Nonprofit Expert Episode 29 – Building Trust in a Distrustful World: Art Taylor on the Future of Nonprofits

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Welcome to Nonprofit Expert, presented by DonorPerfect.

Robbe Healey

Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Robbe Healey, and you are listening to nonprofit expert presented by DonorPerfect. The series this year is career insights, and I am the very lucky fortune Read More

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Welcome to Nonprofit Expert, presented by DonorPerfect.

Robbe Healey

Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Robbe Healey, and you are listening to nonprofit expert presented by DonorPerfect. The series this year is career insights, and I am the very lucky fortune of being able to interview a number of very experienced seasoned professionals who’ve worked long careers in the nonprofit sector and have the opportunity to let them share with us their insights into what the future of the sector will look like. So today, I’m especially excited to be meeting with Art Taylor. I remember meeting you, Art, when I was first a member of the AFP ethics committee. And I walked into the meeting room at the Lilly School of Philanthropy, and there was the famous Art Taylor. And the chair next to him was the chair I was supposed to sit in. And I will admit I had this flash of imposter syndrome. Why could I possibly be in the room with you? Because you had such a distinguished career at the Better Business Bureau, the Wise Giving Alliance, and you were the public member of the ethics committee. And now, of course, you’re the CEO of AFP Global.

Art Taylor

Yeah.

Robbe Healey

So those two little kernels of your history, I’d love for you to share more with the podcast audience. What other things do you want people to know about your career, your education, your journey?

Art Taylor

Well, first, I wanna just say that I’m a Philadelphia, and I was born and raised here. And, my first connection to nonprofit work was, getting a job as the CFO of Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America.

Robbe Healey

Oh, you’re kidding. No. Oh, for heaven’s sake, one of my dear dear friends, Joyce Chester, ran, O OIC in in Coatesville, Chester County. Mhmm. How amazing organization.

Art Taylor

So I was the CFO there, through the mid eighties and then, into the early nineties when I became the national president of OIC of America. So, I was I was about thirty one years old at the time and, doctor Sullivan, reverend Sullivan, gave me this wonderful opportunity to head this national job training program that was employing millions of people around the world. And, learned a tremendous amount about leadership, about, working together to solve big problems, to have visions for what we can do if we if we set our minds to it. And also faith, you know, faith plays sometimes a hidden but important role in the success of nonprofit organizations. And, you know, most of us try to start a nonprofit when we do. We say, you know, we have an idea for what we wanna see happen in the world or in our community, but we don’t have a whole lot to put to it right away. There’s no guarantee that it’s actually going to work. And so there’s a certain element of faith that we put into these things when we get started. And so, I just wanna hold up that important element that really drives the creation and success of a lot of organizations, even ones that have been around a while. Many organizations are going through a lot even now, and you have to have faith to believe that it’s worth continuing to work through those difficult moments. But anyway, so Philadelphia is my home. And I worked at OIC for a good fourteen years. And then this opportunity came up to leave Philadelphia and take on a different kind of role, but one that I had, I would believe, a certain amount of competence to do. The BBB wise giving Alliance was reforming. It was the result now of a merger between the National Charities Information Bureau, which had been around since the early nineteen hundreds. And the Better Business Bureau had a service called the Philanthropic Advisory Service that was operating out of its foundation. And so someone said, you know, these two organizations are doing the same kinds of work. They’re evaluating charities against really important standards, and we should just merge them. They were both kind of struggling financially, And the merger resulted in my being hired as the first CEO back in, May of two thousand and one. So I moved to DC and, and then, we’re doing that work. And, so many things happened over the next twenty four years, really, between, the time I started there and now the time that I’m here at AFP. But some of the more memorable ones were, again, connected to Philadelphia. If you’ll recall, after after, nine eleven, a whole ton of money was released from donors into the hands of a key number of organizations, one of which was the American Red Cross. And, back then, the American Red Cross was a little different than it is today. But, one of the things that, the Wise Giving Alliance was able to point out was that some of the claims that they were making about how the funds were going to be used weren’t necessarily aligned with how they were being used. And so we had to work with them to get them to see that, they needed to have a better respect for donor intent. And so, I’ll never forget my mother calling me one, Saturday saying that, the Philadelphia Inquirer has just run a story, and, it’s below the on the first page bottom fold. And these people from the American Red Cross are calling you everything but a child of God because of what you’re doing. And I said, well, you know, we we didn’t really do much except say we’re gonna look into some of the allegations that people are claiming. And she said, well, I have to tell you something. If I had laid down and gave those people blood and they told me it was gonna go bad, I’d be pretty upset. So you keep doing what you’re doing. And that’s my mother, you know, in

Robbe Healey

her own way. Nothing like a mom.

