From scarcity to abundance

- So welcome to today's webinar From Scarcity to Abundance. So glad to have folks here. I am Ivonne Simms, if we haven't met before. Educational Programming Manager for Candid based in Atlanta and I'm joined by Eboney Carroll, who is also based in Atlanta and will be supporting in the background. And we have some more Candid folks helping because there are so many of you here today. So we're glad that you're here and we're all here to kind of make it work together. If you don't know Candid alrea

dy, we are the marriage, we're gonna call it the marriage of, just making sure this is good, of GuideStar and Foundation Center. And in 2019, those two organizations got together. So now we have over probably 90 plus years of experience in the philanthropic sector and through training, through data, through research, all of those things, we're able to help the social sector. And we're always excited to have webinars like the one we're having today with our special guest about, you know, From Sca

rcity to Abundance, thinking a little differently about the social sector. And I'm just gonna let Satonya off on the mic, get on the mic. I have a cool way to say that I can't remember, but we'll let her on the mic. And we're gonna start with, instead of reading the bio, instead of reading the bio, we wanna know a little bit about what you're doing now, what exactly does that mean that you're the CEO, the first CEO of PEAK. And then we'll kind of go back from there. - Thank you so much, Ivonne.

Hello to everyone who has made some space and time, bit time to join us today. We know that time is the scarce commodity. I'm Satonya Fair, I use she her pronouns. And I am a Black woman who is joining you out of Baltimore on Piscataway Land here in Baltimore County. And I am the proudest president and CEO, I'm competing for all the nonprofits. I am the proudest and just have the great honor and privilege of being part of this organization. I was on the board and had been a volunteer for years w

ith PEAK. So as I, like many of you chose how to spend my quote unquote downtime, I picked PEAK, it was one of my favorite organizations. They engaged me in so many different ways over the years and with time I became a board member and over time the board asked me if I would consider resigning to be considered in the pool of candidates for the first president, CEO. So my predecessor, Michelle Greanias, who was in the role as a volunteer unpaid person for years and then became the organization's

first executive director, proceeded me and put PEAK on a wonderful course along with fabulous volunteers and people in our community. And we have now grown to be this community of change agents. I think most people who show up for PEAK Grantmaking know that we are about shifting practices and how we influence different funders of all types, which we are privileged to also include so many different types of organizations as foundation members and friends. PEAK is about shifting everyone toward m

ore equitable practices. We have a role to play in how we move money. And so I find myself here in my fourth year, I cannot believe, given that I started in 2020, I cannot believe that I'm really saying I'm in my fourth year. But I am here today to really share some of the kind of like the wisdom that is often given to me via our members and talking to our community. But also a thing that I believe in very strongly is that nonprofits have not always been positioned in an abundant place. And so I

'm very excited to be joining you all to talk more about that. And to Ivonne's point, PowerPoints and all that stuff are out. We're gonna talk, we're gonna monitor the Q and A and we are going to hopefully walk away at the end with you all having some new lenses on how the field is being shifted, but also how we as nonprofits must shift ourselves and our own mindsets to be successful at this critical time. So that's a little bit about me and how I find myself at PEAK Grantmaking, best, best, bes

t role ever. - I know, I already have like 10 questions, but I'll try to stick to what we're really talking about today. So I always ask people, just so the honest know, I always ask folks, what do you wanna talk about? Like what do you feel the audience needs to know? What does the philanthropic sector need to know right now? What's kind of burning that you want to talk about? And in the case of Satonya, she said, you know, we have to talk about moving from scarcity to abundance. And so my ques

tion is, you know, why did you feel like that was the discussion that we had to have today? - It's important, right? I will just say that I think as a person right now, I'll talk about my leadership and I'll talk about PEAK in a second. But as a human being, I'm navigating in a world where I am trying to realize my own best opportunity. I'm trying to be my most authentic self and I'm trying to show up as a leader in this moment in the sector guiding people forward. I've said that I want PEAK Gra

ntmaking to be a bit of a beacon in the dark for our folks right now. The people who really come into our community. And one of the things that has become very specifically important for me to continue to talk about is that foundations, funders generally along with and nonprofits as a consequence, foundations operate in scarcity. We know that that right now, if you are a private foundation, which is one of many types of funding entities, which we'll talk a little bit about in the funder landscap

e, if you're a private foundation, you are required to spend 5% of your assets. That is something that is required to view annually. Now you can go higher and you can then go lower. So it's like over across a three year average. But if you think about the world on fire moment that we are experiencing, if you have paid attention at all to anything outside of your own household, it's a lot going on. And I just found myself wondering, what philanthropy has been waiting for as the trigger to go big

or go home. And I realized that as just the impetus to hold on to as much money as possible for as long as possible to stay in business is interesting. But we as nonprofits, we have been impacted by it because we are looking at foundations, PEAK's typical foundation member is a small to medium sized foundation. A staff of five to 20 people with a asset size, generally we'll say under $250 million, which is not a small number, it's big. But when you start to look at that, we are interfacing as an

organization every day with people who only have one other colleague, a few other colleagues, one person in one role. I.E. so Ivonne, you're the Finance Manager, I'm the Chief of Staff, right? And I've got HR, I've got equity, you've got our reporting, 990s reconciliation, spend out everything, right? What happens, Ivonne, if you can't come to work today? Who's picking up the slack for you? Who's ensuring that the organization is in good stead? I realized that I was talking about abundance, abu

ndance and really positioning PEAK from a staff competency skills in this place of where PEAK could really be available for our thousands of members in hundreds of orgs. Make sure that we could be a good resource. And I felt like I was talking to a wall and I realized that I'm growing this organization at a time when foundations are laying staff off, at a time when they're trying to figure out their own wellness model and growth model. And that's really, it's been an interesting juxtaposition 'c

ause I don't have the money that even our smallest foundation member has, but yet, and still I can see a path of listening deeply to what my team needs and saying these folks have worked hard and they deserve a backup. They deserve a plan for wellness. They deserve to take a vacation day and not worry about what awaits 'em on the other side. And so I realized like nonprofits have been put in this position of scarcity because foundations themselves are not always acting in abundance. And so I've

just in this season from scarcity to abundance and really trying to lift up as much as possible what is owed to us by a foundation, what do we owe ourselves? I think we have to stop looking for a model over there. I think we should be talking about how to model being next level as an organization that gets the resources and does the things that we need to do to be best in class in our communities and best in class around the issue areas that we as nonprofits have chosen to focus on. And so much

of PEAK's conversations are with funders. I think what I realized is that when PEAK is successful, foundations do differently, they do better. But it's nonprofits that are better off. And so this was such a beautiful invitation and by you to say, "Let's go talk to nonprofits." And I was like, "Yay, we're gonna talk about abundance." And that's who you get for the next, you know, 45 minutes is this person is really excited about encouraging us to stand in our own light and that we should not be w

aiting for other people to shine it on us. We will shine it on ourselves. - I love it. But we know PEAK, right? So PEAK is is PEAK. So you're like, I know I'm very proud, but how about if I'm like the little guy nonprofit, which is, you know, most of them. I'm out here doing the work. I am taking little time to watch this webinar though, I'm here live. How do I get the attention of funders? I'm not PEAK, I'm not Satonya, Like how do I get on the radar of a funder? - Such a good, good question. A

t one point PEAK had no staff and we had no money. That was the first almost 10 years of our existence, we're going into our 28th year. So all I will say is you will hear me using PEAK as an example is that we are on a growth trajectory. But we know what it was like when it was just like 10 volunteers who also did the work of the organization. They made sure that our taxes got filed and everything else was all volunteer. And we really didn't have a built-in revenue model beyond what that small g

roup of people as a volunteer working board could bring to our coffers. But we also didn't have any professional staff for years. So I'll just say that PEAK stands as like a partner with you all that we may look very different now, we do have a staff of 20. It has been an adjustment for the staff and board to no longer refer to PEAK as this little engine that could in this small organization because we know by the Candid social sector data that we are now sitting in the quote unquote large 5% of

