← Nonprofits Are Messy: Lessons in Leadership | Fundraising | Board Development | Communications
Nonprofits Are Messy: Lessons in Leadership | Fundraising | Board Development | Communications
Ep 249: Financial Resilience Isn’t Luck – It’s Strategy with Bethany Maki
00:44:37
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- [00:00]
Joan Gary
If you did a survey of nonprofits right now and asked their leaders what is top of mind, I have no doubt that revenue generation would be number one or number two. Many people have been thinking about this in terms of fundraising, like having a diverse revenue mix, and we've done different sessions on this on the podcast in the Nonprofit Leadership Lab. Not being overly reliant on any one revenue stream, like government grants, for example, has been a big pain point this year, and some have even considered trying new revenue streams like earned income. So for this podcast, dear listeners, I wanted to find someone to talk to who is thinking about this stuff at the highest, most resilient and most sustainable levels. And I was so fortunate to connect with Bethany Mackey who runs Progressive Multipliers and trust me, she is always thinking about diversity, sustainability, exponential growth and maximum impact. So let's dive right in and see what Bethany and Progressive Multiplier have to teach us.
- [01:27]
Podcast Host/Announcer
Welcome to Nonprofits Are Messy with Joan, Gary and Experts.
- [01:31]
Joan Gary
This podcast is your go to space
- [01:33]
Podcast Host/Announcer
for insights, advice and inspiration designed to help nonprofit leaders overcome challenges and drive impact. Whether you're navigating small beginnings or leading a larger organization, we're here to support
- [01:48]
Joan Gary
you every step of the way.
- [01:51]
Podcast Host/Announcer
Together with Joan and a diverse group
- [01:53]
Joan Gary
of expert guests, we tackle the big
- [01:56]
Podcast Host/Announcer
questions nonprofit leaders face and offer actionable advice to fuel your leadership journey. A special thank you to donorperfect for sponsoring this episode and supporting nonprofits that we love. Now let's jump in
- [02:14]
Bethany Mackey
Foreign.
- [02:21]
Joan Gary
Currently is the Executive Director of Progressive Multiplier Fund and Action Fund and the CEO of Multiplier Effect, whose collective purpose is helping progressive movement groups achieve sustainability and scalability by strengthening their catalytic revenue generation capacity and diversifying their financial capital, we're going to get into all of that. That's just a little bit about Bethany's bio. If you're interested, check out the link in the show notes. But let's get some behind the scenes info about how Bethany got to where she is. I won't give away all the surprises, but it involves sports marketing of all things.
- [03:08]
Bethany Mackey
To start Bethany thank you so much for having me today. Glenda. Yes, I did start my career in sports marketing and like many, many young professionals in 2001, I got downsized during the dot com recession and as we sit here in 2026 saying 2001 I'm like been out this a minute.
- [03:29]
Joan Gary
We've been doing this for a little while. Bethany right?
- [03:32]
Bethany Mackey
Yes. Feeling the gray hair. But I figured out that like while I loved the marketing part of My job, I really hated that at the end of the day my efforts were about, you know, making my boss and the company a profit. So I of course decided to look into nonprofit marketing as young people who want to to be the change tend to do.
- [03:53]
Joan Gary
Yep.
- [03:54]
Bethany Mackey
So that led me on a journey and for from working for an order of nuns to healthcare nonprofits ranging from local places like Allies for Health and Wellness up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to national office at American Diabetes, to running agency practices to help really large nonprofits with digital fundraising and constituent experience work. So I was introduced to Progressive Multipliers founding executive director by a dear friend who I shared a cue ball with at one of those agencies. And Phil Radford brought me on as Progressive Multipliers first program director to help the grantees raise independent revenue. So that how I landed here at Progressive Multiplier.
- [04:36]
Joan Gary
Awesome.
- [04:36]
Bethany Mackey
Great.
- [04:37]
Joan Gary
Well, let's. I, I was not familiar until recently with the work that you do at Progressive Multiplier and I, I really want to share this with the audience because it is both tangible as well as broad and ambitious. And so what the heck is it? Can you tell me about the work you do to help organizations? Because it's very multilayered and so I'm interested in kind of the, that short term, you know, how do you become more sustainable and then I know you all have a long term vision that you are working on that I bet most of our audience members would be really excited by.
