Transcript
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Welcome to the Practice of Nonprofit Leadership.
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I'm Nathan Ruby.
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Well, today we are joined and we've got a special treat for you.
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Today we are joined by Colleen Shaughnessy, executive Director of Youth Heartline in Taos, new Mexico, and today we're going to talk about her journey as a day.
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One brand new first time executive director, colleen.
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Welcome to the show.
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Thanks so much for having me, Nathan.
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It's nice to be here.
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I know.
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So here let's just do a little bio on Colleen so you get a sense of who she is.
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And so Colleen is the executive director of Youth Heartline easy for me to say.
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In Taos, new Mexico.
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She worked for the agency for two years as the manager of parent education, and we're going to talk about that transition from staff to executive director, because that's not always easy.
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Colleen worked as an English language fellow and specialist for the US State Department in South Africa, kyrgyzstan.
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Did I get that right, colleen?
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Pretty close.
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I was close Kyrgyzstan that is not easy to pronounce and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and she was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana.
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So, man, we could do a whole nother show on all of that international travel and work, colleen.
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Indeed, I always like to say I like to get around.
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All right, colleen, before we get into our specific conversation about things, can you just give us a quick context of Youth Heartline overall budget, fundraising budget, maybe staffing?
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Sure.
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So Youth Heartline is a nonprofit in Northeast New Mexico.
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We cover a service area that's the size of Massachusetts and we have 50,000 people in that service area, so it's sparsely populated.
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We have two offices that are separated by 100 miles.
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I have four staff in the office that I don't work within on a regular basis and we have seven staff in our Taos office and that's a total of 11 staff we have.
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This year we are estimating our budget to be around $966,000.
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When I started it was $720,000.
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So it has grown significantly in the last two years and we have seven government contracts and last year we had 18 foundation grants.
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So quite a lot of administrative, grant writing and financial management is required in our organization and we also originated in 1991.
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So we're in our mid-30s as an organization.
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Youth Heartline improves positive long-term outcomes and access to services by reducing risk factors and barriers for understaffed children and families in colfax, house and union counties in northeast new mexico all right, all right, all right, uh, so give me, just give us a quick overview.
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You've got, uh, four or five primary programs.
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What are those?
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Real quick.
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So we have eight total programs.
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They are kind of divided by court, community and stability.
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So our court program is CASA, court Appointed Special Advocates for Foster Children, supervised Visitation for Children in Domestic Violence Cases.
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We have socio-emotional school groups that we do in middle schools and high schools in both of our primary communities and we also do case management for families and we do a tiny little outdoor program and in income-based housing complexes we do a summer program and there's more.
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But that's enough for now, okay.
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All right, awesome, so all right.
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So you were on staff for a couple of years, uh, as a, as a at the director level, uh, and all of a sudden, in a story that's too long to tell, you find yourself as the executive director.
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Never been an executive director before, uh, and so that first day, at seven o'clock in the morning, you walk in, open the door and it's all on your shoulders now.
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So what was that like?
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What were you feeling on that first day when you walked in?
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So I was feeling excitement at the possibility and at change.
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Given my bio, I do enjoy change quite a bit, so I was looking forward to the kind of the challenge and also I was reflecting on my skills and what would apply and how I could take from what I've done in the past, even though I've never done this particular job, and apply it to be an executive director.
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I was also overwhelmed because when I opened up the email there was 60,000 emails in the inbox.
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They were red but they were still in there 60,000 as in the inbox.
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They were read, but they were still in there 60,000, as in six zero and then three zeros.
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Yes, Okay I'm, I'm pretty bad at that, but not that bad that that would be.
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That would be overwhelming.
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I'm somebody who, for better or worse, uses my inbox as my to-do list, so obviously 60,000 felt a little a little much.
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They went all the way back to 2009, which is just kind of fun.
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I was also nervous at particularly the shift from staff to ED because you know, it was just it's such a different role and how will your peers respond to you as their leader?
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And, you know, kind of curious about that and also a little scared.
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But it has all worked out in the long run.
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And I also was trying to think of strategies, of how to kind of manage that.
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And so what I did was I met with everybody one-on-one immediately and that really helped them see who I was going to be as a leader and also start to establish that new relationship.
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And then I would also say in retrospect, I was naive.
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In what way?
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I just didn't know all that was lying ahead of me, and there was more than I knew.
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You know, when you're staff, you don't always know all the, all the deep dark corners of an organization.
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And so, as I went along, it was more than I knew I had signed up for.
