← What the Fundraising
What the Fundraising
307 - The Partnerships That Change More Than Metrics with Renee Daniel Flagler
00:27:29
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- [00:04]
Mallory
Before we dive in, I want to give a huge shout out to donorperfect for supporting this podcast and the fundraisers who listen to it. They're not just a CRM, they're a partner in helping fundraisers feel more confident, aligned and supported. Learn more@donorperfect.com Mallory.
- [00:25]
Renee Daniel Flagler
I would say that we strip the world of philanthropic support, the landscape of all the fringe, unnecessary things, right? And let's strip it of policy, let's strip it of bias, let's strip it of anything that really hinders making sure that that individual is supported in the way that is going to be life transforming, trajectory changing, supportive, giving them what they need so that all of us can thrive and just really get to the work and that everyone who wants to support important missions, like the young people that we work with or whatever it is, that they can do that in a way that is just unhindered.
- [01:20]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Hey my.
- [01:21]
Mallory
My name is Mallory and I'm obsessed with helping leaders in the nonprofit space raise money and run their organizations differently. What the Fundraising is a space for real and raw conversations to both challenge and inspire you. Not too long ago, I was in your shoes. Uncomfortable with fundraising and unsure of my place in this sector. It wasn't until I started to listen to other experts outside of the fundraising space that I was able to shift my mindset and ultimately shift the way I show up as a leader. This podcast is my way of blending professional and personal development so we as a collective inside the nonprofit sector can feel good about the work we are doing. Join me every week as I interview some of the brightest minds in the personal and professional development space to help you fundamentally change the way you lead and fundraise. I hope you enjoy this episode. So let's dive in.
- [02:14]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Welcome everyone. I am so excited to be here today with Renee Daniel Flagger. Renee, welcome to what the fundraising.
- [02:21]
Renee Daniel Flagler
Thank you so much for having me, Mallory. I am excited to be here with you today.
- [02:26]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
I'm so excited for folks to get to hear more about you and your work. Why don't you start by just giving a little introduction and what brings you to our conversation today and then we'll. We'll dig in.
- [02:38]
Renee Daniel Flagler
Absolutely. So my name is Renee Daniel Flagler. I am proudly the president of the National CARES Mentoring Movement, an organization that provides mentoring and trauma informed healing programs and workforce development programs for youth designed to help eradicate and disrupt the cycles of poverty. So our goal is to really attack generational poverty and make sure that the young people that we serve and the families that support Them have what they need to thrive.
- [03:11]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Talk to me a little bit about. I feel like the word mentoring or mentorship is used in a variety of different sort of, or maybe loosely sometimes. And so I'm curious if you'll tell folks a little bit more about sort of what that looks like and means for your program, because I really love your mentorship model and also the very specific outcomes and goals related to mentorship that you just shared. So tell folks a little bit about that.
- [03:43]
Renee Daniel Flagler
Absolutely. So when we say mentoring, we have kind of two sides that the mentors are involved in. So first and foremost, we recruit, train and deploy mentors into communities that are vulnerable where our young people need it, the most impoverished communities, low income, moderate to low income communities. And so we are supplying mentors to organizations and partners who may need their mentors for programs that they're running. But also for programs that we run, we are bringing in mentors to help support that work as well. And then outside of the mentoring, we, with our actual programs, we deliver programs that allow our young people to develop skills in order to foster economic mobility, to increase their ability to do better in school, graduate, go on to higher education that helps provide them with tools and skills for their career pipeline, expose them to different career opportunities, help fill the pipeline for careers in, for example, in STEM with our HBCU Rising program. So it's a big goal. The vision is to disrupt the cycle of poverty, but very specifically, we're making sure that they have the skills to thrive educationally, professionally, academically. And we also do wellness mentoring circles as part of that. So that we're not just giving them the tools and the skills that they need in order to be successful or access and opportunities that they may not normally have access to, but we're also delivering that in a way that is trauma informed and healing centered. Because you can give a young person skills, you can give a young person access and opportunity, but if they're not mentally or emotionally well, they may not be able to take advantage of those skills and those opportunities. And so that is a huge piece that mental wellness, that health wellness piece is very critical to our mission as well.
