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The Smart Communications Podcast
Episode 182: How can you build resilient nonprofit organizations and teams?
00:18:50
Building resilience starts with people. Learn how nonprofits can foster adaptable teams, avoid burnout, and strengthen fundraising for a sustainable future.
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Host 1
This is the Smart Communications.
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Farah Trim
Smart Communications. Smart Communications Podcast.
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Host 1
Developing the voices. Developing the voices of determined nonprofits, brought.
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Peter Heller
To you by Big Duck.
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Farah Trim
Welcome to the Smart Communications Podcast. This is Farah Trim, Peter, co director and worker owner at Big Duck. Today we're going to ask the question, how can you build resilient nonprofit organizations and teams? And I am delighted to be joined by Peter Heller. Peter uses he him pronouns and is the founder of Heller Fundraising Group, based in New York City. With clients everywhere, their firm collaborates with organizations to achieve transformative results, helping them raise more funds to advance their missions. A nationally recognized strategist with over 30 years of experience, Peter has led the Heller Fundraising Group for more than two decades, helping nonprofits secure over $1 billion through capital campaigns, major gift programs, feasibility studies, and training. Peter, welcome to the show.
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Peter Heller
Wow. I sound great.
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Farah Trim
You sound great. You are great. Come on. Everyone needs everyone. Pat themselves on the back right now.
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Peter Heller
Yeah, that's. That's great. Thanks for that great introduction. It's great to be here.
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Farah Trim
My pleasure. Thanks for joining us. Well, we are recording this conversation on February 26, 2025, and I name that date because it is just over a month of the inauguration of the President of the United States, and it has been a time of challenge for many, particularly in the nonprofit sector. I know that perhaps it's just my feeds, but almost everywhere I look, I am seeing the word resilience and the need for resilience, and I just want to start there. What does resilience mean to you, Peter? How do you define it?
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Peter Heller
Well, first off, I just want to point out, Farah, that we started chatting about this way before the election was over, and we already knew that it was an important thing in the nonprofit world because we all, you know, regardless of who's president or the, you know, really challenging or scary things that are happening or the good things that are happening, we. We need to be, what I'd say, taking care of ourselves and. And our organizations, and we need to be resilient. So I look at it, for starters, to, like, really starting with the self and self care. Because if we look at any nonprofit organization and any company or any other structure, I'm saying the obvious thing, but there's people inside there, and people are the most important part of every organization. Sometimes we lose focus on that. We're like, oh, our mission. But in fact, it's the people who are carrying out the mission, both for the community of other people and by. By coming to their jobs and doing it. So we have to make sure that to be resilient as an organization, first we have to take care of ourselves. And there's a lot of different ways that shows up. Even in the New York Times. There's always articles about best self care for this and that, best, you know, exercises for this and that, best foods for this and that. So I'm not endorsing that the New York Times knows how to do everything in the world at all. But, but my point is that it's very much out there in the world and that I think that both the employees at any level in a nonprofit organization and its leadership, staff and board need to be really aware that staff are being given jobs that can be done in a reasonable way and that they're not going to experience nonprofit burnout. And that, you know, that's easier said than done because for all kinds of reasons.
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Farah Trim
And we've talked about burnout on the show. We've talked about ways to folks can take care of themselves. We'll link to some of those episodes in the show notes@bigduck.com insights Peter I do. Before we go to the next topic, though, I'm curious, do you have a definition of the word resilient or resilience that you hold in your mind or that you've seen online somewhere? That is the way we can think about that word as we go into the conversation.
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Peter Heller
Great. Well, I have a definition that I hold on Google.
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Farah Trim
There you go.
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Peter Heller
So I'm reading right here, which I and I think it's it's a great definition. It says the capacity to withstand or recover quickly from difficulties. And you know, that starts all the way from childhood. I'm sure you've heard people talk about, you know, children are really resilient, they bounce back from things. And it's the same thing for a successful, thriving nonprofit is it really needs to have the ability to keep going and recover quickly from difficulties. And I think it's kind of the definition of a CEO or executive director's job is like, deal with difficulties all day long and keep going for some reason.
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Farah Trim
I was just on a webinar yesterday where we talked about being difficult, Gen X, the presenter and I, and I have just the song Chumbawamba's tub thumping. I get knocked down, but I jump up again, or whatever that is.
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Peter Heller
I get knocked down, I get up again.
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Farah Trim
Exactly. There you go. So now that's going to be an earworm in everyone's mind. So let's talk about this idea of getting knocked down and coming back up again. Let's talk about this idea of resilience and more in the nonprofit world. You started speaking about this a moment ago, but how does it show up specifically for people on staff and what it means when staff are resilient and supported in being resilient or perhaps when they're not?