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Yeah, and, and you know you, you chalk that up to.
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You don't know what you don't know and you can't because you the the.
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The only person who really has the full overall view of any nonprofit is the executive director.
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You have all of the perspectives.
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You have the board member perspective and the finance perspective and the fundraising perspective and the program perspective and the admin perspective and the hiring and firing.
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You have all of those perspectives.
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Everyone else in the organization only has their piece of that admin perspective and the hiring and firing and discipline.
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You have all of those perspectives.
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Everyone else in the organization only has their piece of that, and so you just that.
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That's one of the things that you know.
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When new executives walk in on the first day, they just get slapped in the face because they didn't know that all of this other stuff was happening.
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So you're you know that's not, that's not unique to you.
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So, just for a full disclosure, colleen and I have worked together.
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We we did a coaching package for Colleen and we worked together for about a year and she has done just so great, just a great job of of starting from scratch and working her way up into where she is now.
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And so that first year and I will say I tried to think about how I was going to describe this on the show, because whatever I say is not enough you had a first year of setbacks and problems and off the wall crazy crises that happened to you.
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That in my 25, now close to 25 years of of working in nonprofits and in nonprofit leadership, profits and nonprofit leadership I haven't had 10% of the stuff that you had in your first year.
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And uh and we can't talk specifics because of kind of confidentiality and stuff, but just we'll just leave it out there that you couldn't come up with enough crazy things to what happened to you in the first year.
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And so my question is what have you learned about yourself during that time of all of these problems coming up, one after another after another, another?
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What did you learn about yourself and handling those types of situations?
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Well, I've often thanked my mother for her calm, midwestern resolve.
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She was the mother of seven children and so definitely patience and calm is something I got from her and I'm grateful for that.
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So I've definitely learned, you know, that overreacting doesn't really help Taking a deep breath, assessing the problem, closing your door, crying if you need to, but then you know, getting back on the horse and making a plan.
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Asking for help has been a really important lesson for me.
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Whether it's getting a coach, as you just mentioned, or talking to another ED in town or seeking consultants, those things have all been really helpful, and I think asking for help is not always the easiest thing to do, but really, as an ED, we really can't do everything and we can't be experts in every single aspect of this job, because there's so many aspects to it.
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So, you know, asking for help, asking how other people have solved the problem, and then I think the other thing that I really made a strong effort to do was, when a problem arose, was to address the system that was at the root of the problem, so that the problems didn't continue to occur over and over again.
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And I couldn't always do that immediately, but it would always be like okay, now I see where this is stemming from and I need to resolve that so that we aren't in this position again.
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So those are the major things I can think of.
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Yeah, and and I'll add one more that I, that I saw in you as you grew and and in in your leadership ability and and it it was more of the mental, uh, emotional side of the equation.
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And and I remember that, first, that first thing, um, using my air quotes, the first thing that happened, and the.
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And then compare that to like the ninth thing that happened you, you, somewhere in there, about the third, fourth time, you, you stopped coming to me with the problem and then just just not having anything to, okay, here's what's happened.
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And then my reaction of oh my gosh, how could that possibly have happened?
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And then your thing of this is how I'm going to deal with it.
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And so there was and I think a lot of that is just confidence of okay, this is the fifth thing that's happened.
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And now I know I may not know the exact steps to take, but I know the process, I and I feel confident in myself that, okay, it, yeah, this is terrible, but I could figure it out.
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And I think some of that just comes from the experience of, of.
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I've done this once, I've done this twice, I've done this three times.
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Okay, yeah, I could do this.
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And that was a.
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That was a big progress that I saw in you and now you know you've got.
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You've had a thing that came up the other day and you didn't even tell me about it because you, you already are handling it and that's you know.
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That just comes from experience.
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Yeah, and I think it's really.
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It was really helpful to me to have someone to validate my intuition.
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I think EDs use a lot of intuition and when you're brand new to it you don't know whether you should trust it or not.
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And I think the first few problems I was testing out my intuition and then it seemed like it was kind of working.
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So I started to apply it myself and maybe not need as much encouragement and affirmation now.
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All right.
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Well, let's talk fundraising a little bit, my favorite topic.
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So I wouldn't say, when you walked in on day one, I wouldn't say that you were anti-fundraising because you knew that you needed fundraising, you knew that was part of the equation, but I would say that you probably weren't the didn't embrace it quite as much as you do now.
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So which, again, it's not uncommon.
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You know you came up through the program side of the equation.
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Nobody, nobody ever asked you to fundraise, nobody ever taught you how to do it.