organizations that have a general annual budget of more than $5 million and also staff size. But hey, we remember when it feels like yesterday when we had no money, yesterday when we did not have team. So I'll just say that it's not about foundations are looking for you, this is not about you getting their attention. It is really about, and this conversation is about kinda owning and understanding your own expertise and that when you go all that you're trying to do in community for whatever iss

ue area is your jam, whatever that is. Foundations are actually looking for you because in order for them to meet their own mission, money's gotta go out. And so one of the things that's important for us to think about is not so much how we get the attention, we will get to that, how we get the attention, it is that when the door knock comes, are you ready? All of us, are we ready? Have you thought about your own kind of mission alignment, your own impacts and results, how you operate it? Have y

ou tried to ensure that you're ready to tell your story? That you're ready to tell the impact that you're having as a result of your work? Are your financials ready to go? Because if you're an early organization, you may not even be at the place of having real audited financials spending that 10 to $15,000 a year. You may be using unaudited financials and a simple 990 and that's fine. There are tons of funders who are ready to support you like right now as you are, there are tons of startup fund

ers in Baltimore where I am, we have some family foundations and some smaller corporate foundations. All they do is the first three years of funding, they really stand you up. They give you a significant grant across three years to really get you up and moving, hopefully get to your first hire. And so I think at almost every community, and we know there's more than 800 community foundations as well, they're paying attention to who is in their local region and area, and they're always trying to f

ind a way to move the money. So believe it or not, they're looking for us. They're looking for us. But when they find us or when we go find them, the question is, are we grant ready? Which is a term I hate, but it's real. Which is how transparent are you? How ready are your financials? How ready is your story, so that the moment they do find you, you are ready to go. And that's what we're really gonna talk about is really this inward lens that we have to have on our own readiness to really partn

er and engage with a funder when we do find them or when they find us. But they are looking for us. How do we stand out? We'll get to that. - Well I think we're about to get to it right now, so what tools do you suggest that nonprofits utilize in order to find the funders and then show that they are ready and they're someone you wanna partner with and support? - Absolutely. So just again, you've gotta have your story down, not be figuring it out. I joke with my board members that they all have t

o have their fast pitch. All of our board members have full-time jobs. They are volunteering with PEAK, but they also must be the highest consumers what PEAK is dropping down. And so we try to prepare them with what we call like a champion brief so that they kind of know, okay, budget, top line numbers, staff, top line numbers, you know, strategy, boom, boom, boom, boom, key priorities, boom, boom, boom. They have that, 'cause we want them if they're on the elevator with a potential funder. Even

as a board member, like they should always be thinking about bringing attention, awareness and funding into PEAK Grantmaking. So I'll say like first thing is that- - And I like that, everyone write that down, Champions brief. - Yeah, absolutely. The Champion Guide is everything. Sometimes if you're a early org or a smaller org, it's like a half, it's a paragraph, it's a few bullets. But everyone on staff, even if it's just one staff member and your board, which most board members, you know you'

ve got at least like four or five, six people. How do you prepare them with those top line things that you want them to always say if there was a funding opportunity moment, but also it's all about the brand and reputation everyone. It is all about your brand and reputation on the ground. Do you have community members, clients who would speak up on your behalf. Is your board ready? Are you ready for that fast pitch the five minutes or less on the elevator with a potential whatever, dot, dot, dot

. Are you ready to go? I think that that is so important for everyone to understand is that you need to have your own story ready. But then the other thing is is that, and this is not gratuitous because Candid has invited me here, but this marriage, I love the marriage. I've never heard another staff member describe what you said about the marriage between Foundation Center and GuideStar. So let's just back up. I know you are here on this webinar 'cause you understand that you should have a prof

ile on GuideStar. If you go look up PEAK Grantmaking right now, which for free, you can just go type that in to Candid's website, which was get GuideStar back in the day. But Candide's website, you can go look at us and when you go you should be able to see our impact, our demographics. You can see our mission, our vision, our theory of change, our financials for the last five years. So we've just decided to be radically transparent so that if a funder does go looking and they type in our EIN, w

hen they go to that page, they can't be like, "I wonder what PEAK's financials are. Hmm, I wonder who their staff is. Oh I wonder who's on their board. I wonder what their goals are." We have given everything to Candid. I mean and we twice a year we update our profile. So we have a marker. There's certain staff that I have that have a reminder that says, oh new staff and new board are always coming y'all. That is just the story of our lives. It is a revolving door, new staff and if you do not ha

ve board limits, you should call me offline so I can work on that for your governance. Because technically we should all be getting new staff and new board over time in a planful way. But with that, making sure that you have some level of kind of consistency though even with that churn that's gonna happen. You need to have some level of consistency with how you kind of talk about your results, your impact and everything else. But for us, Candid has been everything. The majority of the large foun

dations. Let's talk about the landscape. About 130,000 funders like IRS, they told the IRS, we give money away. There could be more, but the ones we count, it's about $130,000 broken across many categories. Where there's about $1.8 million nonprofits, $130,000, $1.9 million, those are real data points. Now let's talk about the foundations that really talk to us. That's anywhere between like seven and 10. Like when Candid sends a survey out, they might reply, yay. So we have more data on a group

of foundations. Again, different sizes, different types, different places who come back to these main repositories like Candid and say this is who we are. They may have a profile but it has been so critical for all of you to know that for about the last 20 years, many foundations just type your EIN, they type it in and it pops up and it says whether you are filing your 990s on time, it says whether you're in good standing, it's literally a green check mark. I do not kid you, you need to have you

r green check mark. So the first visibility is just to take what Candid has offered the sector, which is this window in to who's out there. And if you are a funder and let's say you are a newer funder and you're starting to do some, you wanna fund like rural leaders in West Virginia around climate change, they can also go to Candid and go type in those tag words and then see the whole list of nonprofits that are registered with the IRS who are doing climate change, are rural and in West Virginia

. And so a lot of times early funders especially, they're getting a feel for the landscape and in getting a feel for the landscape, they gotta go do some research too. They're gonna go Google, they're gonna come to Candid, they're gonna go come to some of the larger repositories like charity navigators or whatever and they're just gonna type a search. Will they find you? That's the question, will they find you? And then if they find you, how much will they find? Because maybe you're not at the l

evel of having a website or anything right now you use Candid as your website y'all, you can put all this data in there and you can customize it. You're the owner, you're the admin of your account. And so your ability to update that is unlimited. You can go in every week and add a new point of contact, a new testimonial. And Candid has really given us an opportunity to utilize this space. So to make sure that there's transparency on the work that we're doing and that we're there and you get diff

erent stars, you start at one level and you can go all the way up. We're at platinum right now. So really excited about that. But really you come in, get that basic information around your board, your financials, what you all do. That's the first thing. A lot of organizations, each funder really operates autonomously and we're working on that. But right now they have to do a level of due diligence that just says that you are real and that you filed some form of documentation back with the IRS at

least once. That's what Candid gives us. So don't let that profile just be your EIN and your name. It can be so much more than that. And I encourage all of you all if nothing else to start there. And if you're at the point of having a website or you do have the resources to invest, I remember back in the day it was a two person organization. We actually hired a grad student out of Towson University and we offered three credit hours for them to develop our website for us. And the person did an a

mazing job and I swear to this day what they initially built is still the base of what the Fuel Fund of Maryland has as their website because it was they just went all out. They went over and above. We had rebranded new colors and they got all that together. And when you go to that website, I just kind of chuckle that whoever did that for us, can't remember who it was. But it was really good use of three credit hours, right? We didn't have to pay for it but they got credit toward their education

and they were all doing web design. And so there's a lot of creative ways that we also can make sure that we can be seen. And that is an important thing. It's like draw on all your creativity to become as transparent as possible. It's not always expensive to do it. - Thank you, I love that. I'm trying to like summarize all these questions that we're getting and I feel like you're already touching up upon these answers so I'm gonna give you a few and see if you feel like you've answered these in