Art Taylor

And I hadn’t even thought about the blood angle. You know? I was thinking more about the money. But, you know, when you sit down and give people blood, you’re giving everything you got basically so that you can save a life and you don’t wanna know that it’s disappeared. But interestingly, as we moved along with the Red Cross and they began to make changes, I was very happy to know that we did not, say as much about the blood issue. And, some people will say, you know, this was the right decision. Other people might say it was the wrong decision. But we chose to ignore the challenges with the blood because we did not want people to say we’re not donating any blood. Because as you go into the summer and blood supplies get low, if people don’t donate, people die. So we we, chose not to say much publicly about the issues that it was having with blood. And, you know, some people say, well, you’re a you were a watchdog. You’re supposed to sell the truth about everything. And, well, I guess I didn’t tell the truth about everything because I had to make a decision about what was better for our world. Right?

Robbe Healey

Well, isn’t that what leadership is?

Art Taylor

I think it is.

Robbe Healey

Well, and it’s interesting you brought up at least thirty things I’d like to probe. But I wanna circle back to one, which I think is this idea of merging merging organizations. And nine eleven, in my experience, nine eleven did cause a lot of change in the sector, not just the one you’re talking about. Because I think while the Red Cross certainly was a high profile organization that got a lot of attention, it it really shined a light on the fact that what you think donors are giving for and what donors think they’re giving for isn’t always the same thing.

Art Taylor

Yeah.

Robbe Healey

And in many cases, you’ve told the truth, and they’ve heard it differently.

Art Taylor

Mhmm.

Robbe Healey

So this how do you create transparency in its purest form? I don’t know that anyone has figured that out, but I’d love to talk about that some more. But I think when you think about the depth of your career and you think about some of those touch points, those turning points in some cases, As you think about the future of what the sector’s going to look like, how does that donor intent, donor restrictions, how could that evolve? And, also, the whole idea that right now in twenty twenty five, we’re at a flexion point globally with how government sees its role in caring for its citizens, and the nonprofit’s always been the bottom line, the safety net, the first line of whatever, depending on how you see that. How do all those things combine to evolve?

Art Taylor

Yeah.

Robbe Healey

And I think there’s the short term impact, and I think that’s really important to a lot of people, but that’ll be over in six months.

Art Taylor

Sure.

Robbe Healey

How do you navigate the glide path? I’ve and I know you’re a futurist, and I’m not. So I think of I mean, we have to get through the present, but we also have to think about what the generative future is gonna look like.

Art Taylor

Right.

Robbe Healey

And how do you navigate both at the same time?

Art Taylor

Yeah. That’s a difficult challenge for leadership because in the nonprofit sector, we’re always focused on what’s happening this year, this week,

Robbe Healey

and Is that work?

Art Taylor

Can we get can we get everybody paid? Can we can we get the work done that we’re trying to get through this year? But, the way I sort of ask people to think is to imagine if you’re in the transportation industry, And suddenly, someone said, you gotta put together a two year plan. And the question was, should I imagine that cars are gonna be connected? Well, if you only look out two years, chances are cars and vehicles won’t be connected in two years. But if you think out ten years, you can probably imagine cars are gonna be connected to each other and that people will have less control or they will give up more control over how the vehicles traverse. They’ll give up more control to machines connected to other cars to do that. And so if you’re in that industry and you’re not thinking ten years out, then maybe you aren’t planning to take the little steps that you need to take today to be ready. And for me, futurism is all about avoiding the catastrophic because you missed a shift and, trying to plan for that in a way that you’re not surprised by things when they happen, but you’re ready as best you can for them. So, what I try to get organizations to do is think out longer than their strategic planning cycle and ask the question, well, what should we be doing now to be ready in the event of these things happening? What little investments can we make? What collaborations do we wanna begin thinking about? Right? So that we can work with others to create new things that don’t currently exist that are much easier to collaborate on. So for me, futurism is about innovation, collaboration, creating new things that don’t currently exist, that also reduce the risk to any particular organization when they don’t work. Because we need lots of things to before we find the things that actually work that align with the future that actually occurred. And, you know, everyone’s saying, well, you should collaborate. This is your other point. The Wise Giving Alliance merged with the, National Charities Information Bureau to be become this Wise Giving Alliance. That actually wasn’t the kind of collaboration that I have in mind. It worked out, but you had two struggling organizations coming together. And most times when that happens, they just continue to be one struggling organization. And, you know, the collaborations I like to see are ones where both organizations are doing okay. They’re not likely to collaborate on things that they currently do because they’re feeling, well, you know, we’re happy with what we’re doing, we’re happy but if there’s something new that they can do together, now that’s a good collaboration because not one of them has to spend all of their resources on it. And if they can do it together, they can both benefit because they’re holding some of the value or some of their assets that it needs to create that thing, but not all of them. So that’s the kind of collaboration I like to see. And it also creates, in a way, a need to encourage the success of your collaborator, which is kinda counterintuitive. Right? Most of the times we come to these relationships, it’s about, well, let me see what I can get from them. And they’re thinking, let me see what I can get from you. And And