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So you know that's common.
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So tell me, tell me about that first six months of your fundraising as the executive director and then you become quite good at it.
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And so that transition from I don't really want to do this to okay, I know I have to do this, so I'm going to do this to okay, this isn't so bad, I can do this.
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Yeah, I mean, the reason I initially reached out to you was because I had zero experience with fundraising and I'd inherited only five donors and no mailing list.
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That wasn't at least a decade old.
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So no database, no, no records, no document, no, nothing, yeah, and I think that was that was my first reach out to you was.
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So you have a 35 year old organization and this is your situation.
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What would you do?
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And this is your situation, what would you do?
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And so it was daunting and there was really nothing established and I also had no experience with it and very little confidence in asking other people for money.
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So I felt like it was just a giant unknown and I really didn't even know where to start, like biting off you know the next, where to even begin, basically, and I felt like it was going to take a lot of effort and there were so many other things happening.
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I just wasn't sure how I was going to make that happen.
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And now I feel like fundraising is about relationships and being known and being trusted, being a real person out in the community and also, for a variety of reasons, publicity and visibility of our organization, and so it's less about, like, the ask for me at this point and um and I do remember saying to you that my ask is always going to be awkward and yeah, it's not about that, it's just getting to know the person across from you and seeing how they're connected and, um, I called the five donors who were our top donors, because they were the only donors and um, I told them that narrowed the list down a little bit.
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And I told them you're one of our highest donors, which wasn't a lie, and I invited them to coffee or lunch and I was very surprised that all of them wanted to do it.
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You know, I come from a lower class background and I was like, but the like here is a really obvious it's I'm going to ask you for money.
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And they still wanted to meet with me and in that process I learned, you know, that one had been a CASA volunteer and one had been like a child welfare worker in her before she became a doctor.
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And you know, just like these things, that they had these connections that I would never have known of if I didn't stop and sit down with them and have a meal together and say so, who are you and why are you one of our top donors?
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And of the five I sat down with, four gave more than they did the previous year, and so I was like, oh so this is how this works.
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And then we did a end of year letter, like physical letter campaign, which might be something that's specific to a rural small town, but it really worked.
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And I now have 85 donors Holy smoke.
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That's awesome.
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That percent increase is but a lot.
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And we also, on day one I started to make a mailing list and just get at every event and any moment we could.
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We started writing down people's names and emails and didn't waste any time on that.
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So we also.
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I think we now are up to about 500 on our mailing list.
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So, little by little I think that was.
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The other thing that I asked you, nathan, was when is this?
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How long is this supposed to take to create a solid fundraising base?
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And you said five years and I felt so relieved because I thought I had to do it in a day and a half.
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I think we all feel that way, but no, I felt like you know, I really had to do it in a day and a half.
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I think we all feel that way, but no, I felt like I really had to do something in the first year, but you helped me see that it was the long game.
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It is.
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It is and I think the most important thing of that whole story that you just told is the understanding that it is about the personal relationship and the personal connection.
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And the actual ask is the least important of the whole thing.
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And you go to any fundraising conference, any training, and it's always you know how do I ask, how do I ask and that's what everybody wants to know.
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And if you get the relationship part right, how you ask is irrelevant, it doesn't make any difference, is irrelevant, it doesn't make any difference.
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You are in a small community.
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Taos is how big Our county is just 32,000 people, so it's hard to determine how much of that is Taos, but probably about 16,000.
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Okay, and then your other community is Raton and that's even smaller.
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Yeah, the whole county is 12,000 and Raton's about 6,000.
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Okay, okay, so the so, when it comes to staffing and volunteers, it is a very small pool.
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So what have you learned over the last couple of years of you know, and you've had to hire, you've had to, you've had some staffing, um, volunteer things where you had to go through a progressive discipline program.
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So what, what have you learned in hiring the right person, uh, over the last year and a half, two years?
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Um, well, I've definitely learned that hiring and staff departures are definitely the largest expense, particularly in time and energy, but also in money.
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And I think if there's high turnover, you know you're constantly hiring, training, losing the knowledge base and on and on and on.
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So it's a real time suck and also it's a challenge to find the right person.
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So when you find the right person, hold on to them.
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That's what I've learned.
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So I think for a small nonprofit, that involves treating your staff well, especially in the social services.
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We work with child abuse and neglect and domestic violence and poverty and just really difficult things to witness on a daily basis.
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So self-care and encouraging that is vital for staff retention retention.