- [05:47]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
I so appreciate that holistic approach. And it's interesting because a lot of the work that I do with fundraisers is also adding that component into. You know, we think about, oh, this is just a skill or this is just a job, or I can just compartmentalize this learning in this way way. But actually our whole body and our whole brain is involved in all of these things. And if Our nervous system is activated. If we're living in stress and trauma, then we can't access that skill building. We can't even access those skills that perhaps have been built in another context because of the way that that's impacting how we can show up in any moment. I'm curious for you, like, one of the things that I feel like I experienced as a fundraising leader and executive director was that it always felt like the. I wanted our programs to be really holistic and deep and comprehensive. And sometimes I felt like that was, like, harder for funders to understand that. Like, it would have been simpler if I just had one line and one thing and. But you are taking this really deep holistic approach because you know that that's ultimately change the outcomes and your ability to achieve mission. So talk to me a little bit about, like, what you wish funders could understand about how about complexity would make them understand the challenges that you're working to address better as well.
- [07:22]
Renee Daniel Flagler
I would say that is about the intersectionality of the work that we do. And it's like, you know, a lot of times when we're measuring things, we're measuring the specific impact of this and the specific impact of that. But where these things, these issues, you, these problems, these barriers come together, a lot of times give you a lot more information as far as the root causes or can actually help you solve, for one thing, if you understand better that the issue is bigger than, you know, just giving them a skill, right? That there's root causes that impact their ability to gain access to a skill, to understand a skill, that their mindsets and things like that that's involved because when you grow up in impoverished community, like poverty has its own breed of trauma, right? That it produces. And so having that understanding that the mental health piece is so tied to our ability, and especially with young people's ability to be successful, to be able to take advantage of opportunities that are before them, that it's really critical to address not just the skills and the development and leadership development and workforce development, but to really give them the school the skills that they can navigate all of that with. Because, I mean, it's not all a quick fix, but if you give them the tools to be able to navigate even in the midst of trauma and how to unwrap that in order to take advantage of the opportunities in front of them and a safe place to do that, that the outcomes are more exponential. It's not just, okay, I've got a skill and I've got leadership and I can do this, but I can now do so much more, because not only have I gotten past those barriers, those abstract barriers that have kept me from moving forward, but I also have the tools that, you know, when they come up again, I know how to address that, and it's transferable now. I know how to address it in my life to create more opportunity for myself. But that also means that when I'm in a workplace, I know how to address it. I have more emotional intelligence when I am in a networking situation. I can better read the room. I can better manage my own emotions. I can tell the difference of when I'm being triggered and what tools I need to kind of address that so that it doesn't impact my ability to develop academically or professionally. So it's that holistic perspective, and that intersectionality is something that it shows up in the metrics, but it's such a deeper story than what the numbers show.
- [09:59]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Yes. Have you found, like, kind of tried and true partners that understand that, like, talk to me a little bit. We're in 2026, the year of. I don't know. I mean, I don't know if we're ever going to say again that fundraising is not one of the hardest years ever, but absolutely, there have been compounding stress and compounding challenges that organizations are facing in this climate. So talk to me a little bit about how you navigate that, how you've seen partners show up and anything else you want to share there.