Robbe Healey

I gotta protect my turf. I gotta protect my turf. Yeah. Right. And they’re protecting their turf over there.

Art Taylor

Exactly. Yeah. And so how do we create a different dynamic where I need you to be successful because we can’t create this new thing unless you are. And that opens the door for asymmetrical collaboration. Sometimes it might be a really big organization and a really small organization, but that small organization might have a piece of the market that this big one doesn’t have. Or they may have a specific know how that this big one can’t really create right now, it doesn’t make sense for them to create, and so they can work together on something not that currently exists but something that they want to do later on. So those are just some thoughts I have around it, but you asked, so what can we think about over the next decade? Obviously AI is huge. But it’s not simply AI. It’s, it’s more around how we, I believe, learn to communicate across difference. Because we’re not going to be able to succeed, I don’t think, very well if it’s constantly a battle between, I’m right or you’re wrong. It has to be, I believe I’m right. Now let me hear what you have to say and let’s talk about this. Let’s not demonize each other. Let’s not assume that you don’t know everything you need to know. Maybe you know some more things than I need you to know. But we have to work together and learn to communicate across differences so that we can achieve things. And right now I just worry that, we’re not doing that. And the future is going to, I think, punish those of us who can’t understand this. The future will punish us because you have to be able to communicate across difference to collaborate, and you can’t grow unless you do. So that’s that’s my concern, I guess, if I had a concern.

Robbe Healey

Yeah. I think I think that concern is huge. I think we’ve somehow demonized compromise and somehow made compromise a loss. Yeah. And I think that’s a tragedy. Yeah. Because while compromise may not get me everything I want or you everything you want, we don’t need to.

Art Taylor

Yeah.

Robbe Healey

And if we could return to collaboration as a way to get to good compromise, I think we could do much better as a society. And and it’s not just in this country. I think that’s a a global problem.

Art Taylor

Yeah.

Robbe Healey

I also think you you met you talked about collaboration to create something new.

Art Taylor

Yeah.

Robbe Healey

I’ve long been troubled, frustrated, and angry that the nonprofit sector is pilloried when it tries something that it doesn’t succeed at.

Art Taylor

Ah.

Robbe Healey

And that if if you if you think about the for profit sector, there’s all kinds of failure, and it’s funded robustly by investors because the three out of a hundred that succeed are good. Yeah. And then we bring those directors, those volunteer leaders into a boardroom where if we try something in the nonprofit sector and we don’t succeed, we’re we’re assailed for that. Yeah. Do you see a future where nonprofit research and development becomes a norm instead of a problem?

Art Taylor

Well, okay. So we have to look at signals, right, of where that might be the case or that might not be the case. And right now, I am beginning to see cracks in certain approaches to nonprofit work that could potentially lead to what you’re saying. First of all, you probably follow, and I follow them a little bit, the, effective altruism movement. The effective altruism movement is one that requires or suggests that people should invest in things that have proven work proven to work. Right? So it makes more sense for someone to invest in mosquito nets because it’s been proven to save lives. If you buy a certain number of mosquito nets, they’re going to save a certain number of lives. They’ve been documented. The problem is that if that’s all we invest in, but what about things that we don’t necessarily know yet, know how to address yet. Right? Like cancer. I’m just throwing that out there as a great example. Right? We need to continue to invest in cancer interventions and research so that one day hopefully we will find these cures. Right? And so I think that the effective altruists are beginning to look at some of the larger issues that society faces, like climate change, for instance. And they’re saying some of these things are so catastrophic if we don’t fix it that we can’t simply invest today in things that we know that work. And so they’re beginning to we’re beginning to see some cracks in that. And what that means is some of the bigger and larger issues, right, that we used to say, as it maybe impact investors would say, you have to invest in things that are proven to work. Maybe now they’re gonna invest in ideas rather than things that are proven to work. And if you invest in ideas, now you’re getting back to innovation, which you’re talking about. So I think there may be some signals that we get there. And I’ve I’ve often struggled with this idea that nonprofit organizations must demonstrate impact. Well, the first thing is we don’t know what we’re talking about most of the time when we say that. Because I can say that in the job training world, right, we we trained twenty people and eighteen of them got jobs making more than they would have had they not gotten that. But what I don’t know is what happens to that person twenty years later.