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And so I did actually inherit a quite a good um paid time off policy and we have probably almost six weeks a year, with holidays and the weekend between Christmas and New Year's.
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And um, we provide a hundred percent of health insurance and we bring, we allow them to bring their kids to work, cause I have at least three single moms to bring their kids to work, because I have at least three single moms and eight parents on my 11-person staff.
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And also it's hard to be called youth heartline and not accommodate our steps, children.
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And I also think that another piece of it is that I really try to model.
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I actually try to use my PTO, which I think is unusual, probably for EDs.
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Unfortunately, and I think you know, in the end, even though there have been some challenges, I'm really most proud of the fact that we haven't I haven't had to hire in over a year, and I've had staff that have been on staff for one to 10 years average is four years and it's amazing to have people who are so confident in their positions and able to perform at a higher level, just because they're not constantly learning and then leaving and learning and leaving.
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So I think the other thing I really learned is that to first look at myself.
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So I had a new position that had never existed before, and we had a young person in it who had really not had much work experience, and I looked at what we did to set her up and it wasn't much, and so that was on me as the executive director.
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We needed better parameters and structures, and so sometimes it's not the employee's fault, and when their performance isn't to what you think it should be, it's not always the ED's fault, but it's worth exploring.
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You know, what could you do better to support the person, and it may not be that they've been set up for success in certain ways, so yeah, that's excellent, excellent.
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And you know a couple of things there, and one the for new executive directors and a reminder for those of us that have been around a while too is your staff and your volunteers.
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They're watching you, and it's less about what you say and more about what you do and how you act.
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And you know, do you, do you get upset?
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Do you get angry, do you?
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You know all of these things, and so people watch what you do, and so that's excellent.
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On the on, taking the time off, and I know you do that now.
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I don't think you were that way when you started, but I think I think you've evolved in that and you know that's part of who you are and part of the culture that you're building now.
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Yeah, I wanted, um, some of my staff who don't take their time off, um to take their time off, and then I realized I couldn't really say that if I didn't start doing it myself.
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Um, and it is hard, you know, it's hard to walk away and not look at your email.
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But I also made that a precedent that I am not available and I will look at my email at the beginning or the end of the day, but that's it when I'm away.
00:23:07.551 --> 00:23:11.730
And if you need something, email me about it and I'll get back to you.
00:23:11.730 --> 00:23:24.405
And I also have our financial officer, who I he was an interim director at one point, so I'm lucky in that sense that I can have him stand in my place if anyone needs anything urgently.
00:23:24.405 --> 00:23:27.730
So, um, kind of figured out systems to make it happen.
00:23:27.730 --> 00:23:30.708
It did not happen as much in my first year, for sure, yeah.
00:23:32.641 --> 00:23:33.526
So all right, Colleen.
00:23:33.526 --> 00:23:41.942
So somebody comes up to you, uh, in the coffee shop, in the street, wherever, and they say, colleen, I just got hired as an executive director.
00:23:41.942 --> 00:23:43.325
What advice do you have for me?
00:23:43.325 --> 00:23:45.631
So, all right, what advice do you?
00:23:45.631 --> 00:23:49.906
What's your top one or two top things for a brand new executive director?
00:23:51.068 --> 00:24:00.205
So I think I would say as much as possible, take your time, observe, assess the situation you find yourself in before you act.
00:24:00.205 --> 00:24:03.548
You know you don't have to fix everything in the first year.
00:24:03.548 --> 00:24:11.517
You don't have to have a full fundraising plan that's, you know, bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars and all in the first year.
00:24:11.517 --> 00:24:18.698
Take it little by little.
00:24:18.698 --> 00:24:37.067
And also I think that connects to what I had mentioned earlier about solving issues down to their root, you know, really figuring out what's causing the problem instead of just continuing to solve the top behavior.
00:24:37.067 --> 00:24:37.650
That's kind of being exposed.
00:24:37.650 --> 00:24:53.910
An example of that, just to make it more concrete, is when I started, I inherited this very narrow salary band and I also recognized that past grants had been written to old salaries instead of future salaries and I was like yeah, I was like okay.
00:24:53.910 --> 00:24:55.113
So I know that needs to change.
00:24:55.113 --> 00:25:16.530
I'm not really sure how to change it, but I kind of sat with Excel for a minute and designed a little stair step of 5% increases over, you know, five years, and that way I was able to expand the salary structure and also I had what next year's salaries was supposed to be.
00:25:16.530 --> 00:25:29.423
So that's not a mystery, and I started writing proposals as soon as the new fiscal year starts to the next fiscal year, and that has helped immensely in actually meeting our budget needs appropriately.
