Episode 114: When You Know Better, Do Better: Correcting Errors Stemming from a Lack of Knowledge
When you start a nonprofit, there is a huge learning curve. Many nonprofit leaders do things that don't align with industry practices and norms. Instead of addressing these missteps, they keep them in place, not knowling that they serve as red flags to Funders and nonprofit leaders in the sector. When you know better, do better. If you don't know how, listen for the steps so that you can improve your organization's reputation and prospects for funding.
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🔦 NONPROFIT SPOTLIGHT 🙌🏿
Umpqua Bank Pt. 2
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🚀 RESOURCES TO HELP YOU RUN A SUCCESSFUL NONPROFIT
How to Demonstrate Impact https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pJPpJqvtSBSnOsds14dw7xw5jQ3JYcyy/view?usp=drive_link
90 Days to a Profitable Nonprofit https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ofgeHJ2CTVS0t8STMiNqfveaVpWfaK7o/view?usp=sharing
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Podcast Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to On Air with Amber Wynn, where nonprofit leaders learn to fuse passion and commitment with proven business strategies to create long-term funding impact and sustainability. And now here's your host and resident, Philanthrepreneur Amber Wynn.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hey, fam, it's your girl just enjoying the beat. My son did the damn thing when he dropped those beats. I just don't know. Just does something to my soul. Welcome to On Air with Amber Wynn. I'm so excited to be in your space as always, thank you for spending time with me every week. I appreciate you. I want you to know that you could be anywhere, but you're here with me and so thank you so much. Today's topic is when you know better, do better. And specifically, we're going to focus on correcting errors of ignorance because you as a nonprofit leader, you do a lot. There's so many pulls from different directions up, down, all around, and you have to prioritize. And when you know better, it's incumbent upon you to do better. And so I've watched several nonprofits, either they've been clients, they've come to some of my workshops, webinars, and I've reviewed their infrastructure, things that I believe may be impacting them and they just ignore it.
(01:43):
And I know why they ignore it. Number one is because they've been doing things the same way for so long and it would be disruptive to change. But here's the thing. If it's going to impact you, and I'm only going to share things with you that the IRS says or that a funder's perspective would do when you know better, do better, right? So I'm going to talk to you a little bit when we come back after the break about how your decision to not change the things that you know that are preventing you from advancing is really detrimental to the advancement of your organization. So when we come back, we're going to talk about correcting errors of ignorance. If your grants aren't getting funded, it could be because the funder can't see how your programs are making an impact in your community. Get the How to demonstrate Impact workbook to quantify the work you're doing in your community in a way that a funder can see a potential return on your investment.
(02:50):
Funders need proof that your organization will use their grant dollars to improve your community. That proof is called impact, and impact is quantified through measurable outcomes. Leverage my 30 years of program development experience to help increase your chance of securing funding. Order your copy today. Welcome back to On Air with Amber Wynn, and today we're talking about correcting errors of ignorance. When you know better, do better, what does that mean? So in the nonprofit sector, a lot of times nonprofit founders start their organizations with passion and commitment, not really understanding that there are agencies that govern that nonprofit, that there are rules in place, that there are things that not only the IRS, but the Secretary of State, attorney General. These organizations have expectations. It's called compliance. And so I've been in situations when I've shared with nonprofit organizations things that would improve their responsiveness for a funder.
(03:56):
For example, there'll be nonprofit leaders who have.com for their email and URL, and they've had it for years. And so I'm like, okay, so in the nonprofit sector, your URL and your email extension should say.org because that represents organization. Whereas a.com represents company and it's about aesthetic appearances. And for some people, they think, oh, well that's not a big deal. Let me share with you. When a funder is looking to eliminate a nonprofit, they're looking for anything that suggests that the nonprofit is number one, not operating as a bonafide nonprofit. It would be like if you went to a mechanic and you needed a catalytic converter and on the front of their business, catalytic is spelled incorrectly. It's like this is what you do. You don't know how to spell catalytic like you are saying that you're a mechanic, right? It's the same thing for a nonprofit.
(04:56):
If your URL is.com that says something to a funder, you don't understand that.org represents your organization. And so those to me are errors of ignorance. Before you didn't know, but when you know, then it's incumbent upon you to make that change. But people continue and be like, I'm not going to deal with that. I don't even know what to do. But when you know better, you need to do better how you move your organization forward. So how do you change things like that? How do you change? You've been around for 10, 15 years and you've always been.com, and you say to yourself, well, I've gotten grants and I've gotten that. And I say to you, right, you've gotten 10,000, 15,000, 25,000. But when you get to different levels, when you get to different funding levels, if you've stayed stagnant right here where you're self-funding your organization and you're like, Amber, I want to move to the next level and I share with you how to do that, you've got to tighten up your house.