what you just told us. So one is you are going gonna write this out maybe, "How do you get them to consider a newer org less than two years old?" How can, hold on. "Most large funders require an invitation to apply. How do we get an invitation when we don't know anyone from that organization?" 'Cause I feel like these are all kind of related. As a fiscally sponsored pro- Well you know what, we can answer that. We'll answer that one. "Is there a common grants application for new fledgling and or

under $150K nonprofits?" So kind of, we're talking small, we're talking I don't know anyone. Do you feel like you just answered that by saying, you know, use your Candid profile or is there more that people can do to you know, get to know folks? - I'm gonna quote one of my favorite people in the whole world because I think it pertains to this and again I'm using myself as an instrument of change. I say that all the time. Use yourself as instrument of change. If you're not networking then you're

not working. Well as a nonprofit, if we are not in community, and we're gonna define all the different communities. If we are not out there like saying hey, we've got this great nonprofit that we've stood up that's really gonna address this gap right now in community. Like you should be going to every regional association if you have a community foundation that's located and they go, "Hey we're doing a mixer, do you wanna come?" So most of the time the funders have actually paid for some of the

se public gatherings. So look for in your area, these are your homework things, go on and if you're not already familiar because nothing I'm saying assumes that y'all are not already at like 100% on all the things. So this is not assuming you've never heard of this or anything. So I have great respect that sometimes when we do these trainings and coaches and webinars, like it's like I'm not telling some of y'all anything new. But for those people who may not have heard it, I think it's important

for you to Google if you have a regional association, a regional association is a gathering of all types of funders in the region. So regional associations are like what is a regional, it is a nonprofit itself. It is fundraising as well, but it's a gatherer of funders versus a community foundation. Again, I said there's 800 to 900, there could be a couple more than that but we know generally there's eight to 900 community foundations. Community foundations give away money and they are given mon

ey by different types of funders to sometimes leverage those dollars in a direction. So a community foundation won't have like a, "We only do climate change." Most community foundations are about community. So they care about things that are local and regional in nature. They care about those things. And then you have another group, so there's regional associations, community foundations, the other thing is family foundations. If you were to just go on Google and say, family foundations near me.

Which is a very good or look, I do not use Apple so I'm gonna say Safari or Google, you go Firefox your way toward these questions. So whatever your favorite mechanism is, but go in 'cause I'm not trying to sell Google. So I'm just saying that out loud. They haven't given Pica checks so I ain't giving them too much credit. But go search, Regional Association, Community Foundation near me. And then the last one is family foundations near me. Some of the earliest and first grants are from communi

ty found, not regional associations, they're the gatherer. So if they are throwing an event and it says, free, you go, 'cause the networking is everything for you to show up at the recently here we rededicate all of our libraries are being rebuilt in Baltimore. And so as the libraries come online they're doing like a rededication ceremony to the community. Everyone was there. I mean it was like, I didn't go, but I'm telling you I was at the stop sign as everybody was rolling in to the Enoch Prat

t Free Libraries reopening of their downtown and it was just sitting at the light. It was a virtual who's who of people walking by to get in. And obviously I was stuck at the light 'cause a lot of people and they were walking in front of my car so I couldn't go anywhere. But something like that, you just stroll into that and you say, "Hi, my name's Satonya, I work at PEAK Grantmaking." Or, "Hi, I'm Satonya, I live in Baltimore." Or whatever your intro is. Going to those gatherings which are ofte

n like no fee, no nothing showing up at things that are prominent in your community. There's a new wing of the hospital, there's a new library, they're opening a new school. All of that stuff becomes an invitation in for you to go into the community you serve, introduce yourself and introduce your org. And the more you do that, the more kind of quote on 'cause babies you kiss and hands you shake. We're like politicians y'all, we have to do that because staying in your office doesn't get you anyw

here. Doesn't get you anywhere. And even if you're doing this for safety or for inclusion purposes, not everybody is on the street. So if you're doing this via Zoom where you're just reaching out and saying, Hey I know you like let's say that I'm a newer organization, a new nonprofit, but there's actually like several nonprofits that I admire. Maybe you all have written your own check to a nonprofit in your community. You know where you say like they're doing really great work getting school sup

plies to kids and they've been around for 10 years. Go introduce yourself to them and say, "Hey, as a newer nonprofit I'm really trying to make some connections not only to potential funders but just really trying to get the word out about the work we're doing. Is there anyone you could introduce me to? Is there anyone you could connect me to?" And so it is really that kind of one-to-one interaction looking locally around your community. But most early stage nonprofits report their first institu

tional philanthropy grants coming from family foundations near them and the community foundation. A lot of community foundations also do like a call out. Like they'll say, "We are looking to invest in children's libraries." And they're gonna do it from their website. So you have to go look sometimes on your community foundation's website to see that there's a call for proposals, 'cause I wanna address the thing about the invitation only. 'Cause there's only so much control PEAK Grantmaking and C

andid have over this sector. 79% I think is the most recent Candid information. It's in the 70s I know of when we ask organizations, how do you find out, like how do you invite people to apply? There are different funders who basically open up proposals and you can apply in the period of time around a certain area, but almost like 80% invite you in. And that is so crappy. But I've just given you a mechanism which is shaking hands, introducing yourself and saying, actually you're funding in an ar

ea where my nonprofit is working and I would love to sit down and have 15 minutes with you, even if it's via Zoom. Start those conversations because that is how it goes. And if you've already gotten some funding, so let's say you're early stage or you've been around for a minute and you've gotten some funding, one of the things that I think has been really successful for PEAK is to get someone who's already given us money to endorse us to another potential funder. So for instance, I was joking t

he other day that like Carmen Rojas, she's at the national level, she leads the Marguerite Casey Foundation out on the West Coast. She literally sent me a note and said, "I really love what PEAK is doing, if there's anything I can do to help you let me know." I went back to the whole team and I was like, so a president of a foundation says she loves us and that if we need her for anything, we should reach out. And I'm like saying this on a giant webinar. So Carmen is not surprised when we actual

ly call that card, but I mean like that's a big deal. It's right what we will ask her, I'm not so sure, but I started talking to my membership director recently and I was like, this is probably where we maximize Carmen, right? She's actually willing to do some connecting for us to present for us and to possibly say, this is why we're a PEAK member and this is the value we've gotten out of it. Maybe she's the voice that a prospect hears, not our two voices. And so we just started talking about th

at last night around, I wonder if she wouldn't mind doing an endorsement to some of our bigger prospects that are similar to her type of work. And so I know I'm going through different, different things here, but it is about networking. It is about having your pitch ready. It is about asking for help. You cannot run a nonprofit on your own. It's impossible. And for Black and Brown leaders and rural leaders, we are often all by ourselves on an island. Do not take on more than you can. Ask for hel

p, ask often and go admire on a few other nonprofits that you think are doing great work. And you go sit with them and say, "How did you get there? How did you get to a $250,000 budget? How did you get to a half million dollar budget?" The vast majority, $1.25 million of the $1.8 million have a budget of less than $250,000, you all. So you are normed, you are not over here feeling small. That's normal and that's good, because you can get to your budget a lot faster than me with a $9 million budg

et is a much bigger hurdle for us to clear that her, you know, to clear that versus if you are a smaller organization that's well connected and in community and always got your talking points, that is the way. But get endorsement, meet more people, meet more people. And if you're spending more than 50% heads down, you gotta reallocate how you spend your time. It's really not good, especially in those first three years. It is like being a politician, I swear, I've been there. - I'm so glad you're

saying this because I'm thinking about the board. I'm on for a tiny little nonprofit. I'm thinking about all the nonprofits that I work with through Candid and some of our leadership programs and they feel very proud that they're doing the work, but they can't sustain without this part. So I know they're thinking, well I'm busy. Like I'm out here doing the work, but you can't do the work if you don't take, you know, for two hours today I am doing this or for for 15 minutes I'm doing like, you n