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Peter Heller
Well, look, we've got all kinds of people showing up as staff members and as bosses and leaders. And when I look at our 20 years of clients, I can go, oh my God, this one like that was a really tough place for people to work. Oh, this one was great. People were really respected and look at the amazing work they did. And first of all, you know, I'm not a believer in that. Like, oh, look at that amazing work. But, you know, he abused his family or what? I'm not like, everything needs to line up for me. Like, you can't be, you can't be in an organization doing amazing work that's having stressed out and, you know, not a well functioning staff that doesn't work for me. And you know, we also see it all over the place. So there's always, you know, you can look at resilience also as the continued effort to improve and make things better in, inside your organization and for the community you serve. I don't know if I'm answering your question, but that's, that's what comes to mind for me.
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Farah Trim
We'll go with it. We'll go with it. About, I want to keep talking a little bit about this idea of cultivating resilience. You talked about leaders, right? So what can leaders do within organizations? How can they foster skills and practices that really welcome this idea of being adaptive and nimble to situations?
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Peter Heller
All kinds of things come to mind for me. I'll give a kind of strange example. So we did a campaign at a synagogue. We've done a lot of synagogue campaigns. And we did one, oh, about six years ago and the theme of the campaign was a home for the future of Judaism. And they ended up raising $16 million. It was a wonderful campaign. They were able to build more space and really welcome their community. Even better. And what we suggested was they wanted to embody that phrase, a home for the future of Judaism. And they already were in a lot of ways. I'm not going to get into like the details of that, but what we suggested was that they actually take that concept and bring it into their senior leadership team meetings and discuss how are we going to action this concept through our programs, through our work with our members. And the reason I bring that up is that their concept for their campaign was something that was in and of itself a building of resilience because they were a home for the future of their faith. But at the same time, resilience doesn't just happen by like, you know, I'm snapping my fingers, it happens. You need to figure out how to weave the process of consciously thinking about it, you know, into your work life. So bringing that discussion into senior staff meetings and then. And then taking action throughout the organization. I don't care if you're a synagogue or not. It's. It's just that kind of thing, you know, having senior staff like, okay, geez, what's resilience? What does that mean to us? How do we make sure. Yeah, sure, we believe everybody needs to do self care, but how do we actually inspire people and make sure that people are taking care of themselves? Oh, I see. So and so was working super late last night. Is that because there was a deadline or is there something going on, they need some support or something like that?
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Farah Trim
Yeah. As you were talking, I had two thoughts. One is we recently did a podcast, my colleagues Brenda and Claire, on how can values strengthen your organization? Right. So the idea of resilience, being nimble, being adaptable, might be a value for an organization that they may hold. And whenever you have a value, or you don't want to just put it on your website or your annual report or your capital campaign case statement, you want to make sure it's alive and well within the organization. And as you were saying too, sometimes these brand identities, these campaign themes for us, brand strategy of positioning. Right. These aren't just ideas that sound nice on paper. They have to be authentically rooted in who the organization is. So sometimes there's a chicken and the eg, sometimes there's a great tagline or a great idea that then we think about how do we make that real? Other times it's, how do we sort of mine what is the essence of us and figure out what to call it? So I think that's an interesting thing you brought up there. The other thing I wanted to share, and we've been talking a lot about it on our team, especially the past few weeks, which have been hard for folks individually as well as being leaders in our organization and partners with our clients, is the spheres of influence. So people may or may not be familiar with it. And I'll be sure to link to an article in the transcript@bigduck.com insights but this idea of these concentric circles, things I can control, which or the circle of control, things I can influence, or the circle of influence, and then things that are outside of my control or the circle of concern. And sometimes it can just be helpful in these moments to just map things out. What can I control right now? What can I influence? And what is outside of my control? I need to be concerned about it. I need to be aware of it. But. But I should put my energy elsewhere. And I think that can also be a helpful tool that folks can use in day to day situations or big picture planning. So I want to offer that into our conversation.
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Peter Heller
Thank you. And the reality is that the majority of things in our work and in our lives are out of our control.
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Farah Trim
That is true. Right.
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Peter Heller
Figuring out the things that are actually in our control. What time do I wake up in the morning? What do I do with my free time? What do I eat?
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Farah Trim
How do I nurse myself physically, emotionally, spiritually? All of that.
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Peter Heller
When I sit down at my desk at home or I go to an office, how do I make sure I'm focusing on the most urgent tasks of the day or the week or the month?
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Farah Trim
Right, Right. These are all things.
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Peter Heller
Yeah. We had a staff member a while ago who's like, well, we're all really busy. And I was like, yeah, that's not the point. Are we focusing on the things that matter most?