(05:58):
You've got to look like a bonafide nonprofit. There are, how can I say this? It's easier for a funder to write off 10, $15,000. It's like $20 to them, but when you want them to start investing the money, that's going to make a difference in your organization, 150,250,000. The criteria is more rigid. So little things, little red flags that may suggest to a funder that you don't know what you're doing, like having.org or if the name of your organization is a foundation you didn't know when you started that A foundation in the nonprofit sector is a grant making entity, and it's not a problem in and of itself, it's just the name of your organization. But if you are seeking grants versus giving grants, there's just some confusion and people have got to figure out who you are. And so when I say to a nonprofit, you really shouldn't be a foundation because in the nonprofit sector, a foundation gives out money and they're like, well, we've been around for 10 years.
(07:10):
Like what? You expect us to change our name? Everybody knows us by this name. And my answer is, I don't expect anything. You do what you want to do. I'm giving you the information that's going to help you do what it is you say you want to do. You told me you want to go to the next level. I'm going to help you eliminate those red flags. So should you change your name, that's a decision you have to make. I'm telling you, this may be a barrier. So how do you do things like that? How do you go 10, 15 years with something that everybody knows and then you have this person, Hey, Amber Wynn here telling you, this is how you get to the next level. When you know better, you do better. You do things like you say to yourself, alright, what are we going to do?
(07:55):
What's important? Is it to make this money bring in more money? Or is it to stay how people know us? This is what Amber would suggest. If you are right now, your website is being hosted as.com, then you make an opportunity out of it. You send out an e-blast to everybody on your mailing list. You put it on your website, you post it on your social media and you say, guess what? We're moving. Make it really cute and colorful. And you say, Amberwynn.com is now moving to amberwynn.org. And you explain to people that you're human. You say, when we first started our nonprofit, we started with passion and dedication, not knowing that a nonprofit is a business and blah, blah, blah, blah. So we are aligning our infrastructure to make sure that it aligns with the IRS rules and regulations. When you say stuff like that, funders see that one of those funders may have been like, oh, they're dot com.
(09:01):
They don't know what they're doing. But you publicly have stated, we understand that the IRS governs the nonprofit and we are getting in alignment with that, and the funder's going to be like, bet they get it right. They're making things right. As opposed to you just saying, well, everybody knows this is.com. Then make the announcement. We are now moving to.org. And here's the other thing, get an IT person to reroute after you make the announcement, make the announcement for three, four weeks. Don't just do it for one day, do it for three, four weeks. We're moving, we're moving. And then you can say, we've made it to our new home. Turn it into a giving opportunity. If you'd like to give us a housewarming gift, hit donate, make it really cute, but a reason to even fundraise. So that's how you can go about making that change with something that is really important.
(09:53):
Your URL and your emails. If your email is Bright horizons@gmail.com, that is not the appropriate email extension. It should be.org and you can even get them from free for free with Google. Google Workspace offers nonprofits free email extensions and URL so you don't even have an excuse. Correct that error by taking the time to do what you know you need to do and how do you change your name? Everybody knows us as the Wynn Foundation. Same thing. You make an announcement, you say, Hey, we've been working with the consultant. And what we realize is that our name doesn't really represent who we are. We are not a grant making institution. We are seeking grants, and we want to be clear, we want funders to understand that we need their financial support in order to do the work that we're doing in community effective January 1st. Our new name is going to be the, I don't know, the wynn nonprofit serving, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever the appropriate name is.
(11:08):
It will no longer be foundation because Foundation misrepresents who you are. And then make a big splash about it. Do a press release and say the board of the Amber Wynn Foundation is excited to align this new name with the mission, which is so you can say different name, same quality or different name, same commitment to community, but we are changing our name to reflect who we are and what we are as a nonprofit. So there are many ways that you can correct these errors, but you are no longer, in my opinion, you are no longer given the license to just continue to do what you've been doing. If you want to go to the next level. Now, if you want to stay where you are, if you want to continue to only get five, 10, $15,000, then that's fine. But as you elevate in your requests from funders, the criteria becomes more rigid.