00:25:31.267 --> 00:25:35.815
And then I would say use coaches, consultants, professionals.
00:25:35.815 --> 00:25:40.183
Get a lawyer on retainer if you don't have one on your board.
00:25:40.183 --> 00:25:46.653
Uh, we did a logo redesign and I used a graphic designer and hired out for that.
00:25:46.653 --> 00:26:06.041
Um, anything hr related I highly recommend unless that's your expertise and consultant, um, especially in your first year, I think a coach was really invaluable because of that ability to affirm and encourage and also make you feel like you haven't lost your mind.
00:26:07.005 --> 00:26:13.306
The last thing I would say is just to really invest in your team and to be their biggest ally and supporter.
00:26:13.306 --> 00:26:17.080
And if you have to take the fall for them, do it.
00:26:17.080 --> 00:26:18.644
That's your job, I think.
00:26:18.644 --> 00:26:23.317
And model what you want.
00:26:23.317 --> 00:27:10.031
If you want them to be taking care of themselves, take care of yourself If you, you know, I take a annual retreat for a whole week, silent retreat, and I don't have to tell them where I'm going or what I'm doing, but I do because I want them to understand like this is a way that I take care of myself, and you guys should do that too, no-transcript, and also that they are friends with each other and feel like they can sit down at each other's desks and chit chat for a half hour and their bosses and to come say like, oh my gosh, stop talking, cause that's just as important as the work they're performing is feeling supported in the workplace.
00:27:11.423 --> 00:27:19.987
So I think that's pretty good, I think that's a great list and you've just you've turned into a great leader and, uh, and that's uh, that's awesome.
00:27:19.987 --> 00:27:23.865
Um, so, all right, our last question.
00:27:23.865 --> 00:27:25.289
Um, this is about you personally.
00:27:25.289 --> 00:27:30.045
So for the next three minutes, colleen, it's all about you Um what?
00:27:30.045 --> 00:27:38.465
What have you learned about yourself in the last two years as you've gone through this transition to into leading this organization?
00:27:41.130 --> 00:27:47.184
I think I've learned that I'm calmer than I knew in crisis.
00:27:47.184 --> 00:27:53.800
I mean, I was a hospital chaplain for a year and so I did know that I had the ability to be calm.
00:27:53.800 --> 00:28:03.334
But this is this has taught me in a in a different way, in a sustained sort of way, that I am very relaxed.
00:28:03.334 --> 00:28:06.766
One thing I think I can talk about is we were broken into.
00:28:06.766 --> 00:28:29.594
That was one of the many things in the first year and I just remember, you know, very calmly, calling each other what was on your desk, how much did you, what was there, and I'm writing down and and you know the police are on their way and just, you know, no like um hyper active over reaction from me, just, and then they also were calm about it.
00:28:29.594 --> 00:28:33.640
It was like, you know, we lost five thousand dollars worth of equipment, but it's not the end of the world.
00:28:33.640 --> 00:28:35.422
There's worse things that could have happened in this.
00:28:35.422 --> 00:28:50.336
So just seeing that I'm I'm able to respond that way to things, which then impacts how everyone else in the agency responds to things, has really been an interesting insight into myself.
00:28:50.336 --> 00:28:54.069
And I can ask people for money.
00:28:54.069 --> 00:28:55.907
That's another thing I've learned about myself.
00:28:55.907 --> 00:29:07.340
That's a little one, um, that's a little one also.
00:29:07.340 --> 00:29:26.605
I think, um, the the role of humor and laughter as we're you know I'm making jokes here, uh but it is, um, really important, especially when you're dealing with some of the worst sides of humanity and our society, societal problems, um, and you know, of course there's spaces to be funny and spaces not to, but laughter really helps, helps a thing go along, and I guess I'm funnier than I thought, so that's useful.
00:29:27.665 --> 00:29:31.288
I think that this position in a surprise to me.
00:29:31.288 --> 00:29:32.189
I just I'd never.
00:29:32.189 --> 00:29:43.356
I really mostly worked in academic institutions and so it never occurred to me that I would be the boss, you know, because I never thought I'd be a college president and that's not my future.
00:29:43.356 --> 00:29:51.432
But you know, a little nonprofit and being the leader of it has taught me that this is something I can do.
00:29:51.432 --> 00:29:52.555
It's something I enjoy.
00:29:52.555 --> 00:29:57.105
I love the 18 balls in the air, which might make me crazy, but I do.