eed to still talk to people and network and all those things. And I feel like part, they partly feel like, no, I'm doing the work though. You know what I mean? Like there's that that proud like, I'm not just out here talking, I'm doing what I said I was going to do. And so I'm glad, I hope they're hearing this as permission and understanding you can't do the work without this part. It doesn't mean that you are, you know, lazy or not really doing what you're supposed to do. It feeds that part of

things. So I really hope that people are hearing this. So that's one thing is that when we talk to these nonprofits, they feel like, well I have to get the work done. I'm out here in the community, so I'm doing that. And then the other thing is they're not as comfortable getting money in different ways. So, you know, you and I talked about this a little bit. They're upset, kind of annoyed, frustrated with foundations because they're not getting the money that they, they need, they want and they

feel like, man, you know, what am I supposed to do? And we're kind of thinking, you know, you're not just supposed to go toward, you know, look for support at foundations. Can you talk a little bit more about the mix? What nonprofits kind of need to do to have different kinds of support? - Right, so I'll use again, go back to PEAK. Like right now we are a membership, we're a nonprofit, that has a membership. Our format is based on a membership model. So foundations, funders, and I wanna just exp

and this, I wanna just explain. Anybody giving money away can be part PEAK. Like we expanded our bylaws to not exclude anybody, but also if you are working in the field, there are a lot of consultants and firms that really, and technology providers that support philanthropy. And so we also wanna hear from them as well. So I'll just say that a huge percentage of what is the core revenue. And so I will say there's two things that you should be thinking about. What's the staff cost and then what's

your whole cost? Because there's a thing that we have to do as nonprofits, which is like, I'm gonna, if you can't see me, I'm doing like I'm pulling on an accordion. There are times when you are kind of cash rich and resource rich like people to do the work and all that other stuff. And at those times it's the best time to go raise money. First point when you are kind of like in a good place, that is one of the best times for you to go raise money. But also there's just natural contractions that

we can't control. And so when there's less of it, I always say keep your eye on the personnel ball because when I think about PEAKs overall, like ooh, these are all the things we said we'd do in '23 and this is how much it was gonna cost and this is how much money we thought we could raise. The eye that I have every day is on how I make payroll for my staff every two weeks. And if nothing else I must make that commitment. And I wanna take a moment, this is a PSA, you are not to be working unpai

d. That is unacceptable. This topic is from scarcity to abundance. You can go get a market analysis of what an executive director at a $250,000 nonprofit in your area should be making. And you set your salary goals for that. If you haven't done it already. Now set your plan to get to where that is and you should be doing a new assessment of the market for your staff or for yourself every three years. But keep your eye on the personnel budget if you can figure out how to get to that. Everything e

lse is scraping because you can do more or you can do a little bit less in any given period of time. But you've gotta pay your staff, the people do the work. PEAK is out there every day on your behalf because this is what we do. This is our mission telling foundations to fully fund the cost of a nonprofit. We are out there advocating with Candid and so many others who work in this space to just remind foundations that the way they operate and cool sometimes and they could do better by us. So jus

t trust that we are out there like ringing the bell. People actually pay to become a member of PEAK so we can tell them ways that they can move money better. Now that is just so unique and so strange. But it is real. - It is. I was gonna say that when you were talking about being like a volunteer organization, I'm like, you had the nerve to be like, we wanna talk about you. Can you fund us though? So we can tell you about yourselves. Like oh okay that works. - But on the flip side of that, here'

s the piece. This is the piece where I want you all just to remember PEAK. Not because we can write a grant to you. I want you to remember PEAK because we happen to be one of a few and I mean we may be the only nonprofit that can say thank you for your $20,000 the way you gave it to us, the process we had to go through how your staff treated us did not feel good. And, but we have some recommendations for how this process could have been differently. And so we deposit the check and with love and

a lot of respect we say, that was the worst experience ever and the fact that we have relationship with you and we can call you, Ivonne, and say, that was no good. Think about all the nonprofits that don't have relationship with you and they just went through the same thing PEAK went through and it was wrong. It wasn't good, it was not right size for the money. You made me go through 20 pages and then you gave us $5,000. Like what? Okay, PEAK is actually out there saying with respect we challeng

e your practice. It wasn't okay. And even though we have tons of staff and the capacity to get through your hurdles, I am telling you that a small nonprofit in your community is not gonna have the ability to tell you that your stuff stinks as it relates to how you do this. PEAK is taking a huge gamble. And trust me, members walk away. People don't always fund us. They don't like the way I talk about equity, racial equity, whatever it is what it is. I'm gonna say what I have to say as a leader in

this moment, they can be members because the thing is, is how much work is my team supposed to be doing? Grappling to hold onto somebody who doesn't believe in what PEAK is doing. We just have to go toward the light. We have to go toward those people. - Agree - Who are high prospects, let's talk about like technical terms, high prospects for us. We've gotta devote our energy to them. And that is like so important for us to just think about it. Time is a commodity that is like you're just not go

nna get it back. - Yeah, thank you for saying that because we shouldn't be kind of like out there like be my friends. Like there, there are enough organizations speaking of abundance that will, you know. - Yeah. And let us challenge them. Let us challenge funders and try to move them into better practice so that when you encounter them it's a different road for you. I think that that is PEAK's role. I think it's what we're supposed to be doing. But again, we deposit the check and then we tell th

em their stuff stinks. Yes, like we're not stupid but at the same time we're just trying to move people into like a different space and a different place. But I do think it's important for you to always remember you gotta focus on your staff component first, the personnel. Like how are you sustaining that piece? And then you've gotta ebb and flow depending on what's happening and then. - Oh so you're kind of answering this. So I think you're about to, so I'm just gonna put out these two question

s overhead, you know, how do you get people to fund overhead, general operating support and overhead? And then someone at said, "Can you talk a little bit about hiring your first staff member? I'm not quite understanding what steps need to be taken to our org to bring on a paid staff member." So you were touching upon that anyway, so yeah we'd love to hear that. - So the first question is, go back to the first. I wanna make sure I keep them. 'Cause the paid staff I got, what was the first one? -

General operating support. How do we, you know, the whole overhead thing. - So here's the deal, when you're early on you take the money. Early on, I'll just say a lot of organizations, when I was referring to the family foundations here in Baltimore that do that three year, this is for like the new orgs. They are working very specifically with our state nonprofit org. So most of our states, every state has a nonprofit organization. And so here it's called Maryland Nonprofit. Woo, that's a big s

urprise. Maryland nonprofit has made it, part of their goal is to really get new nonprofits that are coming into the market situated well. So there's all kinds of trainings and support and coaching and a lot of times, like the executive director is the first person hired. And that makes total sense because wouldn't it be weird if you're board brought in like two people doing the work and no executive, like you're the executive director. You gotta be able to select your staff and decide when you'

re ready and have that like kind of give and take with the board. 'Cause the board has three duties. I mean they have fiduciary responsibilities to make sure the organization's good financial said they've got a care and they've gotta make sure you don't have any conflicts. Like right, not going in the technicals of that, 'cause that's not this presentation, but your board becomes really, really critical to your growth. So you start with the ED, right? You start with this, our Maryland nonprofit

has identified those early funder orgs. And so that's another one for you all to Google. If you're not already connected with your state-based nonprofit agency, go and find them because they often already have the relationship and when you come in they'll say, oh what you're kind of new or you're trying to get to like being a salaried organization and things like that. They've already got a pathway for you to follow and they can already connect you to some of those early funders. So your state-b

ased nonprofit, really important if you haven't already done it. Also, they already have money from different funders to give you the coaching and training to make sure that you're ready to file your first 990 and you're ready to hire your first person. They have so many resources and like Virginia has one, DC has one, Maryland has one and they often work together as well. So think about your local state-based nonprofit. You have got to work with your board though when it comes down to like grow