- [05:14]
Bethany Mackey
Yeah, absolutely. So our work is all about making sure that the financial means of justice are as durable as the purpose they serve. That's it, that's the bottom line and that's intentionally broad because we know today that need is very different than what it's going to be five years from now, 50 years from now. So we're, we have tried to structure Progressive Multiplier to really come at things both from this very short term strategy as well as really long arc far horizon strategy. So currently our three programs, the Catalyst, the Lab and the Convergence, strengthen the movement's financial engines today. So we are helping groups organize diverse financial capital, test new revenue generation models, giving a safe space for experimentation and then really sharing out what works so that we're never in that, you know, place where we're gatekeeping any of the things that we discover or the models that work, we're making them available for free. And then we're also in parallel really working on how do we change the ecosystem that controls the determinants of financial resilience for nonprofits. So things like Access to financing and revenue, to cash flow modeling and things like that.
- [06:36]
Joan Gary
Yeah, I'm glad. So. So for folks who are not finance
- [06:40]
Bethany Mackey
geeks out there, not everybody embraces the spreadsheet quite as hard as I. I
- [06:47]
Joan Gary
am one of those people. I am like Excel. Too much Google sheets. I can handle that. That's where I'm at. So for those folks we're talking about, how do we fund the nonprofit movement, how do we fund the progressive movement, and how do we make sure that that is in the short term and the long term sustainable, that we can rely on it? This is something I think people in 2025 started really, that they hadn't been before, thinking about differently because the landscape changed. And one of the that you all talk about that I just want to make sure people understand what it is that seems key to the work that you do is independent revenue generation. So I know what all those words mean. But together and related to your work at Progressive Multiplier, what does that mean? What is independent revenue generation? Why is it so important?
- [07:54]
Bethany Mackey
Yeah, that's definitely the core. So independent revenue generation, which we shortened to IRG because, you know, what's nonprofit work if you don't, if you don't have acronyms? Lots of them.
- [08:05]
Joan Gary
Yep.
- [08:07]
Bethany Mackey
So that is really simply money that isn't coming in from a grant. And the reason that's so important for progressive nonprofits especially is that most of these kinds of groups and movement groups and frontline organizing groups can be upwards of 90% institution, grant institution funded. Which, you know, anytime you have a single source of revenue, that that creates risk, especially when it's revenue that is so influenced by landscape and things out of your control. So typically people think of IRG is like, oh, you mean an individual donor program. And yes, that is one type, but there are many. But this money is so critical to the financial resilience because it allows groups to essentially turn their own keys and drive their, their own strategies. So several of my kind of industry colleagues, Prentice Haney and Vivian Chang and I came together or put together a definition around what we see as financial resilience that requires this kind of revenue. So when groups can weather the ups and downs of funding cycles and still stay independent at the same time. So when they can make decisions about how they want to grow their power and impact without depending on funders. Yeah, and the last piece, how they want to catalyze their own work without having to wait on their funders. So when they're. They can be truly responsive to community needs. So enough Resources, including unrestricted resources from different sources and the practices to stay strong and stable in the long run is really what we consider financial resilience all about.
- [09:41]
Joan Gary
That's amazing. Anything Vivian Chang is behind, I'm behind. So this, that's a good policy. That, that sounds good. Let's take a quick break and then we're going to get concrete about how you work with groups because I'm sure folks are interested in knowing how that. Okay, that sounds good. I want that. Who wouldn't want that? How do you work with groups in the short term, in the long term, to make that happen to, as you say, organize financial capital to grow progressive power? Right after the break.
- [10:16]
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Joan Gary
so Bethany, can you give us some concrete examples of how you work with organizations? What does this actually look like?
