you briefly touched on all of the things that you're doing. Give us a little bit more information about Grey Matter and kind of the work that you guys are doing at that intersection because that is really interesting to you. So that's also, some of my recently, I have a portfolio career. I'm like, "I don't even know what that means." But sometimes I'll help coach people who say, "I don't even know what I want to do. I want to do a lot of things." There's always a through line. For me, the through line has been storytelling, sharing, encouraging. And so Grey Matter group, we are basically, our tagline is making good brands great, but a brand is so much more than just that, right? It's about how the interactions are from a client perspective, from whatever the thing is that somebody's doing. So Grey Matter group has been around for 30 plus years. And one of our largest clients is the Templeton Religion Trust, the $2 billion trust that's got by the name of Sir John Templeton started. And he then funds people, PhD researchers around the globe, who are doing research, basically the conflict narrative saying, "Okay, as an example, just because you grew up in a scientific household doesn't render you an atheist, like forever and ever, amen." Or just because you have a belief system doesn't mean that you shouldn't go into STEM or into the sciences. And I love that contrarian by nature. Let's just maybe ask the hard questions because if people are not doing critical thinking, then I think that the lack of critical thinking to me is what really fuels the divisiveness that we feel today. Because people sometimes will hear one thing, and they think that substantiates a very black and white way of thinking. When, if you can be around people who think differently than you, be around people who are experiencing different life situations, it gives you a whole other perspective from which to offer insight. So that's what we do. Researchers around the globe who are doing this kind of work, they will do all this crazy research, this amazing and brilliant, but our job at Grey Matter group is to get that story out there. Because again, you could be doing great work in the world if nobody knows about it, then sure. So we do videos, you know, we do all the marketing and we make that sort of visible to the people out in the world. And I love that because I get to go interview people and hear about things that people are passionate about and are trying to have a positive impact on the world, pro-social impact. I love it. So if anybody wanted to find you or follow up with any of these pieces, whether it's coaching or with Grey Matter or even some of your leadership development pieces, if they wanted to find you and connect with you and learn more about any of those things, how would they do that? Probably the fastest way is on LinkedIn, so I'm a big LinkedIn user, but my personal website is BethFisher, F-I-S-H-E-R.com, FisherStrategic.com is out there as well. Yeah, any of those means. And I'm out there on social media platforms, so LinkedIn, BethFisher.com, FisherStrategic.com. Perfect. Awesome. Beth, this has been really great and I think it'll be really encouraging to a lot of our listeners in terms of breaking out of that. We've always done it this way in mindset and moving forward strategically. So I appreciate all of your wisdom. Thanks so much for joining us on the show today. Thanks for having me. I love being here. This has been another episode of the Nonprofit Hub Radio podcast. My name is Megan Spear. My guest has been BethFisher, who's the founder and CEO of FisherStrategic, and we will see you next time on the Nonprofit Hub podcast. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]