th. Because the board has to make the first commitment that they're gonna go out there and glad hand and raise the money. That's their job along with you. It is not your job to raise the money. You've gotta pick your board very wisely. They have to have their own connections. They have to be able to write their own checks. My board members must write a check to PEAK Grantmaking every year. We don't have a required amount, but they must write the check. And why? Because a lot of funders will say,

what percentage of your board is supporting your work? It's a question on the application when you get there, you wanna say a hundred percent, even if they're all just giving you a dollar. Like yep, you can set higher standards but your board becomes critically important to positioning you to hire that first member. But when you're early, you should not be thinking about only general operating support grants. You should think about any money you can get. Because one of the things about being a

early phase nonprofit is that you have to build the rigor, the practice of doing grant reports, of being able to get through a grant application. The couple of meetings you need, you have to think about all of that as you building a muscle that just gets stronger over time. When you talk to an organization that's in its 10th year or that's a larger nonprofit, they've built the muscle and added the personnel to really be able to get through those grant applications, the grant report, the conversa

tion, the site visit. Oh we wanna come out and see what y'all are doing and they can handle it. So think about your first few years as you building some muscle. A lot of us, I'm 28 years, I can ask for a hundred, I can ask for a million dollar GOS grant like right now because PEAK has 28 years approving clean audits, clean financials, all that. So we do kind of go on some bold doors I guess you could say. But it's based on our 28 years of being around for early nonprofits. I think it's very, I t

hink actually if it were your money, you might wanna give that money away kind of having like as we would say, a restricted grant, a programmatic grant. Like I'm gonna fund this piece of what you're doing because you wanna feel like it's directed. You got a clean line on what they're gonna be reporting back to you on. If it were your money, you might want a little bit more time to find out kind of what's going on with the organization. I would just say don't eshoo that it's not a horrible thing,

it's just kind of part of it. But the key is the more you build that muscle, the better you are at the processes, the more likely you are to be able to get that what I call the love offering of some money that you didn't ask for. Because somebody's watching you do good work. In many ways, one of the biggest things, if you take away from scarcity to abundance, one of the things to think about is that we don't have a profit and we don't have shareholders, we have community, we have people who car

e about the work we do. Run your nonprofit like a small business. The better you run it, the more likely people are to invest their dollars in you to talk you up to say, "Hey you should go over to Ivonne because she's doing X, Y, Z I saw her doing it and it's amazing and people are benefiting from it." That's more like kind of like a small business mindset to kind of growth and not like a, oh charity, charity, charity. One of my favorite unfavorite words, I do not like charity. That right there

we're a nonprofit corporation and we are running this place in a way that's super transparent. Our results are on our sleeve. We don't want you looking for what PEAK's results are. You can see them. And the other thing is we're gonna do it so well that you wanna put your money here, like this is the best big bet that you can make. Think about that. That's how you gotta run your organization from day one to day 100. That is what you have to do as you go forward. And it's not as hard all the time.

There are a lot of foundations trying to give away money and they say they're not successful. I'm just putting that out there. And I know Ivonne, like the fact that we only have 10 minutes is wild because we're gonna answer every question here. - Oh no, we have longer than that. - We do. Okay, we have more time okay. - Yeah. - Good. I feel like okay we've got some time. - Okay. - I feel like some of the questions are really, I can hit them really quickly if we do a quick water break pause. - Ok

ay. Well a couple of things. So I'll just tell the audience, 'cause I'm getting a lot of questions about what state organization did you mention, what's going on? You know, that kind of stuff. - I'll go back to it. - Yeah, so well we have on Candid Learning the nonprofit startup assessment tool and it's just a whole startup page. So even though you may not be a startup or maybe you are, it's really good for getting you your state. You know, so I know you're all over. So looking at different stat

e help, even legal things, you know, how do I get started? There's actually a whole tool where you get to answer all these questions and then it kind of spits back, Ooh, maybe you're not ready or you are ready And it gives you all of these resources. I mean a lot of resources. So I'm just putting that out there for people asking those questions, 'cause they're so specific and we do have something that you can look at. But I wanted to get back with you, Satonya, to having that pie chart, having t

hat, you know, what does PEAK look like in terms of getting support in different ways. And so not getting so frustrated with the foundations, but understanding there's other ways. And you started talking about membership, that was one piece of the pie. So yeah, lead us down that road again. - Thank you. I'm gonna go back to that. So PEAK's unique thing is that we do have membership. Now like that is just a model that we have because we want foundations, that's it. We want foundations joining us

members as a signal that they are also open to us pouring into them good practice. So we do a membership model. It is not fraternities, sororities, those organizations. Some churches, it's a membership model. Actually a church you join as a member, right? You pay your ties. Most people don't think about churches as a membership organization, but they are. And so they are, that is their model. But the typical 501C3, like all the other places that I have worked, typical 501C3 has to goal to have t

he most healthy and diverse pie chart. So let's think about a pie. Sometimes it's all pecan pie, that's cute for Thanksgiving, but your pie needs to be a little peach, a little pecan. You gotta have some sweet potato, you have some buttermilk, some chess pie, that's buttermilk pie with coconut. And then you're gonna have a little bit of like blackberry and so on and so forth. It is one of the biggest things, the opportunity moments for us as people working at nonprofits to figure out ways based

on our type to have the most diverse financial pie chart. Like we're not talking about expenses, we're talking about strict revenue. PEAK right now has a lot of our revenue coming from our memberships in which, and then contributions. So if you're a membership organization, you have to do a value, a dues valuation. So people pay a membership due, you know, I love that. A membership due membership dues, they pay that. There's a component that goes back to the value they receive. And then there's

the component that is tax deductible. So for PEAK, let's say our average member gives us $2,800. We have a due and these are just, I'm just giving you some quick examples. This is not ours exactly. Our dues valuation $750, someone gives us $2,800, $750, that's $2,050 left over. That is a contribution toward us operating. So they pay for their value and then the rest is received from an accounting as a contribution. So every $2,800 to $2,050 comes back, boom, boom. And so there's a component that

is going to the 600 members there at value is this amount. Everything beyond that. So for instance, a lot of our organizations, one of our goals in making our pie chart cooler, so we've got our membership revenue, but this contributions revenue was not as wide as it could have been. And so we wanted to see if we just asked for more money than the dues, would people give it to us. And so your invoice for your dues is $2,800, but we would love if you could give us $4,000. And people started writi

ng a check for $4,000. And so that allowed our membership contribution, like our goal. So let's say we settle, 50% of our revenue is gonna be from membership contribution. That's real, it's a lot. It's way more in the pie chart than I would like for it to be, but it's the right pie chart for PEAK, 'cause we are a membership of organization. So really 50% to 70% of our revenue should be coming from membership dues and the contributions associated above and beyond those dues. So our pie chart is v

ery healthy. So you have contributions is that part beyond the dues and then we have grants, like people who just grant. We don't have a ton of sponsorships. One of the biggest conversation we've said is that when PEAK does events, when we have our annual convening, when we do something in a region or whatever, we weren't really pricing our events well. And so we had a focus group of our members. We just put out a thing on the website. We said, "Hey, anybody wanna be part of this focus group?" W

e invited a few people specifically, but at the end of the day we just said, who wants to be on it? People showed up, it was two sessions and we asked them like, "Are we undervaluing what we do?" And they were like, by the order magnitude of a hundred percent. Can you imagine like someone who gives you money coming in and saying, for what PEAK gave us, y'all could have charged double that. And we were shocked. We were like, oh my goodness. 'Cause in your first moment, I think my first moment was

like, oh goodness, we're leaving money on the table. That's what I thought. I was like, oh, we're leaving money on the table. But after I got over that, like for all these years, I didn't know that you all would be willing to really support PEAK at this much different level. But then we got to action and we changed our membership dues valuation, we changed how we asked for money. We took that they said, "We value what you're bringing to the marketplace." And as a result of that, we kind of swit