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Bethany Mackey
Sure. So there are really four ways that we work one on one with groups and that can sound like a lot, but we really want to make sure we're the right fit for a group in terms of the maturity of its revenue generation program because what we found in working with movement groups is that that range is wide. So our SP program really helps groups build or fix what those catalytic capacities you mentioned at the top of the, of the pod. So these are things that you need in place to make sure that it's worth investing in your own revenue generation. So it's that sort of fix the, the leaky bucket before you pour into it kind of thing. So we're talking a lot of like making sure your tech architecture is, is ready to receive money that you have thought through the budget it will take to break even once you start investing. So it' not just a, we spent money and we, we didn't make a profit. And what does that mean? So that's what Spark is all about. So we work with a lot of smaller groups, rural groups that tend to, you know, serve small, small areas that haven't had a lot of attention to their infrastructure on these catalytic capacities. So that's what that's about. Then we have our surge program which is all about the bread and butter of great independent revenue for progressive groups. So IRG can, can be those individual donors that we talked about, but it could be fee for service, it could be real estate, it could be lines of income from the state that you're operating in any of those things. So our Surge program helps groups implement what we already know works. So most of the education that's out there around implementation is for direct service groups like the groups that I grew up working with, like the American Diabetes association are those folks who are doing like direct service, help, hope, support, not groups that are building power revenue. Gener is fundamentally different for power building groups. So Surge is all about taking, taking those best practices and implementing them with groups that are already have the infrastructure in place. Then our roadmap program helps groups plan on what to invest in Revgen. So they've got the infrastructure, they got the bread and butter, and now it's how do we grow? How do we invest in ourselves to grow? Answering that question of where do I spend my next dollar to make a dollar? And then finally there is our lab program, which is really our start. And that's we give grants and strategic assistance to help groups experiment. So this is all about actually carving out new methods for raising money. And some of them can be very crazy and sassy and some of them can be taking a traditional tactic and just adding another layer on it or another nuance or embedding revenue generation in an existing part of programmatic work. So just because it's experimental does not necessarily mean flashy. Yeah, but it's really putting the money and rigor around. What does it take to experiment with new tactics and giving groups a safe space? It's that R and D money.
- [13:58]
Joan Gary
Yeah, yeah. Research and development folks. Just so you know. So give me. I, as you were talking, I was wanting like a concrete example like, like take me through working with a group and sort of what you did with them given any of these four methods.
- [14:18]
Bethany Mackey
Yep. So one group that we've worked with that has I think hit just about all of the programs that we offer is Unite Oregon. They're part of our Pacific Northwest power building cohort and they just finished their third grant with us about to start a fourth. But they used an initial surge grant to implement a bread and butter sustaining program for their C4. So that nuance of there's a, there's thousand resources out there on how to do a sustaining program. But when you're doing a sustaining program for your C4, so not tax deductible donations from the donor.
- [14:53]
Joan Gary
More complicated.
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Bethany Mackey
Way more complicated and not that easy. Like your $10 every month feeds x number of families. It's, you know, your $10 every month is helping us organize our community. So then you have to get into like, okay, how do you educate on what the heck does that mean? And what is the actual net net for the donor? How does it change the donor's world? Not how does it benefit them, but how does it change the world that they live in? So we worked with that with Unite Oregon and then they have done back to back lab grants. The first one was so fascinating. They used it to figure out how to monetize their civic education program using corporate sponsorships. So they had a really well established civic education program that brought in both individuals, folks from government offices, folks from other nonprofits, community members. And they actually reached out to groups that had been supportive during the protests in Portland back in 2020 and said, you know, would you sponsor seats? You know, and since this was all, all C3 compliant, that was an easy, easier pitch than some of the C4 work, but still really helped with their civic engagement education.
- [16:08]
Joan Gary
Yeah. And civic engagement is like how do you make sure you know what's going on in your community? How do you get involved with that? Are you registered to vote? Are there actions or protests in your area that you might want to participate in? That's amazing. And corporate sponsors gave money to sponsor seats in that program. So people could better learn how to do that. That's great.
- [16:34]
Bethany Mackey
Exactly. And then their most recent experiment with us was one of those examples of taking a tried and true tactic like a capital campaign. In their case, they are building a self sustaining community in East Portland. And so typical capital campaign, but they added on a grassroots small dollar donor campaign into it, which you know, if anybody's ever run a capital campaign or been part of it, those are usually giant checks to go buy buildings.
- [17:05]
Joan Gary
Big money.