Robbe Healey

Yep.

Art Taylor

What’s the ripple of that? That’s the real impact. Right? The real impact is that person got a job. Now they’re raising a family. And now who know who gets credit for that is the other thing. Right? If that person turns out to be president of the United States, who gets credit for that? The job training program or all the other ex all the other, interventions or work and and ideas and concepts that this person has come across and relationships that they’ve come across since that time, who gets credit. So we’re we’re stuck in this world of causation and a whole host of things that really don’t help us. They don’t help us really understand the full effect of what nonprofit work is, which I believe is really about hope. Nobody wants to hear that, Robbie. But the work we do is about hope for the future, if it’s about anything. It’s about giving us personal agency over what may happen if we put our ideas and resources and align with others through the creation of these institutions to give it a try. Now there are smaller organizations too that are doing single things. Like, I loved it when I lived here in Philadelphia. There was the Fairmount Sports Association, right on the boulevard where my kids could go play baseball and softball. And that’s what they did. And it was a great experience for kid kids nonprofit organization. And that’s it. They weren’t trying to change the world. They were just trying to create a way for kids to play softball. Fine.

Robbe Healey

But they probably were changing.

Art Taylor

And they were. But we won’t know that. Right? We don’t No. We won’t. And my kids are doing amazing things. So yes.

Robbe Healey

It’s because they played softball. But who’s to say it’s not? But that’s your whole point.

Art Taylor

That’s my whole point. My whole point is they got together. They weren’t trying to change the world. They were just trying to give kids a place to play baseball. Great. Some things may have happened to those kids as a result of that that now changes the world. But you you don’t go out, I don’t think, in many smaller organizations thinking we’re gonna change the world. We’re just gonna try to help some people in our community do a thing and that’s great. So, you know, I the impact of that well, somebody would say, well, is that scalable? Can you bring in millions of people to do that? What’s the point investing in such a small thing? Screw all that. You know, I’m just saying these are people who got together to create an experience for kids and they did it, and that’s enough.

Robbe Healey

Yeah. I bet I think I think you’re hitting on a, in my opinion, a very significant value

Art Taylor

Yeah.

Robbe Healey

Which is, in my experience, the people who work in the nonprofit sector as a calling want to change the world in a positive way.

Art Taylor

Yeah.

Robbe Healey

And they may see it right in front of their very eyes, or they may never see it, But they know it’s good for the sake of good.

Art Taylor

Yeah.

Robbe Healey

And and when you were talking about hope, something that you said made me think about the absence of hope. And without people doing good for the sake of good, there is the absence of hope.

Art Taylor

Yep.

Robbe Healey

And have we gotten to the point are we going through a dark tunnel where people are struggling with that? Mhmm. That they’re they’re feeling like maybe there’s not as much hope as there had been, that that they’re somehow I I I think some sometimes, I think people are made to feel as if the value of their work in this sector doesn’t compare with the value of people who have a focus on for profit business or industry or commerce

Art Taylor

Yeah.

Robbe Healey

That somehow that’s more valuable than teaching a kid to play ball.

Art Taylor

Yeah.

Robbe Healey

And I I worry about that. I I and I I’m not convinced we’re stalled forever. Yeah. But the glide path has been going down instead of up.

Art Taylor

Yeah. I don’t I don’t know the answer to that. I would

Art Taylor

why not? But I but I do know this, or I feel this way that without hope we’re doomed.

Robbe Healey

I would agree with that.