ched it up to give organizations a better opportunity to support our work holistically. And as a result of that, our sponsorship revenue is growing now. So the pie chart looks a lot healthier as it relates to that. You're starting to see more just general contributions come in, right? Because I mean we were do, we would do an event and let's say we'd say, oh, we think we can raise $25,000, right? And then we might raise $50,000. So like, oh, next year maybe that should be closer to the goal we h

ave for each other. And then your next goal the next year is $50,000 for that golf tournament and you get in $60,000 and go, maybe we can go. So you really do have to follow the market. You can't go beyond what people are willing to contribute, but you should be paying attention to that. For most nonprofits, and I'm gonna go back to the $50,000 to $250,000, which is the vast majority, this is where your revenue comes from, individual contributions, events, like just general events. It could be t

hat you hosted a dinner or it would be like whatever, like it's events, it's event sponsorship. It's like you pay $20, you come to the thing, that's it. So individual and then you have event and then you have some sponsorship like somebody actually sponsored the thing in addition to you having people pay to come to the thing. So you have like that. That's pretty much it. That is very normal. And it's what we, as someone who worked at foundations for years, it's something I'm used to seeing when

I go look at where the revenue is coming in from the organization is generally a few sources. But Ivonne really wanted me to make sure that I'm sharing with you all. Like ask her what you need. What are your costs? This is how much it costs around our organization. You should ask her the whole thing. You should just ask her the cost. That's one piece. But the grant writing, like PEAK doesn't, we didn't do a ton of grant writing back in the day. We don't even have a development person. I'm the ch

ief development officer along with my membership director and my COO. We kind of manage the money coming in. So I think this is important because from scarcity of abundance says, do you have the staff? And before you can get the staff, do you at least have a board member or a great volunteer who's really good at doing those grant applications? And so we do have to think about the fact that if you're mostly getting the majority of your revenue from individual contributions, a lot of people from t

he Association of Fundraising Professionals, AFP, one of my favorite organizations, AFP would say, "Okay, that's all well and good. What are you leaving on the table? What are you leaving on the table?" Individual contributions means that me and Ivonne wrote a check to your nonprofit. Have you talked to us about bequest? Have you asked us to consider a larger gift next time? So there's these trajectories you have to put your donors on to help you grow. You have to think about as well, like are w

e doing something in community that community needs? During the pandemic when all the childcare places shut down. And so the people who are paying to take their kids to drop them off so they could go to work, were shut down. Nonprofits filled the gap left and right for parents who still had to go into an office or just needed a couple hours to run a meeting or a webinar and wouldn't run hundreds of people. They needed that help. And so you start to think about like, oh, we run a whole daycare ov

er here. Or we already have a playground. We already are operating out of a school. We have all these different buildings and we have folks who are already qualified to do some childcare. How organizations pivoted in the moment and said, wait a minute, we probably have like 60% to 70% of what we need. Let's call the state and say, don't get in trouble. What all will we need to be able to do just two hours after school care safely according to whatever rules or laws would govern that. And a lot o

f organizations found with a couple of quick tweaks, putting their paperwork in, they could actually provide some after school. And so we always have to be like not chasing an opportunity, but you have to look around you and say, could we possibly earn some revenue because we've got skills or we've got knowledge or we've got connection points or a real service that community needs right now. Earned revenue is probably one of the biggest things that folks leave on the table. I'll say the other th

ing too is maybe you were a private daycare provider. ARPA funds, all the pandemic related funds are now flowing to states. You could either work really hard on that piece or you could actually say, oh, we're a daycare provider that's totally certified in the state of Maryland. There are funds for daycare providers. You could actually become a government grantee by saying, we have exactly what you need. Raise your hand, you go through the process and next thing you know, you're getting a reimbur

sement quarterly because of what you're doing. And so we can never look past the federal agencies, government, local, state, rural, federal. Sometimes what a nonprofit is providing the government sees as essential and there's a component that they're willing to offset because it's needed. Society or community will not operate well without it. And so that's a another thing. It's a little sophisticated in the sense of there's often reporting requirements that you must be able to meet to get govern

ment grants. But the key is having a good board and having good volunteers while you build your staff up who have that expertise. So don't ask your friends to join your board. Lawyer, accountant, marketing, communication, IT. So you gotta have people who are good with reputation, good with money, good with legal, good with this, good with that and good writers, really good writers, good business communicators. You want those people on your board because until you have staff your board's agreed t

o do that, don't let them say otherwise. They should step off if they're not ready to do the work. You board had agreed to do the work. - I love that, I love that. - And so earned revenue is a place where everyone should be thinking, do I have something that society, the country, the world, the community needs that we could actually get revenue back in? And so some people, they actually are a nonprofit that provides mental health services. Their whole pie chart is earned revenue because that's a

ll they do. Now they could be doing some sponsorships, some individual donations. They could be doing some event things, they could be doing some grant writing. So the key is not to let one area or pie chart to get so outsized that if that dried up, it would impact your ability to pay your bills and to really meet the obligations of community that you're trying to meet. So a healthy pie chart is one that has at least four or five different flavors. That is a good goal. And Candid has a ton of re

sources to really help you. But again, back to your state nonprofit, it's just like put an Iowa nonprofit, just type that if you're in Iowa, it's gonna pop up. So almost every state has it. And some states have more than one entity. Like New York for instance, is so big, there's three different entities that kind of perform that function. But philanthropy, New York is the funder side and then there's another agency that's really on the nonprofit side. And so that's just something to remember. Bu

t they exist in every state and every territory. Puerto Rico, Guam, all of 'em have it. So we don't have any state that's unrepresented at this point. - Yeah, those nonprofit associations, thank you for mentioning earned revenue, which I know freaks people out sometimes. Like what am I selling? I thought I was a nonprofit. Yes, you can sell stuff, especially if you're a consultant, again with Satonya saying like you have some expertise somewhere that you didn't realize. You may sell tickets, you

may sell swag, you have events like those. - Marketing, yes. - Yeah, you may have all those things and that's totally fine. And individual giving, which I always thought people were cool with that. 'Cause I see the Donate button, but a lot of folks, they have that Donate button, but they don't do much behind it because they're busy writing grants, so - That would be PEAK Grantmaking. That would be us. Like we might get like 200 individual grants a year. Like people who write us a check. - Exact

ly. - Because it's just not been our model. We don't see, we haven't put a lot of energy behind it because that's just not going to be where we get our most amount of money. - Right. - It's just not, but we do have a donate button, - Right. - Have a donate button, I think is Ivonne's point, And with that, we can give you a couple of places to go look and explore for your particular nonprofit to say, yeah, I wanna make sure that our organization is listed on Network for Good or on Charity Navigat

or has everyone, but it's a mechanism where people can donate to you through those. It's not that they can find you, like we were talking about GuideStar, you want the ability to be found and have someone give you money and they will handle the administration to get that money over to you. That's important. - Am I back now? - Oh yeah, we can see you and you're moving. - Great, oh good, okay. I think my laptop is like, she moves too much, so I'm just gonna freeze her. But anyway, so the question

that I was gonna ask was we're talking a lot of this kind of traditional, you know, the pie chart and transactional and kind of checklists and all of that. But we know that PEAK is trying to do more, encourage more transformational practices. So not transactional grantmaking, but you know, just different kinds of relationships and support and those kinds of words and partnership. So can you talk a little bit more about that please? - I will because we often will walk away, I'll say like PEAK, we

will often walk away. I'll give an example the team and I were just talking very candidly about this and we have funders who every time it's time for them to give us money, it feels like we're starting anew. It's like so intriguing 'cause you kind of go, okay, didn't they give us money last year? And then like we get this really stilted email and it's like, "Hey PEAK Grantmaking." And you're like, Hey. - It's like being on a dating app. Like I went out with this dude, you don't remember that. I

'm sorry. - Or as I say, you know, we do a lot of equity and racial equity not to like, you know, freak folks out. But the other thing is, as a Black woman, I cannot tell you how many meetings I'm in with people. And then I see them the next day and they introduce themselves to me and I laugh, but I was like, I understand it is been a moment in our society where we didn't have to remember certain people, but we're gonna do better about that. But when it comes to a funding relationship, it is awk

ward to say the least when it feels like you're starting all over again. And so I'll just say that as an example for us, we just are like, maybe we should remind them who we are. Like we're snarky behind the scenes. We're real people who go to work. But it's interesting when someone's been funding us for like three, five years consistently seems to always be starting a new relationship. Now let's think about that. One of the things we realized is that their staff has changed. So the person manag

ing our grant is a brand new person. So they truly are like, "Hey PEAK, Grantmaking." They don't know anything about us. So grace is beautiful, grace and space. But one of the things is if you experience something that feels transactional, like they came, they came looked at our facility, they were like, this is great. They left us a check and then you never hear from them again. Deposit the check, let's start there. But then you have to ask yourself, 'cause we can only control ourselves, right?