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Bethany Mackey
Yeah, big money. How did you take this story? Like, we aren't, we aren't asking you to put your name on a building, but how, how can you be part of changing this lives of folks in East Portland with this community? And what does the community mean much more broadly to the progressive movement in that area? So yeah, you can sort of see the arc of like the bread and butter to, you know, monetizing program to actually real experimentation. So that's what we're about. Because now they've got several self sustaining lines of revenue because of this.
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Joan Gary
Yeah, yeah, I want to, I want to drill down even one Layer more specific and tactical. Because I think when you and I have talked about this in the past, you've kind of called this. The, like, organizations need to understand. You need to learn how to eat your broccoli first. Like, you need the basics and, and then you can get more creative and more complex. So that first one that we, that we talked about, that, that fixing the leaky bucket, like, so important, I imagine a lot of listeners out there are thinking, I like what she's talking about. I want some of that. How can, like, what have you seen that makes organizations successful in working with you all to become. Everyone wants to become more sustainable and more scalable. If you, the EDs, the executive directors, or the board chairs out there in the audience, what did they need to do to even be prepared to go on this journey with you all to become more scalable and sustainable?
- [18:49]
Bethany Mackey
I love this question because we can have great programs and work with amazing folks in the movement who are charged with raising the money, but the mindset and the sort of container, culturally that you are raising money for is the most important thing. So the ED has to get that at least half of their job is fundraising, is revenue generation. And I did say 55, 0. So that's a shock to a lot of new EDs, especially who have come up through the more programmatic side of the movement. So we end up with these amazing organizers who are now in an ED seat, and it's like, yep, go raise a few million dollars. And they don't have like, the training, the background, et cetera. So, you know, we've certainly got solutions for that. But that is the number one thing that has to happen for people to be successful when they go into revenue generation, that, that the ED gets, that that is, is 50% of their job.
- [19:48]
Joan Gary
So if you are a leader who's saying, oh, that's the fundraising department, that's my development director, that's over there, that is not the kind of mindset that is going to allow your organization to become sustainable and scalable.
- [20:04]
Bethany Mackey
Exactly. Yeah, 100% it is. It is your job as well. Hopefully you have a great development department, you have great partners to do that on staff. But there is something that comes with the positional power of being an executive director and the vision that only you can have that are critical ingredients to fundraising.
- [20:25]
Joan Gary
It's both. It's like walking the walk and talking the talk. It's. It's like from the top, you can say this is important, but if you're not meaningfully participating in it, you're Sending the opposite message.
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Bethany Mackey
Exactly.
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Joan Gary
Which is I think where you get that 50% number like this needs to be half or more of what you're thinking about. It's not just what you're doing. It's like how are you paying for it today, tomorrow, five years from now? So that I love that. Okay, what else?
- [20:56]
Bethany Mackey
Similarly, a board that sees resilience and sustainability as part of their job, that it is not just we're going to do the rubber stamp on the budget or even if you've got a great board like we have, you know, take the budget to task and make sure that holds water, but that it is actually that longer term planning and making those hard decisions about how you invest in your resilience. Because sometimes that's going to mean this year you're investing less in program because this year you might need to build some piece of your revenue generation that's going to mean financial resilience in the long term. So that it is not having those very set. We always have to invest more in program. We always have to do it this way. It's. That's going to be an ebb and flow year to year of when you are actually purposefully prioritizing investment in resilience and sustainability. It's not rocket science, but you have to sort of let go of the, the mindset that we can't invest in ourselves.
- [21:56]
Joan Gary
I, I want to slow down on this for a second because I think everybody at home is probably shaking their head. Yep, yep. I totally agree. But what Bethany is saying, and please correct me if I'm wrong, Bethany, there may be a year where you as a board are approving a deficit budget to invest in your organization to be able to have sustainable funding for the future.
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Bethany Mackey
Absolutely.
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Joan Gary
Nobody likes to tell you that. Nobody tells you that. You just think, especially those board members coming right from the corporate world. What deficit budget? No, this is bad. I'm not going to approve that. It actually isn't always. There are those times when you need to invest in the infrastructure of the organization. And that means that's why I'm being very explicit. Sometimes a deficit budget or taking some of your savings or some of your reserve and actually using it to make sure that you can be that foundation as strong and stable for the future. I want to be clear about that because I think we don't talk about that enough with board members.