(12:13):
They scrutinize things like that because this is a huge sum of money. And so if I'm giving you a huge sum of money, I need to know that you understand what it is to be a nonprofit. And those little telltale signs they give you away. If you're a.com, if you're a foundation, if you have ministry in your title, sometimes for a faith-based organization, that is a turnoff for some funders. And I say to people all the time because they'll say to me, God gave me that name, and I'm like, that's fine. Just make sure that God's giving you that grant. You know what I mean? So in certain circumstances, there are funders who fund faith-based organizations and ministry and God and religion in the title is not a problem. What I say from a fund developer's perspective is that pot of money is small, the rest is huge.
(13:06):
So you want to open yourself so that you can get money from different sources and not just compete against those other faith-based organizations for that even smaller pot of money. You feel me? Y'all ain't going to never get me to say nothing bad about God. I do have a relationship, but I am here to make sure that your organization survives longer than you. So I'm not going to give you information that's going to keep you small. I'm going to give you information that's going to open up more opportunities for you to generate revenue. So this episode we've been talking about, when you know better, do better. Don't put your head in the sand. When a consultant says to you, this may help you. You're saying you want to go to the next level, but you're not willing to do the work. You have to do the work.
(13:50):
You have to sit down with your board and you have to say, this is what I've come to understand. And don't just take Amber Wynn's word for it. Don't just take another consultant's word for it. Go to the IRS website. You can verify it. If I said to you the IRS says, you are a public charity and as a public charity.org, you can go verify that. So that's your responsibility to do that due diligence. At the end of the day, I just want you to commit to once you know better, that you're going to do better. Because in that space, you don't put your head in the sand and you don't say, I don't have time for it. You don't have time to not do it, because if you're serious about increasing your opportunity to generate revenue, these are the things you have to do as a leader, right?
(14:38):
So if you are not sure about if your organization is tight, although I will say if you're not generating consistent outside revenue, if you are self-funding your nonprofit, then your nonprofit's not tight. I'll just say that. But if you're not sure how to get your house in order, if you're not sure about how to turn your organization around, I've got the roadmap. It is a step by step blueprint on how to transform your organization. So these things that you say, well, I don't know, I hand them to you. I point them out, this is a red flag and this is how you fix it. This is a red flag and this is how you fix it. You'll find it in my course called 90 Days to a Profitable Nonprofit, and it will walk you through how to correct these errors of ignorance because I'm here to support you and we don't have time to be floundering.
(15:36):
So let's take a look at 90 days to a Profitable. Nonprofit's going to help you to know better so that you can do better. Are you struggling to fund your programs? Can't get a grant to save your life. Most consultants will share the what of how to start a nonprofit or how to fundraise. They may even share the why, but they don't share the how because that's where they make their money. Now, I'm not hating. I'm a business woman too, but I've been where you are trying to make the world a better place, struggling to keep the doors open up to the wee hours of the night writing grants and doing whatever needed to be done. And because I've walked in your shoes, I'm not here to make you spend your will, waste your time or your hard earned money. We ain't got time for that.
(16:25):
The world needs you. I'm here to show you how to transform that pit. You keep dumping your heart earned money into a profitable nonprofit. I take my 30 years of nonprofit experience as a founder, executive director, program developer, grant writer in funder, giving out over $7 million annually in grants, and I save you literally thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours. I walk you through setting up your nonprofit organization so that you can be generating enough revenue to cover your monthly expenses in just 90 days. How would that feel? Not paying bills from your personal bank account. I share my insider secret tips, tricks of the trade and provide you with a step-by-step roadmap on how to turn your bootstrap organization into a profitable nonprofit. Within six months, you could be generating enough revenue to pay your salary or fully fund your programs. The choice is yours, but you have to get the blueprint, and it took me three years to develop it, but it's here and it's going to change your life.
(17:32):
Join my other successful clients who were just like you full of passion and determination, but they had no idea all that it takes to run and fund a successful nonprofit. Now they're winning grants and drawing a salary, and they know what it is that they're supposed to be doing to run a successful nonprofit. They're no longer making it up as they go. They have the roadmap and they're clear about next steps. And I want that for you too. So what do you get in this course? You'll walk away with knowledge, products, processes, and systems, not just a bunch of promises, but exactly what you need to turn your organization into a profitable nonprofit. I promise you don't need grants. What you need is a solid infrastructure, and this course is going to give you all of that and more. And what's more it comes with the money back guarantee.