You have to ask yourself, did I position this as a relationship, the beginning of a good relationship? Did I position this as like, Hey, you have money, we need money. Can you give us money? They said yes, they gave you the money, they're done. And then you know what the question is, is like did we position ourselves for the beginning of a long term funding relationship? Did we go beyond the transactional or did we really just say, oh my blue told me that you're giving away money and so I'm com

ing over here and we're gonna get some money from you. Or we're gonna have you come to the event or you wrote the check to our organization as an individual donor, that's it. We have to do a much better job of really thinking about, and like when PEAK talks about transformational, I'll tell you about that. But just starting where we are as nonprofits. Have we done what we need to that the funder or the individual donor feels like we are in relationship, that I'm gonna come back to you and tell y

ou how good we're doing. Not just when I'm asking for money or not just when I want you to come to the thing. In our biz, we call that stewardship. Stewardship is about staying in touch with people in between the transaction and stewardship is something that very few early nonprofits invest in because we are working so hard just to do the required things. So the idea of like saying like, "Hey, we're over here doing great work." That's it, like nothing. There's no asks, there's no nothing, no inv

itation, whatever. I think that has to become, and with social media in five seconds you can send that love note. With social media and with email you can literally say, "Hey, we just started a new program and it made me think about the conversation we had, blah blah blah." You send a quick note, three lines in and out done. And that's the note that you send over to a potential donor or someone that you had worked with. Sometimes it's those little things that say, oh, Satonya is gonna contact us

when she's not just asking for something. So we have to set ourselves up to be going into relationship with funders. The other thing is, is that you're an expert Ivonne's part about like, hey, you might be coming from another career. Maybe you did run a marketing firm, but now you're running a nonprofit. Well do you know marketing communications is in high need in our space? You better go get that contract for your thought leadership and expertise because that can be so important. But also are

you lending that to other nonprofits. That's another opportunity, is for you to get a consortium started that has like marketing for a whole group of nonprofits that you're gonna lead in addition to X, Y, Z. Don't kill yourself but your expertise is your expertise. I think it's so important for us to think about all that we are as experts and to really value that. You don't want transactional, you want a relationship. What PEAK is doing is saying, "Hey funders, we experience a lot of transaction

al stuff from you all and that's not okay." You can best support community in whatever issue area you fund, if you are actually willing to leave your office, quote unquote even over Zoom and go spend some time with folks, really spend some time with them and get to see how they're interacting in communities, so on and so forth. So we are really trying to move, especially our private foundations beyond their 5%. There was a question about the largest and whether people are investing in PRIs. We k

now that probably less than 10% of foundations who are eligible to do PRIs, program related investments, mission related investments. It is the equivalent of using some of the money that stays in the bank to go invest in aligned area that's gonna produce jobs, housing, these very specific things. But giving away, doing PRIs is no easy joke. You need a team. There's all kind of requirements from the IRS, so on and so forth. There's very few folks that are doing that. But talk about going in relat

ionship. You get a PRI from a funder, y'all are twins now because they are gonna be like this with you. You'll go this way and they're like this and you will go that way. 'Cause the moment they make that level of investment in you is sometimes for three years, five years, 10 years. 'Cause y'all gonna go build a building and house all the homeless people in the city. That's where we invest PRIs and MRIs. But it is again, foundations are working in scarcity. They got four people, five people, 10 p

eople doing PRIs and MRIs requires a team. You can't do that as a one-off. It is a very different proposition. So you're mostly seeing it from these really large family foundations that are well-staffed and a lot of the private foundations doing that. But backs to transformational. PEAK has to encourage more funders to see us, to see who we are, period. Come in, see our work, see who we are. Fund the people, the people do the work. You're not funding a project. There's no project that exists wit

hout people doing the work. And so stop telling us you wanna give us project funding or whatever. Do you see PEAK? Do you see our unique value proposition back to the marketplace? And are you willing to invest in us? A grant can be charity or it can be an investment. I like to get our people to give us a grant investment. I want them sticking around. I want them getting to know my team and my board and our volunteers. I want them staying forever. If we're the only check they write every year, we

want it to be that. But I am willing to invest the time as is my team in that being a relationship and not a one-off. Now we do some transactional stuff because we gotta pay bills and not everything can be the deepest of relationships. We're just trying to encourage foundations to do better by the way they show up, for us to see us, to see the people who do the work and to maybe think about not just giving you a one-time investment, that is BS. Your mission aligned, they see what you do, it's a

ll perfect. Why would you just do one thing and walk away and do nothing else? So we're also trying to challenge nonprofits to stay in it for the long haul. You say you want to deal with homelessness in Baltimore, that's not one grant. That's a whole bunch of stuff that we're gonna have to do to really also trying to get them to really be as complex as the problems that we are trying to solve and not treat us as the one-off thing either. And so again, PEAK has a unique position to really challen

ge our funders to do better and to see us and let us do that. You just go get that transaction if you need to do that so you can pay your bills. But we are really saying don't position yourself only as transactional as a nonprofit. Because sometimes we get what we've really positioned ourselves for. So go in relationship, say hello, check in and ask them how they're doing. Because PEAK is over here saying to a board and CEO, did you all ask Ivonne how she was doing when you all went on your site

visit? And they go like this, like I'll be in like a training and they'll be like, What do you mean? I'm like, what do you do when you go on a site visit? Like, well we walk around the building. I'm like, did you look at a staff member and say, "How are you doing today?" And wait for the answer. Did you ask them, do they have the resources they need to do good work? Did you wait for the answer? That is what I want a board or a CEO doing in when they go out in the community, I want them checking

on you all, you're humans doing hard work that's thinkless. That's real. And so that is a little bit of the work that PEAK and a few other funders are doing to really move our funders into a much more transformational space with us. But we can't screw it up by showing up transactional ourselves. - I like that, I like that. I'm always curious when we talk what the position that you're in, do you get a lot of resistance from funders? Is there a feeling that for some some reason it's scary or it's

not right or it's too different to be in relationship and to do and to think abundantly. Is that just like, do people have to, I always say this like people have to die for things to change. But you know, meaning like the newer folks, of course they're kind of like, yes, I've been in nonprofit and so they have all this enthusiasm. Is there some old guard that is trying to hold onto something that, that we don't like anymore? It doesn't work anymore? - You know, I think sometimes when you have p

ower and money, no one's challenged you. No one's asked you sometimes the questions. And so PEAK has five principles that we like, they guide us internally and how we work, but also they guide how we work with funders. And two of those principles, one is called tie your practices to your values. So tie practices to values. I.E. don't say something and then when we stare at you, we see that you're doing exactly the opposite. It doesn't feel okay and it's not okay. The other thing is narrow the po