- [10:34]
Renee Daniel Flagler
So I'll start with, yes, we kind of been here before, right. With COVID was very unexpected. 2008 was, you know, the housing market crash and the impact that rippled through nonprofit community was very unexpected. So we're in another unprecedented time, you know, in a different way. But how are they showing up and how are we showing up, and how is that helpful? We do have some amazing funders that just get it, and they're like, we get it. Of course they're making an investment in the work because the mission is aligned with their goals and they have goals that they want to meet. But there is, for some of our strongest partnerships, just an understanding of what else can we do to help you achieve your goals. Because we understand that the work of this mission, the transformation of the young people, is truly essential. It's our future workforce. Right. So those partners who go deeper has really shown that this is more than a transactional opportunity, and it allows us to go deeper as a nonprofit organization. And so what that has shown me is, like, I want all of our partnerships to be like this. So it actually has prompted the way I handle exploratory and discovery conversations. And like, what does a great partnership look like to you? And a lot of times it's not just the engagement, but it's engagement, it's the investment. It's opportunities to come together in other ways. It's bringing them into the mission, opportunities to touch the mission. And those have just been really fruitful on all levels. They are, those have been like our confidants. And it's like, hey, this is going on. And it's like, okay, maybe we can provide some additional support to help you with that or maybe we can help you with some capacity support where we're giving you some skills bills, some skills based training. So the ones that have shown up to be like just the most fruitful partnerships are the ones where we're having innovative conversations about how they can support.
- [12:36]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Yeah, I love that. And it sounds like they're. Those partners are also sort of like thinking bigger and understanding the complexity and that the holistic. That the way that you're thinking about this and not just looking for like vanity metrics. Right. Like, one of the things I loved about reading about your organization is I was thinking about how and you've served a tremendous amount of people, but if you were doing one part of the program, I'm sure those numbers could be bigger, but it would be shallower in terms of the depth that you're going with all of the folks that you're working with. And so. And it sounds like you're finding partners that really understand how critical that is.
- [13:18]
Renee Daniel Flagler
And we would love for all of those partnerships to look like that. And besides our funding partners, we have some really amazing relationships with programmatic partners who are really helping to take the work to a different level. Like organizations like the American Nurses Enterprise. Right. With, you know, we're able to bring our young people out to events and conferences and you know, get them into the pipeline and networking and meeting people and understanding what that has being in an environment with professionals in fields that they are interested in going to looks like. So it deepens the experience. Like the association of Physicians Associates, our community organizations, those partners helping us or us going in to provide mentoring programs and stuff in their locations and them providing access to young people who need or would truly benefit from our services. So that just that kind of being really innovative and going deeper beyond the traditional, this is how we partner with a nonprofit organization has been so critical.
- [14:23]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Hey, I want to tell you about a podcast. I genuinely love the small nonprofit podcast. It's hosted by the incredible Maria Rio,
- [14:31]
Mallory
and it speaks directly to the realities
- [14:33]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
so many of us are living inside every day. Maria, tell us about your show.
- [14:38]
Maria Rio
Hi, I'm your host, Maria Rio. I moved to Canada as a refugee, used charitable services myself, and have been fundraising for over a decade. I love exploring ways our sector can grow, change, and make the world more equitable. The small nonprofit podcast is where we do just that. I believe small nonprofits are where the most transformative work happens. But we've been set up to fail by systems that expect us to do more with less. Every week I sit down with leaders, fundraisers and change makers who are doing things differently. They're building sustainable funding without compromising their values, creating power instead of dependence and pushing back on the broken systems we've all inherited. You'll walk away with actionable strategies you can use, not just inspiration. So if you're ready to stop scrambling and start building something that lasts, you're in the right place. Let's get into it.
- [15:30]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
If you're leading or fundraising at a small nonprofit and you're to going craving work that feels aligned, sustainable and human,
- [15:37]
Mallory
go listen to the Small Nonprofit Podcast. Search the Small Nonprofit Podcast on Spotify
- [15:42]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
or Apple Podcasts to listen. I love that I'm curious, just thinking about the dynamic nature of the world that we're in. I'm curious like, how, not how often. Maybe that's too kind of superficial of a question, but I'm curious about how you think about that in, in terms of program agility or like model agility. So like, I'm sure during, you know, Covid that created this sort of like, structural implications for like in person versus virtual that sort of forced our hand and changing things overnight in a lot of settings. But I'm just thinking about like the different pressures that young people are under, you know, over the last 10 years and social media and YouTube. But it feels like there's always something, right? Like there's just always something. And I can imagine that as the climate changes around these young people, their needs are. I don't know if shifting is the right way of saying it, but I'm just sort of curious how you think about that in relationship to the program offerings.