(18:25):
So go ahead, click the link below to register for this course. Welcome back to On Air with Amber Wynn, and today's topic is When you know better, do better. We're at the point of the episode where you get to ask me your pressing questions. Today's question comes from Chelsea out of Huntington Beach, and she hit me up on LinkedIn. You too can hit me up. You can DM me on any of my socials. You can email me at amber@amberwynn.net. You can visit my website, get in contact with me and let me know what your question is. So Chelsea's question is, I applied for and was denied funding for a grant. They provided me with the reviewer's comments. I scored pretty high, 80%, but didn't get funded. I scored pretty good in most sections, but missed the majority of points on the question that asked. What measurement and evaluation practices do you have in place?
(19:29):
It was worth 25 points. I received nine in total. I can't afford an evaluator. Any suggestions on how I can increase my score on this section until I'm able to afford one? First of all, Chelsea, congratulations. 80% is pretty solid, but the landscape is very competitive out there. A lot of these RFPs are annual, and so just like you, other nonprofits have received scores, the scores from the review. So they've had the opportunity to improve their questions, which is exactly what you're going to do, and they apply year after year. So they really mastered this RFP. So what you want to do is to be able to answer not only the basic questions, but for the government grants in particular, they also have a competitive question that they give extra points. You've got to answer those two. Some people think, oh, that's an extra credit, but everybody's so good at answering the questions that 80, 90, 100% is not even good enough.
(20:40):
You have to get those extra 10 points. There's usually going to be two extra questions that's going to even make you competitive. So there's a cutoff, and the cutoff usually is going to be at 105, right? So if you answered all of those other questions perfectly and you got a hundred points, you still wouldn't make the cutoff. So you've got to answer those extra questions as well. But in terms of your question, I'm sorry. Y'all know I be going in on my own tangent, but I just think that's important. I don't want you to think that even if you answer this question and you get a hundred percent that you'll make the cutoff, I just need you to know that, right? That's not enough. You've got to do the competitive questions as well. But to answer your question, an evaluator is great. They are expensive.
(21:29):
But what a funder really wants to know is how will you be able to determine if a change occurred as a result of your program intervention? How will, if the program was a success, an inexpensive evaluation practice is a pre and post-test. So you get to measure your participants' knowledge at the beginning of your program, and then you get to measure their knowledge at the end, and that's all that a funder's really looking for. Yes, if you can have an evaluator come in and create the tools and write the questions in the beginning, in the mid and the end, do their, that would be great. But to your point, it's extremely expensive. So what you can say to them, because how I read your question is what measurement and evaluation practices? It didn't say, do you have an evaluator? It says, what are your measurement and evaluation practices?
(22:34):
So what you can say is, we administer a pretest. You would ask five questions when the participant starts and then ask those same questions at the end of the program, and then that way you can measure the amount of growth and knowledge. So let's just say one of the questions are your program is to teach hard to place youth about non-traditional careers. So in the beginning, you can say, well, what type of careers are you able to explore? And they're like, well, a doctor, a nurse, or whatever. Those are traditional. Then they go through your program and they learn about green jobs, they learn about technology. Maybe they could do podcasting, or maybe they could do weatherization, things that they just didn't know about. So in the beginning, they list all of these traditional careers, and then in the end, now that they've been exposed to them, they're like, oh, I can work in the green industry.
(23:35):
I can work in the construction industry. I can work in podcasting as an engineer, whatever. So that shows their growth in knowledge. So pre post tests are really effective ways of demonstrating to a funder that you can measure growth in knowledge, measure growth in skill measure, growth in attitude. So in an ideal world, you should be able to see the growth in that knowledge or skill just based off of those five questions. But you can also say stuff like 90% of the participants indicated that they feel more confident in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So if you even have five participants, and of those five, eight of them said, blah, blah, blah, blah, that's 90% of your participants. So just being able to leverage the pre and post-test will be sufficient in answering that question. If you ever get to a place where you can afford an evaluator, that would be amazing.
(24:37):
But as funders, we know it's pretty expensive. What we want to know is how you will be able to measure. So look into pre and post tests. They're pretty easy to generate. But that should sufficiently answer the question. Thank you. And if you have a question, feel free to hit me up on any of my social medias. I'm on all of them. Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. You can email me at amber@amberwynn.net. I'm here for you. So now we're going to move on to my favorite part of the episode where I get to shine a light on the most amazing people on the planet, and that would be you. My nonprofit leaders in part two. We're continuing our conversation with members of Umpqua Bank. Umpqua Bank has been around since the early fifties, and now they are moving into Southern California deepening their reach into communities of color, which of course I'm super excited about.