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Farah Trim
Yeah, I think examples are good. I've gotten good feedback. When we ask for folks with the hang of the podcast, we often ask guests for examples just to. So people can apply these ideas. And I'm wondering, Peter, if you can share an example of a nonprofit or folks you've seen out there that have used communications or fundraising to build or sustain resilience.
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Peter Heller
Yeah. So I want to focus on fundraising because that's our expertise. I'm going to say a couple of things. There's two points I want to make, and I see this again and again. One is the secret positive outcome of really good fundraising and especially of a really good capital campaign. The other is a cautionary tale about making sure you build resilience. So the first thing is that when a nonprofit's development team does fundraising really well, or when a nonprofit's development team runs a capital campaign really well, either way, it's a team sport, meaning you've got the staff in development, you've got the executive director or CEO, you have board members and perhaps other volunteers, and you have donors. Through that effort, you obviously want to raise a lot of money and as much as you can. And at the same time, if it's done really well. You've knitted together the community even more around your purpose and your mission of making your particular community stronger and better in the future. And you'll find that, you know, just by virtue of people spending time together on a campaign committee or a fundraising committee, or having to talk about how you explain your organization in a. In a really focused way. And this is talking about communications and the work you do. You get a goal, but you also get people connecting more deeply, and that's. That builds resilience because people understand each other better, they care about each other more. They're all, like, sticking to their resolve and plowing forward in the same way. I'm going to pause there and then say that. The second thing, the cautionary tale is we have a organization we're working with now. This has happened a whole bunch of times in the past where an organization will depend way too heavily on a single donor for their annual budget. The organization right now, in a few years, they're going to lose an $8 million gift. Luckily, they have a Runway to know about that. But you need to have diversified fundraising streams. It's amazing to have that $8 million. And I'm not saying you should be like, oh, we know exactly what's going to happen when that leaves. I mean, that's part of what we're working with them on. But getting really dependent on that can cause all kinds of problems. And I could list three or four examples just like that. So resilience, to me means diversifying your top donor pool.
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Farah Trim
Yeah. And I know your organization, our organization primarily focus on building relationships with individuals, whether they are your donors, your prospects, your activists, your program participants, your volunteers. What we're seeing now, too, is organizations challenged by. They were reliant on federal funds, and some of those federal funds are going away or being challenged or being threatened to take away. And so this need for diversifying of funds is certainly coming up more and more in conversation. So I appreciate you naming it. We may have covered this, but I'm just curious for you, just, you know, as we wrap things up, how can we connect a resilient organizational future to a fundraising campaign? Right. You mentioned the word future. A minute ago, we were talking about that theme of the campaign. So much of this idea of being adaptable and again, getting back up after you've been knocked down is about not only how we approach the moment, but how we set ourselves up for the future. So how does this idea connect to a fundraising campaign, even beyond what you were just mentioning?
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Peter Heller
Well, here's another little secret that we use, and I'm sure you're quite familiar with this because of your. Your communications work. I'm going to focus on this future idea, which is it's very simple, but it's also very powerful. The best fundraising tells the story of a stronger future for the community that your nonprofit serves. So it's not actually about your nonprofit. It's about the community you serve. And any community that is stronger in the future is, by definition, more resilient. So a lot of organizations get caught up in, number one, they talk about themselves. Number two, they'll talk about, like, if it's a capital campaign, they'll talk about how important this building is that we're building or the endowment that we're building. Those can be important. But the overarching story that needs to sit on top of that is, is a stronger community that's going to be in the future, whether the future is six months or three years from now or whatever.
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Farah Trim
Great. I love it. Well, I like optimism. I like hope. Let's go forward with that. If you're out there and you'd like to connect with Peter, learn more about what the Heller fundraising group does, access some helpful resources that they have, and more. Go to hellerfundraisinggroup.com Peter before we sign off, any other advice or thoughts you'd like to share with our listeners?
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Peter Heller
Keep it real.
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Farah Trim
There you go. I like it. Keep it 100. Keep it real. All right, everyone, have a great day out there and take care.
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Host 1
Are you a fan of this podcast or Big Duck's other resources on nonprofit communications? If you are, we'd love to hear from you. Please drop us a line by writing to hello to tell us what you're working on and what topics you need help with. We also welcome getting your feedback via reviews. You can review this podcast in itunes or wherever you listen. We'd love to hear from you.
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Farah Trim
This is the Smart Communications Podcast, Developing the Voices of Determined Nonprofits, brought to.
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Host 1
You by Big Duck. Big Duck is an agency that puts smart communications in the hands of nonprofits. We help our nonprofit clients develop strong brands, strong campaigns, and strong teams that advance their missions and achieve their goals.
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Farah Trim
Connect with us@bigduck.com.