- [16:55]
Renee Daniel Flagler
So we're always looking at making sure that we are meeting our young people where. Where they are. And not only making sure that we are relevant and efficient. Right. And effective. Right. In delivery, but because we look at things with a holistic lens, we have an understanding of the other things that will impact them. Like, for example, Covid has severely impacted mental health and wellness. And so while we were already looking into that, paying attention and keeping our ear to the ground and utilizing our partners expertise and understanding the lasting impacts of COVID like immediate impacts of COVID where young people were dealing with isolation and depression and things like that, and responding to that and just making sure that if we have to make some type of minor adjustments to the program, not the core of the program, but to address them in the moment that we're doing that, but also taking a look at what are some of the long term effects, what are we dealing with that has residual, a residual impact? What else is happening in these young people's environments and ecosystems that is contributing to their current mental and emotional state? Right. And what has changed academically where we might be able to fill the gap? We have dealt with some severe learning loss through Covid as coming out of COVID right. Some of our young people, their social skills were really impacted and you know, now them having to go out and be more social be that's being required now we're outside again, you know, and it took time to get outside. But what is the impact of that? There's social anxieties that we're dealing with, learning losses that we're dealing with, exasperated states of depression and anxiety and all of that. So just really understanding the environment, understanding the young people, understanding all the things that impact them, and making sure that our programs are really responsive to what they really, really need. Not just saying, okay, this is what we do and this is what we deliver, but how do we take what we do and what we deliver and really increase the efficacy of it so that we are doing what we say we want to do, right? Disrupting the cycles of poverty, giving these young people opportunities to come out of the traumas that come with, you know, living in poverty and the whole ecosystem of what that looks like, being in community that are under resourced or schools that are under resourced, and how do we bring them out of those environments to expose them to other environments so they can think bigger and how are we moving the needle as far as their skills are concerned? Are we changing their habits and things like that? So just really paying close attention and keeping our ear to the ground and making sure that we're hearing from not just the partners that can provide expertise, but hearing from our young people directly. What do you need? What's happening? Talk to us. You know, what are you struggling with? One of the things that our founder, amazing founder Susan L. Taylor, was focused on when she Worked on developing the framework for our curriculum was what's hurting? What's hurting? What are they struggling with and how do we meet them there and pull them forward?
- [20:10]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Yeah, I love that. I love that consistent grounding in their experience and not being like, we know this is what everybody needs and they're going to keep needing it. And it's like, listen, like the world is. I mean, I have a six year old and a two year old, but even what the six year old is being exposed to and, and the conversations she's having, the things she's dealing with, I was like, well, I feel like when I was even coming to, you know, face to face with some of these things and so there's just so much. How do you do it? Like, I'm thinking about you as the leader holding all of this and I think this is true for a lot of different nonprofit leaders. But you sit at the intersection of holding space for a lot of challenges and pain and then have to turn around and walk into that funder meeting and kind of keep it all, not keep it all together, but you have to just like hold the tenderness of the work that you're doing with the strength of the leadership of it at the same time. And I can feel it in you. But I'm just curious, like, what are some of your practices or habits that help you stay grounded in the work?