- [23:13]
Bethany Mackey
100 and that's again, you know, sort of like we don't necessarily train EDS to be fundraisers. We don't trade board members to Think strategically necessarily about budgets year over year that this may be a year where we are heavily investing in staff growth or next year we may keep staff stable, but there is tech that needs to be invested in. And the other sort of tried and true rules of it usually takes any revenue generation tactic about 24 to 36 months to break even. So you are going to take a loss for two to three years as you start to build an engine that is just reality. And it's okay. We have lost so much ground because of as groups where they're like, well we invested in it and didn't make money. And it's like of course it didn't. So I think that immediately it takes
- [24:05]
Joan Gary
time and effort to build that up.
- [24:08]
Bethany Mackey
So it's, it is deficit budgeting. It is looking at budgeting beyond 12 months. You have to have a multi year arc in your budgeting approach if you are going to actually invest correctly in your own sustainability.
- [24:21]
Joan Gary
Yeah, yeah. What else, what else should folks be really focused on?
- [24:26]
Bethany Mackey
Yeah, I would say that there's really one more and that is that revenue generation is a discipline that you can not do off the side of your desk. You have to staff revenue generation like you would staff any program in your nonprofit. And normally we see like a fundraiser in most of the groups we work with or we see somebody who is like half fundraising, half something else.
- [24:52]
Joan Gary
Yes.
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Bethany Mackey
And it's, we would never expect to be able to do a program without putting human skill, talent, heart, effort, time, all the things behind it. Revenue generation is something you have to staff the same way. So I think it's getting rid of our internal bias.
- [25:12]
Joan Gary
Yes.
- [25:13]
Bethany Mackey
That securing our own financial capital is a bad thing and that we like, we actually have to invest in doing this and in ourselves.
- [25:21]
Joan Gary
I, I, I want to slow down on this too because I, there are two groups I want to speak to here. One, it's, and look, I, I did this too. I mean it's internally within a nonprofit organization. It's the people which can sometimes include the leadership who are like programs good, spend money on program. Okay. We get, you know, we have all probably gotten those grants where it's like you're getting this grant to do this program and part of the premise is you have to hire this person to actually deliver this program. And that's just, you don't even question it. That's expected. We don't have the same calculation even internally in our organizations around fundraising. So I'm saying this to all the people out there who are like, no, you got to spend 80, 90% of the money on the programs. Sure, ideally. But how do you think you're going to raise the money if you don't invest in the fundraising in the development department? And the thing that reinforces this, the other audience know I'm a soapbox, Bethany, I want to talk to, is the, the watchdog groups, you know, the groups that rank charities based on. And it's gotten better, it's gotten more nuanced over the years. But those groups out there who say you're really good if you spend all your money on programs and no money on infrastructure, no money on fundraising, it just reinforces this magical thing thinking that like we're supposed to be able to raise money with one fundraiser in an organization and then just spend all the money on dozens and dozens of program people. And I, it's just wrong. It's just wrong.
- [27:09]
Bethany Mackey
It's, it's so wrong. And it was, I had a real sort of comeuppance on this just the other day. We are about to launch a substantial program within our Realizing Democracy cohort. So, and we put out to the groups that we're working with different things that they could, we could work with them on. And one of the things we offered was something we're calling a staffing mini grant, where we're giving a grant to in part hire and then supporting the hiring process, like writing the job description, helping post it, helping vet candidates, all of that kind of thing. Because if you're hiring a first time fundraiser and you have no fundraising background, really hard to make a grade hire. So, so we, we put together this offering to do that. And I was like, oh, we'll probably get a few takers of the, I think 49 applicants of 20 of them asked for that. And I was like, okay then. And then we had seven more who asked for a fractional development director.
- [28:10]
Nonprofit Leadership Lab Promoter
Yeah.
- [28:10]
Bethany Mackey
Which was another thing that, that we, we offered as part of this. And I was just like, so out of a cohort, you, you had fully, like three quarters of it saying we need some kind of staffing help.
- [28:22]
Joan Gary
Yeah.
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Bethany Mackey
So that was just, you know, forget the experimentation, forget like the straight up grants to help me go raise money. Like people were saying, give me this instead of a three year grant.