wer gap. To the point of your question, when you have money and status and community, you can forget my name the next day 'cause somebody told you that that was okay and no one's held you accountable. So that when like me as a human at this moment for years in my career working at nonprofits and then eventually working for philanthropic organizations, for foundations, going to the art museum and going to that event and having these really thoughtful conversations with someone and then running in

to them at the grocery store the next day and saying, "Hi, it's so good to see you." and them going like, who the hell is talking me? Like what is that? Back in the day that hurt my feelings. Now let's just say that when we leave the grocery store, we're in a different place because I know that I am a person who says, no, you won't forget about PEAK, nor will you forget about me. Nor was that ever okay for you to having a whole hour with someone and then forget that you had that conversation. Li

ke stop. And so I'll just say that a lot of people who have had power and status have not necessarily been challenged to do things differently. I think PEAK with love and respect goes to folks and says, you can do it differently. So I don't know if it's so much a old guard or a new guard. I just think that us challenging power in all of power's things is new for those people. And so those folks are really, really having a kind of moment, especially funders really saying like, it's not like, oh,

you want me to be in a relationship with PEAK Grantmaking? What's up with that? Or Candid, which is also a nonprofit by the way, doing all this good stuff for all of us. It's not that we, they don't wanna be in a relationship. They too have been heads down trying to get through the checklist. Well this week the checklist includes getting my membership dues out to me and your grant check to you. And they go checklist, checklist, done, done. They too are very heads down. What we're trying to tell

them to do is use technology as your friend, let technology help you get the grant applications and reports done in a more efficient way so that the few staff you do have are out there doing higher order work. The same thing for us as nonprofits. Are we utilizing technology tools and platforms as best as we can for wherever we are in our stage, our lifecycle as an organization so that the staff can really be doing the best things and not this menial kind of crazy that we end up getting stuck in.

And so I don't think that there is resistance. Now when it comes to equity and racial equity, there is resistance. And I am not, I'm a Star Trek girl. Resistance is futile. I will keep knocking at your door because why are you giving money away to solve homelessness in Baltimore without thinking about how we ended up with 2000 people on the street. Okay, there are policy gaps, there's mental health support gaps, there's not enough affordable housing. There's a lot of policy gaps behind why a fo

undation can come in and do this great work. Can you help me on the policy advocacy side and foundations can? You can but also at the end of the day, it's just like you really do need to be in community for us to truly solve this. You can't do it by just writing the one check and walking away. And so when we start to address things like equity policy gaps and things like that, that is scary for an organization that for a foundation that's never done that. Like they don't have a policy advocacy a

rm or expertise and they really have never thought about how racism shows up in the world, it screws people or genderism. We haven't had a female president in this country. Let's all think about that for a minute. I'm just saying now you're a woman who's on the street, who's homeless, who's trying to get seen and get some help. Being a woman is its own target in society. And so we are just having very different conversations, Ivonne, with funders right now and there is resistance. But go back to

scarcity abundance. They got five staff. So you start talking about relationships and being a community and not doing these checklist things to move money. And they're like wondering if they have the capacity to kind of do what we're asking at this moment, which is to see me, to respect me, to own that the policy gaps that maybe your grandfather or your uncle put in place is the reason why your foundation is now giving away money. Those are not conversations people have had. So that's why I thi

nk PEAK has to go into those discussions with love. We have to connect a funder with another funder, me saying, Hey, it's time said I should do this, that no. Carmen Rojas has to call this other foundation and say, this is how we changed over time and here's how we grew our staff by three people, which allowed us, because we have the money in the bank to really do this work different better. And that has been so important for us to almost say to them like, if PEAK is old enough to get the staff

we need to support youth foundations in changing, can you get a few staff too so your staff can have a moment, take a day off, but also stop being so transactional with us. So we are challenging right now, the very model by which foundations they kept saying, we had the least amount of staff so we can give the most amount of money away. The least amount of this so we can do this. And it's like, no, we reject that premise. - Yeah, that's never a good idea. Like we're trying to do more with less,

no. - Right, and the other thing is, can we just solve homelessness in Baltimore? Do I need to stay here as a nonprofit helping the homeless? Do you need to stay here as a funder of the home? Let's solve the problem. That's the shortsightedness I think that we're seeing. But we're really challenging whether we can put a price on the problem and go collectively solve it and then maybe move on to the next challenge. And so if you only do homelessness, and that's all you've been doing is funding ho

melessness in Baltimore and we're talking about putting you out of business of that problem, you don't always see the path forward. And I think that's a bit of the resistance that we're seeing, but it's only because it's kind of conceptually new. These are new conversations and foundations themselves are running very scarce. And so they haven't thought about all the possibilities for what they could do. And we're just trying to invite those conversations right now. And for the organizations, We

have hundreds of foundations who are making this shift. And it is beautiful to see you all. We have a journal, we capture it. We really try to have a foundation, talk to another foundation, a person talk to another person about their own transformation. That is the most important story. But we're seeing it happen. It's just that PEAK is one organization. - Yeah. - And we've gotta get time, we've gotta talk through people and we've got people say, how can we be better off as a funder if we're bei

ng equitable? Well, we gotta have time to have that conversation, to really break it down for them on why, if we're all aspiring toward a racial equity norm, we mean when we say that is that we just want everyone to have open opportunity. - Absolutely. - Yeah, pursuit of happiness, man. If we all can get that, how you give money away when it's overly burdensome on a nonprofit or on a community that's not helping us get to that opportunity norm, giving a nonprofit money but not enough money to fu

lly pay their executive director that's not helping us get to this place that we're going. And so we're really just trying to reveal some things that maybe they've overlooked over time and then new opportunity areas. And that's the work that PEAK is doing. And we can see it taking root you all and we. - You're reminding me of the phrase calling in rather than calling out, so- - Amen, that's what we do. - Yeah, because you know, we kind of wanna call people out sometimes, but then you're like- -

Doesn't work. - Right. - Like shame works, shame does work at times, let's just be clear. But if you think about that intimate conversation that you're having, you're really saying, we have an opportunity to do things differently. Not like, why are you doing this? - Exactly. - You can say that exactly. But it's like, give them an example of what's in their benefit if they shift. And that's for human beings in general, let alone foundations and nonprofits. - Exactly. So Satonya, you know, and I k

now this from meeting with you on the side, we could talk all day. So I was like, how are we gonna do this? But thank you so much for being here. It's 3:29, we're done at 3:30, but I'm still gonna ask you for your last final wise words and even if you can throw in some assets framework as a tool. But I wanna thank everyone for coming. Tell everyone please enjoy your day and please join us next year when we start these series again of having these wonderful guests that are just doing really great

things in the philanthropic sector. And we're also putting the feedback link in the chat. So please let us know how we're doing and what we can do better. But yes, I'm gonna get those final words even though it's 3:30. So just give us the final words - And I'm hoping we can grab the questions. I promise that if we can grab the questions, I'll get answers back to you all individually if you have your information out there. But even in our resources, we'll just try to answer all the questions as

many as we can. I saw that many were answered, but more than anything you have to use yourself as a nonprofit leader and staff member as an instrument of change. And when I think about from scarcity to abundance, believe it or not, we are the ones modeling to the funders on how we can be differently. And I would just say that I PEAK, I as Satonya and PEAK stand as a resource alongside you to really think about how to lift up our expertise. The fact that we are not a grantee, we're a nonprofit pa

rtner. Foundation has money and we have expertise, and we have relationship and community. We can go into this proposition as equal partners and that is going to be how we change society. And so I hope you're inspired, I hope you're starting to think about your playbook on abundance. And I hope you know that just PEAK is here, even if you've never heard of us before, we are over here really trying to push a very different abundant landscape for all of us to be able to do our work in. And it give

s us great joy to have this position. So thank you, Ivonne. - Thank you so much. Please go get some water and a snack and a nap or whatever you need after giving us so many jewels. Thank you everyone, enjoy your day.