Art Taylor

I don’t know. Purpose in life means everything. How do you get up in the morning if you don’t have any purpose? However you define it. And sometimes that purpose comes from something you wanna see happen. You don’t have the solution yet, but you’re gonna work every day to try to figure out what that is. And therein lies hope. Without that, what’s the point? There’s no point. So and I think there are studies that are now showing that people live longer when they find that they have purpose in life than people who haven’t figured that out. Maybe we’re healthier because we are doing something that brings us joy. Right? And I think some of us who work in the nonprofit sector do it because of the joy we get out of it, even though there’s a lot of angst and, you know, painful times too. But we know that what we’re shooting for is something better than it was when we got started. And we feel that we’re living lives of purpose. So I think that is really important. Now as far as the future, one of the huge challenges and shifts that we’re seeing, right, is the explosion of the need that people have for mental health support and trauma reduction. Right? It’s an explosion. If you go to any college or university, for instance, you know, high percentages of children children, they’re young adults now, have gone through some type of mental health counseling or emotional support. And it it almost feels like the world has changed since the days when maybe you and I grew up, although we probably had our own trauma. Maybe it just went untreated. But now we’re acknowledging it and people are taking advantage of it and that’s great. But in that acknowledgment, how does that also shift the way we go about doing things so that people don’t have to have those traumas? And I think that, for me, is a big shift potentially of value for the nonprofit sector. I think as we come become more empathetic, as we become more caring, as we become more insightful about the challenges that everyday life brings to some people who come to this earth with certain, conditions. Right? Then the more likely we are, I think, to wanna work in institutions that are focused on trying to do something about these problems. Whether that be business, because not every good thing has to happen in a nonprofit. It can happen in a business, or whether that be in a nonprofit. And I think the other big shift or concern I’m worried about right now is this lack of trust in institutions in general. And I wanna go back to, again, the times that maybe I grew up and you grew up. People wanna say things are worse now. They they maybe are in terms of how much people trust institutions compared to those times. But it doesn’t mean that the institutions are any better or worse in in reality. Right? It just means that we see more today. And so the things we see cause us to have less trust.

Robbe Healey

And is that a function of communication in the media?

Art Taylor

Well, immediate the media’s exploded. Right? So we Yeah. We can’t even of course, it is. Right? We we have cameras. We have ways of communicating now that we couldn’t have dreamed of back then. And so we’re seeing lots more. We had three TV stations when, when I was growing up.

Robbe Healey

Well, no four because we had public television.

Art Taylor

We had public TV and that’s gone now.

Robbe Healey

The big three.

Art Taylor

Right. So, so, you know, I, I just think of what, information we have available to us now and most people are sadly getting their information from social media, which can be good sometimes and really misleading in other times. And so, we’re seeing things in a way that we didn’t see before, but it doesn’t mean that those institutions are better or worse. It does mean that the institutions have to do better. You know, when when people are calling you out because you’ve done wrong, you have to do better. And that’s not a bad thing. But I also think it’s wrong for us to just think we can cancel institutions. The only way we can really get things done collaboratively is in an institution. That’s why we create them so we can work together in a concerted way to get things done. And so, that is a growing concern and people wanna give peer to peer. So they’re still generous. People are still increasingly generous, but they’re not giving to institutions. Now that’s a whole another conversation about why that’s not happening. But some of that has to do with, I think, the lack of trust that people have in these institutions as well. They rather give to their friend directly.

Robbe Healey

Yeah. I think that’s that’s an interesting phenomenon, and I think there are some people who attribute that to generational behavior. I’m not sure it’s all generational because I think about the people who were leaders when I was early in my career. They were asking each other. So were they giving to the person they respected, trusted, and admired who happened to be connected to the institution, or are they giving to the institution through that person who they knew? Someone might have figured that out, but Yeah. It wasn’t me. Yeah. But I I also think it’s always been a very connected experience Yeah. For people who are genuinely involved.

Art Taylor

Yeah.

Robbe Healey

You know, you’ve mentioned leadership a great deal, and I think if you could if someone had given you great career advice forty or forty five years ago, what would it have been? I don’t know what it would have been. But if you could give the leaders of tomorrow your insights and advice based on the various turning points you’ve seen over your career? Are there things that stand out for you, things that they should be mindful of, take advantage of, be careful of, anticipate.