(25:45):
And in this episode, they're going to help me do what I love to do best, and that's making sure that nonprofit leaders are taking care of themselves, right? It is one thing, and maybe y'all going to get some feathers in your wings to support your community, but I am here to support you. I don't believe that you need to sacrifice the stability of your home in order to support your community. So I'm bringing in resources to help you create generational wealth in your family. Umpqua Bank leaders are going to talk to you in this episode about how to position your family for generational wealth. If it's home ownership or the resources that they can help you just take your organization to the next level. Things like savings and CDs and whatever tools they have to help you build your home so that when it comes time for you to retire, you can So many nonprofits die at their organizations because they haven't created the infrastructure. We're not about that. We are going to help nonprofit leaders put things in place so that they can retire, so that they can have a legacy, so that they can have generational wealth. So those are the type of resources I'm going to be bringing to Shine on in the upcoming months. And this is a conversation we're going to continue with Umpqua Bank.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
A lot of nonprofits think they're conduit only. Conduit to the bank is CRA, right? So giving some context, which I know you brought up, and a lot of that is wrapped around that because that is a lot of the ways that banks do interact with nonprofits, but understanding CRA is key. So I'm going to just give a little groundwork about what the Community Reinvestment Act really does from a financial institution's perspective. So the CRA is a federal guideline that helps to manage banks and ensuring that we're lending equitably, equitably, wherever we have a footprint, wherever we have a presence, that we are not doing what Redlining was doing, which was pulling resources out of those redline communities, but not pumping any back, right? So what that looks like from a bank perspective is we have three things that we're tested on investment service and lending.
(28:14):
So for the investment test that looks like community development lending that we do, a lot of banks, a lot of times it's to those larger nonprofits, the habitats for humanity, the larger nonprofits where they can get a big bank for their buck where they're building, building housing with the low income housing tax credits, with new market tax credits. You're building community centers and things like that. And so that's the investment test that banks are focused on, and a lot of that is with nonprofit partners. Then there's the service test. So the service test is where are we volunteering our time, sitting on boards, providing our professional expertise to nonprofits? Those are a lot of things that we lean into. Akin to lawyers working pro bono. CRA requires bankers to work pro bono, if you will. Part of that is donating our time to our nonprofit partners and specific nonprofits Garner specific goals, but we sit on nonprofit billboards across the spectrum. Everyone has a different thing that tugs at their heart, but there are some things that have to be tied directly to financial inclusion in order for it to be CRA qualified.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Well, welcome back. You're on air with Amber Wynn. If you'd like to watch the full episode of my interview with these amazing ladies from Umpqua Bank, feel free to go check me out on my YouTube channel. You can hear the full conversation. I'm only sharing just little snippets during the episode, but we can dive deep and you can check that out on YouTube. And I think it ties into what we've been talking about today. When you know better, do better, when you know that there are resources out there that can help you solidify your home life, that can help you put things in place so that you can generate more wealth for your family and create generational wealth for generations behind you when you know better, do better. So I will be continuing to share these resources with you because we definitely want to strengthen our community, and because you guys are the backbone of our community, I need to make sure that you are taken care of.
(30:53):
That's my role, that's my job. I'm here for it, and I'm going to continue to provide you with those resources. So go check out the full episode, and as we wrap up, I know that you have a lot to do. There are so many priorities, and you may think changing the email. I don't have time for that. And what I want to implore is that you are competing against other nonprofits, and in order for you to get to that next level, you have got to look the part. So when you know better, do better, stop, do the work that it takes to correct whatever it is that's making you not look like a bonafide nonprofit so that you can then elevate your game. I've seen it time and time again with my clients. They do the work, but they don't know how to represent themselves in such a way that when a funder looks at their application, it is reflected.
(31:49):
A funder is not going to take the time to call you and ask you questions. A funder is going to look at what you present. So if someone has told you, someone credible that this is preventing you from taking it to the next level, I want you to stop. Do your research. Make sure that what they're saying is accurate and not just deploy for them to make more money. And then when you know better, do better. In the meantime, I know you do a lot. I want to thank you for all that you do in your community, and I want to encourage you to take care of yourself, like you take care of your community. If you've liked what you've heard, be sure to subscribe, like, and share with other people in your space. We'll see you next week fam.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe and leave a review on iTunes. Head over to www.amberwynn.net/podcast for the links and resources mentioned in today's podcast. See you next time.