- [28:32]
Joan Gary
Wow. Which is big. I mean, I mean, you know, cash is king. So for any nonprofit organization to say no, you know what? And that I think is a really good examp example of thinking sustainably, you know, thinking like, if I could get a person who knows how to do this, that actually over the course of, you know, three to five years could get more money for the organizations, for our programs, for organizing for, you know, the things that we do.
- [29:05]
Bethany Mackey
Well.
- [29:05]
Joan Gary
Thank you for hopping on that soapbox with me.
- [29:09]
Bethany Mackey
Always.
- [29:11]
Nonprofit Leadership Lab Promoter
Today's episode is sponsored by DRG Talent. I go way back with drg. This team is passionate about strengthening the nonprofit sector. Their work goes well beyond a holistic executive search process with strat plans, comp analyses, culture surveys, leadership 360s, and the list goes on. I refer clients to DRG regularly and I'm excited to be able to say this with a microphone in front of me. These folks are good and they care. Reach out to them drgtalent.com and tell them Joan Gary sent you.
- [29:39]
Joan Gary
So I want to, I feel like we've talked a lot about kind of mindset and risks, revenue. And here is a bit of a silver lining, a real world scenario that some nonprofits are thankfully facing, which is, let's say, hypothetically, Mackenzie Scott gives your nonprofit a big grant. This is a real thing that is happening, very real thing. Nonprofits across the country. So multiple, you know, Mackenzie Scott was not giving $10,000. Mackenzie Scott is giving a million or more real money. Real money. That big capital campaign money we were talking about.
- [30:22]
Bethany Mackey
Yeah.
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Joan Gary
So how, what is, let's think about this. What is a sustainable, resilient way to use that money? What have you seen? What should those leaders who are in this really fortunate situation, what should they be thinking about? What should they do with that money?
- [30:43]
Bethany Mackey
Yes, we have several real world examples of this for the grant. Some of the grantees that we work with have, have gotten the call and have gotten Mackenzie Scott money.
- [30:52]
Joan Gary
Yep.
- [30:53]
Bethany Mackey
So the first thing we counsel them to do is where are you not sustainable? So where are that, like analyze everything, soup to nuts, and where aren't you sustainable? And invest there and making sure you're thinking that multi year. So if there is something new, if there is a new program the community needs and you're launching it, when will it be sustainable? So you are actually using that money in a way so that you can get to a point of sustainability.
- [31:26]
Joan Gary
Can you define that, Bethany? Like what? Like, like looking at program. Like you're looking at your programs, you're gazing out, you're an executive director. What, what tells you a program is not sustainable?
- [31:38]
Bethany Mackey
So this is going to be very unpopular. We.
- [31:41]
Joan Gary
Let's go.
- [31:43]
Bethany Mackey
I actually have a rate card for our organization. So for every hour that my staff spends with a grantee, I can tell you what that costs. All in. So what their salary and benefits plus all the things like the fraction of all of those core mission support things that we do, the marketing, the all of it. Right. So. And that's because I spent a decade in an agency and that was a normal and okay thing to do. But when I came to progressive multiplier and I did, I did that, people were a little horrified and I was like, how else do you know how much you cost?
- [32:20]
Joan Gary
We don't like to do that, Bethany. We like to do that. We like to separate. That's over there, the all in. And then this is the program. And the.
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Bethany Mackey
Yes. So Propel Nonprofits has a fantastic graphic and article around sort of core mission support, shared program and direct program. And essentially how do you make sure that you're getting full pieces of the pie in relationship funded, whether it's through independent revenue generation or grants. But that's where that calculation starts. So when I look at our program sustainable, I look at full cost of the program and where is the revenue coming towards that full cost. So in a lot of our cases you've got. It's really well funded up front because of a grant. Right. But then what? So the grant runs out. There is still a need there. You don't necessarily have renewal. What is the independent revenue generation that then carries that on and how much of it do you need? But like true program costs, we're way too shy about that. Yeah, the, the whole 75, 25 split is fiction. Yeah. In terms of sustainability, so.