Art Taylor

Yeah. I I people always say that a leader should be decisive, and they should be making decisions and not delaying things. And and in some environments, you know, that may make sense. Right? But I think increasingly, what’s more important is to listen to the people that are part of your organization and learn from them. And, don’t make your first act to destroy something without understanding that you’re destroying it and the reef and the and the repercussions of it. Especially when you’re coming into an organization, if you’re just coming into something that’s already existing, you need to understand what the culture is, why they do what they do before you just start making changes to things, unless there’s some kind of crisis going on. But so the first thing I would say to people is listen. And not just to catch people and things, but listen to really understand what’s going on and why. Then you can begin to work with people to make the kind of changes, whether they’re large scale or or micro, that can help the organization move forward. So to me, that’s number one. And, again, because our systems are moving so quickly now, because we see rapid change happening all around us, because a company with a product that’s at the top of the market may only have a year or two before it’s disrupted by another product. We have to constantly be innovating. If you’re not listening to the people who are doing the work, who are managing different units in your enterprise, then that means you wanna be the sole arbiter of what innovation is, and organization forward because of a perspective that you have that many people in your organization won’t have had. Because if you’re a leader, you’ve seen some things maybe that they haven’t seen. That’s great. But now it’s about taking those ideas to those people and saying, hey. Could this work? To those people and saying, hey. Could this work? How might this enhance the way you do your job? Could this be a way for us to succeed in ways that we haven’t? And to kind of push in a way that people begin to see what’s possible through these ideas and and give you feedback on whether they can actually occur or not. So it’s a little bit of both. It’s not simply top down, It’s not simply bottom up, but it is a reflection of everyone’s abilities and positioning in the organization to contribute to something different happening in that organization. So to me, that’s the first thing is just listening.

Robbe Healey

Sounds like collaboration.

Art Taylor

It’s all about collaboration.

Robbe Healey

You’ve got a theme going on here with collaboration.

Art Taylor

Yeah. I mean, I think you’re, well, when you when you come to an institution, and people have been doing jobs for a while, you’re a fool to not respect that and see what you can learn from that as you lead them. And, we’re also at a point where people have choices. I mean if you’re a fool as a leader they don’t have to stay.

Robbe Healey

They certainly don’t. They certainly don’t.

Art Taylor

If you don’t respect them, if you don’t give them, a place to express what they’re feeling, sensing and knowing from doing that work, they can just leave. So as leaders, do we want people walking out the door? I think the worst sign of a leader is one that has a revolving door. The wise giving allows nobody left. And that, I look at that as me being a pretty good leader. Nobody wanted to leave and we did we got our job done so, but they also had agency over what we did in the organization. When we did something new, many cases was them who came up with the ideas and I was just like, great. So I’ve created a culture where people feel good about coming up with new things because they understand the the broader picture that I’ve painted about needing to innovate and standing behind their ideas to innovate. Sometimes they work, sometimes they didn’t. We don’t penalize people for things that don’t work. We we encourage people who come to us with new ideas. That’s what we need to do in these organizations. It’s scary. I mean, most leaders you talk to will be people who are, wanting to control things. And I kinda understand that. Right? Because in the end, the board or your account the people you’re accountable to are going to be asking you the questions. They’re not asking people below you the question. But, in a world where we need constant innovation, you need more of a matrix kind of situation going on where a a person in this part of your organization might be having lunch with a person in this part of your organization. They come up with an idea and they say let’s work together on something outside of the formal structure of the organization. And then they can come to their leaders and say, you know what? This might work. And that’s how you get innovation going. So, it can’t just be about the leader. It’s gotta be about the environment the leader creates for that kind of innovation to occur.

Robbe Healey

Earlier, you were in the very beginning, you were talking about doctor Sullivan finding you early in your professional career and giving you an opportunity that perhaps you hadn’t even thought about.

Art Taylor

Yeah.

Robbe Healey

That feels like organic, mentoring to me, someone seeing something. And, you know, I think I’ve had the same experience with a a career mentor when I worked for the Girl Scouts, but I wonder if you’re if you’re a young person aspiring to a career in the sector. And I think a lot of people in our generation Yeah. Didn’t even know to aspire to a career in the sector, let alone plan for that. But if you are, what other than the organic kind of glide path that we had, what are the kinds of things you think they could intentionally study, learn, intern, practice, prepare for that would help support them in becoming successful in a sector where caring and hope is the core business.

Art Taylor

I’m about to jump out my seat when you for you asking me

Robbe Healey

that question. I hope in a good way.

Art Taylor

In a really good way. Because, you know, I do this job. I’m the CEO of the Association of Fundraising Professionals. We have twenty five thousand members, and there are one point five million organizations. Twenty five thousand members, one point five million organizations. Are we

Robbe Healey

up to one point five?