- [21:20]
Renee Daniel Flagler
For me, one thing is clear and that this work is my assignment. So the work is my mission fuel. Right. I'm here very intentionally. I started my career in marketing and I came across an opportunity to serve and volunteer and it changed me. I worked with a group of young women. This is many years ago. This is like almost 20 years ago. Worked with a group of young women who were in living in a group home. It was a home for pregnant and runaway teens. And being able to go, you know, I write and so being able to go and work with those young women and write with them, it was a life changing opportunity. And I was like, this is what I'm meant to do. This is what I'm supposed to do. And so I was really intentional about transitioning from corporate into nonprofit and starting with volunteer opportunities. And so it is often a place where you experience or you see or you hold space for young people that are dealing with so much, you know, some, you know, very traumatic situations, painful anxiety, family situations, just all kinds of trauma. But for me, knowing that this is my assignment there is. I take my moments of unplugging and experiencing joy and I have to sit down for a second, let me sit down and catch my breath. But then I jump back in because this is, this is my work, this is my assignment. And being able to contribute to a mission like the National CARES mentoring movement that really impacts the lives of young people is what fuels me. It is the thing that keeps me going. Just knowing that I can contribute to that. No one ever has to know my name. No one ever has to know that I was involved. There are. I love being around our young people and tapping into the mission. I tell them I need my mission moments and I'll go visit programming. But if those young people who are dealing with and carrying so much never know who I am, the fact that I'm doing my part to contribute to life changing work for them is all that I need. This is my assignment and I'm going to do everything I can to fulfill my assignment.
- [23:32]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
I so appreciate hearing that and I'm really grateful for you sharing with everybody today about your journey and your experience. Experience. What's a question that I haven't asked you that I should have asked you?
- [23:44]
Renee Daniel Flagler
Let's see. I mean, I can talk about the mission all day and I think we probably did most of that, right? We kind of covered that.
- [23:51]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Yeah.
- [23:52]
Renee Daniel Flagler
I don't know, maybe something along the lines of what would I like to see happen in the world of philanthropy? Right.
- [23:57]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Yes, tell me.
- [23:59]
Renee Daniel Flagler
And I would say that we strip the world of philanthropic support, the landscape of all the fringe, unnecessary things. Right. And let's strip it of policy, let's strip it of bias, let's strip it of anything that really hinders making sure that that individual is supported in the way that is going to be life transforming, trajectory changing, supportive, giving them what they need so that all of us can thrive and just really get to the work. And that everyone who wants to support important missions like the young people that we work with or whatever it is, that they can do that in a way that is just unhindered. Wouldn't that be beautiful?
- [24:51]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
It would be amazing. Yeah, it would be amazing. And then we'd maybe be able to solve some of these challenges. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that question. Thank you for sharing that. Where can folks go to learn more about your work support, if they can connect with you, etc.
- [25:14]
Renee Daniel Flagler
So CARES is all over the social media spectrum. So we have, we are on LinkedIn, we are on Facebook and we are on Instagram as CARES Mentoring. Our website is cares mentoring.org take a look at our website, find all about our iconic, beloved founder Susan L. Taylor, who started this mission literally 20 years ago from her heart. And it grew into 20 years of serving young people, trauma informed healing centered programs, and economic mobility and making sure that mentors are filling the gap to help our young people thrive. So yeah, cares mentoring is all you need to know. There's mentoring all over the place, Online, on social media, on our website. Find us, reach out to us. We'd be happy to talk to everyone.
- [26:10]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Amazing. Amazing. Thank you so much for joining me and for all of your wisdom and insight and most importantly, for the work that you do. I'm so grateful.
- [26:20]
Renee Daniel Flagler
Thank you so much Mallory. And thank you for what you're doing and helping making sure that nonprofit organization like ours have the opportunity to speak to their mission and receive support. I signed up for one of your newsletters. Amazing the support that you provide this sector. Thank you.
- [26:38]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Oh, my pleasure.
- [26:44]
Mallory
I hope today's episode inspired or challenged you to think differently. For additional takeaways, tips, show notes, and more about our amazing, amazing guests and sponsors, head on over to Mallorykson.com podcast and if you didn't know, hosting this podcast isn't the only thing I do every day. I coach, guide and help fundraisers and leaders just like you. Inside of my program, the Power Partners Formula Collective. Inside the program, I share my methods, tools and experiences that have helped me fundraise millions of dollars and feel good about myself in the process. To learn more about how I can help you, visit Mallorykson.com PowerPartners last but not least, if you enjoyed this episode, I'd love to encourage you to share it with a friend you know would benefit or leave a review. I'm so grateful for all of you and the good hard work you're doing to make our world a better place. I can't wait to see you in the next episode.
- [27:45]
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