- [33:29]
Joan Gary
Oh God. I mean, I've done it. I've done it. When you're an executive director and you're out there fundraising and you're standing in front of a grantor and they say, okay, how much will it cost to do this program? Your instinct is to low ball, not too high ball. Not to say, well, all in this program is half a million dollars to run every year or this organization, this activity, it costs, you know, X. I want to be really specific because you're really encouraging people. No, you need to look at the real cost. Don't put things to the side. Don't put them below the line. All in.
- [34:07]
Bethany Mackey
All in. If you could get sustainable, if you don't actually know you're all in and get how you. What's the path to revenue to get the all in cost.
- [34:18]
Joan Gary
Yeah, yeah.
- [34:19]
Bethany Mackey
And it's not. It is rarely going to be fully grant funded because that's where most nonprofits just in the progressive sector run into. The problem is that, you know, when you are 90% grant funded grants in the way they are structured typically do not fund, do not all in cost.
- [34:36]
Joan Gary
No, absolutely. It is very rare for a grant, especially I would say a government grant to fund everything that needs to be done in order for you to do the thing you're applying to do. So it's, it's a real wake up call I think for folks to look at it this way. So people should look at their organization. Where are you not sustainable? And if you're thinking of launching something new, when do you reach sustainable? When and how do you reach sustainability? What else?
- [35:08]
Bethany Mackey
So I think if you, if you get the magic call from mackenzie Scott, that's so it's, it's the math party first. If you have not already done that, it's your lines of revenue over time to keep that sustainable or if you have a growth need like you are taking on the communities growing, you need to provide more of something. So I think it's also looking at that growth landscape of what, what is going to be the need of your program that inevitably then means you have to spend more on program so spending more to be scalable and then sustainable. So it's both that, that all in and then the growth trajectory. And I think that it's. Can you leverage then an infusion of cash like that to make more cash or to, especially in the places like we work with Metro IAF and they, I thought did a brilliant thing with their, their MacKenzie Scott gift in that they actually worked with their affiliates to give them tech infrastructure grants. So around their independent revenue generation. So it's like what's the initial investment that is going to, you know, be sizable but it's a big outlay once kind of thing. And then the maintenance money and then they, they did a matching grant. So they said if you, if you bring in sustaining donors, we will match every sustaining donor you bring in. Wow. So they actually structured this grant to incent bringing in sustaining sustainable money.
- [36:48]
Joan Gary
Yeah.
- [36:49]
Bethany Mackey
And to, to multiply it. So I think it's also if you are in that situation where you have a network or you, you know, have affiliates, things like that is how can you leverage that influx of cash to ensure sort of the all the downstream financial resilience.
- [37:05]
Joan Gary
Yeah. Oh, I love that they did that. And because that is something that small like affiliates and grassroots are going to, they, they almost never have that kind of money that you know, if I could spend 15 grand, 50 grand on a CRM, on a, you know, constituent.
- [37:23]
Bethany Mackey
Exactly.
- [37:24]
Joan Gary
Resource like then I could have raised more money over the next 10 years. Like, that's gonna help me so much. So I love that example. Really concrete. I so am enjoying talking to you, Bethany. I could. I could talk to you all day, especially because I think this is the stuff that. It might not be as sexy as a new program or a big initiative, but this is the. You said it. The bread and butter, eat your broccoli stuff that we have to do. My daughter loves broccoli, by the way. So I always. Oh, that's awesome. I know. I feel so lucky. I. It's totally not me. She just really likes it. It's that kind of stuff. So I. So, last question. What? You've been doing this for a while and you've seen a lot, and so what is one thing you want to leave with funders? What is one thing you want funders to know right now? Like, if you could whisper in their collective ears and, and tell them something and then what is one thing you want to. You want nonprofit leaders to know? One thing you could whisper in their collective ear so they can. We can all leave this podcast and get started on the right track.