Art Taylor

Yeah. Right. So there’s a lot of fundraising going on with people who aren’t technically trained to be fundraisers. Okay. There’s a lot of

Robbe Healey

Well, that’s the anybody could raise money thought.

Art Taylor

Right. And so your your question is for me, if you wanna get into the nonprofit sector, learn how to be a fundraiser. Not just be a fundraiser. Learn how to do it and do it well. And there tons of tools out there to help with that. You don’t have to go to a college. We we have tools at the association that can help anybody learn to be a fundraiser. And yet, as you said, anybody can be a fundraiser. Well, you can, but you need to be trained. You need to know what you’re doing. And, so I would say to anybody, learn I’d be a fundraiser. Because frankly, you’re more likely to work in a small organization that may have one, if any, formally trained people who are doing fundraiser, fundraising, than you are to work in, let’s say, Penn Medicine, it’s Penn Medicine’s foundation. Right? Where they have hundreds of people maybe doing fundraising. So the point here is, if you care about causes, if you want to see a difference happen in a world, learn how to fundraise because if you decide to start your own organization or you’re working somebody else’s, there’s a need for you. And fundraisers are uniquely positioned because they get to talk to the people who have aspirations for how they want to see their resources deployed and the institution that wants to deploy those resources for good. They see both the the full spectrum of this. They have to know the story of how that money has been used so that that can become part of the case for resources. So, there’s gonna be a lot of people leaving government right now.

Robbe Healey

It seems.

Art Taylor

It seems. Right? Some purposely, some, unfortunately, right? I wish they would consider fundraising as a career because they went in many people went into government because they wanted to see positive change in society. You can learn how to be a fundraiser, and you can change the world by connecting people to opportunities to live out their philanthropic dreams. You can do that. So that’s what I would say as the head of the association for but I think I would say that now even if I wasn’t because I really believe that.

Robbe Healey

Well, I think it’s pretty common knowledge that when a nonprofit is doing a search for development officer, finding qualified candidates is extremely difficult.

Art Taylor

Yeah.

Robbe Healey

Finding candidates might not be difficult. Finding qualified candidates can really be.

Art Taylor

Qualified.

Robbe Healey

And then I think, you know, you’ve got that chicken and egg problem of investing in that sector of the work within an agency because board members, good intention to people without a depth of knowledge, don’t realize that donors are a constituency as important as the people served. Because without both, there’s no work done.

Art Taylor

Right.

Robbe Healey

I my the first fundraising training I ever took in nineteen eighty two, the late Hank Russell was still alive running the fundraising school. And he I wrote this down on my notebook. I had no idea what what it really meant, but it was written down. He said, the degree to which your organization will be successful in fundraising is related to the degree to which they see donors as a constituency as important to every other constituency.

Art Taylor

Yeah. Yeah.

Robbe Healey

And it it it is. There you are. So if you if you hire highly qualified people to deliver services to your participants, but you don’t have highly qualified people engaging with your investors, you have a disequilibrium that doesn’t serve well.

Art Taylor

Doesn’t work. And this is why boards are so frustrated.

Robbe Healey

Talk more about that.

Art Taylor

Well, I think, and I’m on a number of them, and I I can tell you. A lot of times people think, oh, all we have to do is hire a fundraiser and all our problems are solved. Right?

Robbe Healey

I’ve heard that.

Art Taylor

We need a fundraiser.

Robbe Healey

Yeah. I’ve heard that. Of course you do. Yeah. Right?

Art Taylor

And then we could go back to sleep and focus on the programs that we

Robbe Healey

That we like. Do.

Art Taylor

But then, three months later, they’re like, oh, we hired the fundraiser and it’s not happening.

Robbe Healey

We didn’t raise ten million dollars.

Art Taylor

Yeah. We didn’t hit our what’s going on? Well, you first of all, you don’t really understand what fundraisers do. And let me explain that to you. So my little brief definition is fundraisers work with people who might want to contribute to your organization by developing relationships with them so that over time, they and others can support your organization and you can get consistent revenues. That’s what we do. We don’t come into an organization as miracle workers and take an organization that was raising nothing, and in two weeks, you’re raising hundreds of thousands of dollars. That’s not what we do.

Robbe Healey

Certainly not.

Art Taylor

And so, if you’re not willing to support your fundraiser to do the work that I just mentioned, which is a longer term prospecting approach, a longer term building your fundraising institution support, then you’re gonna be frustrated and that fundraiser is going to leave. Yep. You may ask them to leave. By the way, average tenure right now, I’m sad to say, is somewhere around eighteen months for a fundraiser. That’s that’s terrible. Because in eighteen months, you’re just maybe getting to the point where you can see some breakthroughs. Right? But they’re so frustrated trying to demonstrate to this recalcitrant group of board members that this is the process. No. We need the money. This is the process. No. Yeah. And and then there’s finally, I give up. I’m gone. Yeah. So, that’s something else that I hope we’re able to do, which is to get boards better educated on what fundraisers do so they can better support them. And it isn’t simply, we need you to go out and ask for money. I hear lots of board members don’t like to ask for money. Okay. Fine. But you can support them by asking the right questions about how they’re doing. So for instance, how many calls did we make this month compared to what our goal was? How many letters did we get out compared to our goal? How how are we doing with regard to those relationships? Meaning, are we moving people from when we first found them to another place where they’re getting closer to that gift? And how do we document and record that? Those kinds of questions is fair for a board to ask. And at any point, a board member might step in at that point and say, you know what? I might be able to help you move this donor from here to here. I kinda know them a little bit, and I kinda have some experience there. I might be able to help. But if you’re just asking how much money came in the door, well, duh, it’ll get there, and and then there’s the frustration. So, yeah, we need to do more with with boards, and I wanna try to do more with them.

Robbe Healey

And I think you’ve you’re again you’re again talking about collaboration. In my opinion, you’re talking about collaboration between the board and the staff. Mhmm. And as you were talking, I think about case, sprinkle, graces, triple a boards, ambassadors, advocates, and askers.

Art Taylor

Mhmm.

Robbe Healey

And if you’ve got me for eighteen months or less, then I want you out there as the ambassador telling the story.

Art Taylor

Yeah. I don’t

Robbe Healey

want you asking for money if you don’t know how to do that. Right. But I want you telling the right stories in the right way to the right people so that the mission of the organization is better understood. And if if we would collaborate instead of calling out, we’d get a whole lot more done.

Art Taylor

I agree with that completely.

Robbe Healey

Yeah. It’s, I think there are so many stereotypes about the work of fundraisers. And in my opinion and experience in this country and culture, we’re socialized from childhood never to admit what we don’t know. So you put a bunch of brilliant, dedicated board members in a room who know they don’t know how to do this, and they are silent because they’re trained that way.

Art Taylor

Mhmm. So I

Robbe Healey

think we have to release that and and give them permission to take the lessons.

Art Taylor

Absolutely.

Robbe Healey

And we can give them the lessons.

Art Taylor

We can give them the lessons for sure. And they will be less frustrated. They look, people join boards because they wanna see the organization succeed. Maybe some other reasons too. But they want to, I believe, fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities. And one of them, obviously, is to make sure the organization has the revenues it needs to pursue its mission. I want you to do that the right way. That might help you figure it out.

Robbe Healey

It’s much easier than the

Art Taylor

right way. Absolutely. So Well,

Robbe Healey

I think we could probably talk for another six hours, but I’m I wanna ask you one last question.

Art Taylor

Okay.

Robbe Healey

If there was one kernel of wisdom that you could put out there that would inspire boards and support staff and help move the sector in the next three to five years? Is there anything in particular you think is gonna be the most significant or the most helpful?

Art Taylor

Yeah. I would say right now for many organizations, the key is going to be, finding ways to generate and maintain positive energy. Because every day, there’s something that’s hitting us, right, that is discouraging. And mission moments are gonna be so important now, you know, where we can talk about something that happened good in our organization that uplifts us. We have to find ways to generate and maintain positive energy, and it doesn’t have to be a big thing. It could be something small. But whatever works for you, go to that. Engage in that. Participate in that. Because that’s how we get through these difficult moments. It’s that. Things are gonna happen in the organization. You might lose some money. You might lose some people, but you have to be positive. You have to find ways to absorb what’s going on that may be negative, but still generate the positive energy to believe that tomorrow is gonna be better. And and so that to me is the number one thing.

Robbe Healey

Well, I think that’s a really good number one thing to to end with and to to inspire the people who have listened to this.

Art Taylor

Thank you.

Robbe Healey

Thank you very much, Art Taylor, for joining us for Thank you, Art. Nonprofit expert. And, for those of you who’ve listened to this, we are so grateful to Art to share his skills and insights and recommendations to us. It’s, a distinguished career that is still going strong, and we will be the beneficiaries of his energy and insights. So thank you again for joining us for nonprofit expert presented by DonorPerfect in this series, career insights.

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