- [38:40]
Bethany Mackey
I would say that the one thing that I would want our funder colleagues to know is that the conversations we're having right now with the groups that we support, which are also the groups that they support, are things like, how do we scenario plan for fundraising for revenue generation, given this landscape? Yeah, I had a. A group yesterday that said something of, you know, like, how do we. How do we plan around different levels of authoritarianism? What. What could that mean? So I think it is. It's a different level of realness that I've never seen before of connecting the. The sort of. Not just the political landscape, but the truly fundamental shift in the landscape. And what does that mean? Multiple. We're having to hold multiple scenarios in a very different way than we ever have had before. So when funders are asking us to, you know, what are our short term and our long term goals and this, that and the other, it's like, which one of these half dozen ways that this cookie may crumble do you want to talk about? Yeah, and it's requiring a different level of strategic prowess from executive directors and boards and anybody in the. In the money realm.
- [40:00]
Joan Gary
So it's maybe more that. To summarize and try and do just. It's like more flexibility. Funder, funders being open to more flexibility about how things might roll out and they might happen and how might. You might achieve your goals and how. What you might need to do to even survive.
- [40:19]
Bethany Mackey
Yep.
- [40:19]
Joan Gary
In this really, really tricky moment. So, yes, I love that advice and think nonprofits would appreciate you giving that advice to.
- [40:30]
Bethany Mackey
Yeah. And I think it's also the flip side for nonprofits of, yes, we are here. Yes, we are having to do that kind of scenario planning. The unknowns are significant and some of the knowns are really scary. We can't put our head in the sand about that. We have to be very active in sort of the how. How can we navigate? So we're going to be in this state for a while. Yeah. So it's. How do we continue to figure out how to scale, figure out how to sustain? I. I see a lot of freezing of like, well, we don't know what's going to happen. It's like, nope. And we're not gonna.
- [41:07]
Nonprofit Leadership Lab Promoter
Yep.
- [41:08]
Bethany Mackey
So it's. What is the right next step? So I think really focusing on, okay, what's the fuzzy picture with the different versions of the fuzzy picture that I can get based on. On how things may go and what's the right next step that I can take now?
- [41:22]
Joan Gary
Yeah.
- [41:22]
Bethany Mackey
So I think it's when it comes to the revenue that that's it. It's. It sounds so basic, but I think it's getting really, really rigorous about the right next steps and being able to take them as the scenarios come into fruition.
- [41:36]
Joan Gary
Yeah. I think one of the luxuries you lose when you become a leader is that you look at the reality like everybody else and the reality is, we don't know and, wow, this looks bad in some ways. But you lose the luxury of being able to throw up your hands and say, so I don't know. So I don't know what we're going to do. You still, as a leader, have to plan and have to think about the possibilities and how you might navigate them. You are the person or you are hopefully the group of people who are doing that. At an organization, that freeze can be really deadly.
- [42:21]
Bethany Mackey
Yeah. And that there's no lonelier job than executive directordom, I don't think, at least in my experience. And please know that you're not alone in having to do that planning, like progressive multiplier. We're here.
- [42:36]
Nonprofit Leadership Lab Promoter
Yeah.
- [42:36]
Bethany Mackey
Please email us. We're always happy to. To get on a phone support riff to start to get towards that. That clarity around resilience.
- [42:46]
Joan Gary
Yeah. I. That's a great note to end on. And we are here also. Non profits are messy. This podcast, we have hundreds of episodes for you to listen to and then consider joining the Nonprofit Leadership Lab. This is a cozy community of thousands of small to mid sized nonprofit leaders who are coming together every day, every week, every month trying to figure it out and talk through those scenarios and find their way forward to make the world better.
- [43:13]
Bethany Mackey
So absolutely an invaluable community and we are proud to be a part.
- [43:20]
Joan Gary
Yeah. Thank you so much Bethany. Thank you for your time and your wisdom and your work. Please keep going. We need you. The world needs you. And. And I wish we could. I love your name, Progressive multiplier. I wish we could multiply all the good that we all know is out there. And we're working on it. So we're going to keep going.
- [43:39]
Bethany Mackey
Thanks so much.
- [43:45]
Podcast Host/Announcer
Thank you for spending time with us today. We hope this conversation provides valuable insights as you navigate the messy but meaningful world of nonprofits. A Special thanks to DonorPerfect for sponsoring this episode and for their dedication to empowering nonprofits like yours to do more good. For more resources to support your work, visit joengary.com podcast. We think you'll find a lot of helpful things there. Most importantly, thank you you for all you do to make the world a better place. One small or large step at a time. Talk to you all next time.