Episode 44: A Nontraditional Approach to Staffing - Project Based Hiring
Side step the heavy lifting that comes with traditional hiring. Learn how project-based hiring can help increase your capacity, achieve short term goals, and strengthen your organization without the financial burden associated with traditional hiring.
LINKS:
NONPROFIT SPOTLIGHT: American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
Podcast Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to On Air with Amber Wynn, where nonprofit leaders learned 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 (00:28):
Hey Fam! Welcome to On Air with Amber. It's your girl Amber Wynn Philanthrepreneur, and I am in the house. Today we are talking about a nontraditional approach to staffing your nonprofit. In this series, we're looking at just different ways of approaching building out your nonprofit, starting it, funding it, staffing it, all things nontraditional. Why? Because if you take the nontraditional approach, you may get caught up in what you think should be happening. My goal is to help build capacity. What does that mean? I wanna make life easier for you. As a nonprofit Founder and Leader, I wanna help you get to your goals quicker. You can spend so much time and energy just spinning out, trying to figure out what to do and how to do it. And a lot of times my nonprofit founders will be looking at other organizations and mind you, they're not even at the same stage.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
You may be in stage one or two in the organization that you're trying to emulate and model are in stage five and six. So you're gonna have some challenges there. We are going to talk over the next couple of weeks about nontraditional ways to approach your nonprofit; ways that's gonna get you to your goals quicker, right? Quicker and just different ways. People think you start a nonprofit, you get your 501(c)(3) and you get grants. That is not the roadmap to get to grants is gonna take you two to three years if you follow the traditional roadmap. Why? Because you're trying to figure it out and you're trying to do it the way that things have always been done. So today we're taking on a nontraditional approach to staffing your nonprofit organization. But first we're gonna pause for a quick video from our sponsor, and when we get back, we'll jump back in.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
This is you and this is your business. From invoicing your first client to your 10th client to your hundredth client. You'll need to get paid quickly. Pretty soon you'll be ready to hire some help and you'll need to pay them. As your business grows, Wave is there to grow with you.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Hey, so we're back. You're on air with Amber Wynn, Philanthrepreneur, and today we are episode two of our Nontraditional Approach To series, and we are talking about staffing. Staffing is really important because I'm just gonna keep it real. A lot of my nonprofits are solopreneurs. They will use language like we we we and there is no we, it's just me. They are doing it all. Now, they may have volunteers but the volunteers aren't consistent. It's usually their friends and family and at some point they get burnt out. So today we're gonna look at taking a nontraditional approach to staffing and it's gonna come in the shape of project based assignments. What I mean by that, what I try to encourage most of my nonprofits to do is to make a list of projects that will move the needle, that will get them to a place where something is happening.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Let me give you an example. You are a nonprofit founder and you need to recruit board members because the role of the board member is to fundraise. But because you're also delivering programs and out there networking, you don't have the time to recruit board members. What I would recommend is that you write down what that project would look like for an individual. So let's just say first thing that that person would do would be is to create job descriptions for the board member. What is the president expected to do? What is the secretary expected to do? Those things you can find on the internet, but you need to have them. The second thing they're gonna do is to help you create your board invitation. That's the packet that outlines everything that you expect them to do. You let them know about your mission and your programs.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
You let them know about your board dues, all of that. You can find a template of that on my website at www.amberwynn.net. It's called the Board Recruitment Toolkit. You make a list of everything that you want them to do. So you're gonna want them to do the research. What type of person would you want supporting your organization? Well, if you're in the arts, you're gonna want some people who are in the arts circle. You are gonna want an attorney, you're gonna want someone who's in entertainment, whatever. So that person can accomplish this project. It's a task based project. So I would recommend that you look into virtual assistance. Now that we've gone through the pandemic, we know that people can work efficiently, remotely. Why do you need to hire an administrative assistant that's gonna cost you 40, $50,000. You're gonna have them on payroll either part-time or full time if it's full time.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Now you've got benefits, right? So that's gonna tack on another 10, $15,000. When you can hire through an agency, a virtual assistant who can accomplish a certain number of tasks. Couple things gonna happen. Number one, you're gonna have budget savings because you don't hire this person and have them on your payroll where you have payroll taxes that are mandatory and then additional taxes. You are gonna pay the agency. So that person is just going to accomplish those tasks. Accomplishing those tasks is gonna move your organization forward. You're still out there running programs, you're still out there doing what you need to do, but these tasks that you have in your to-do list that you never get to are getting accomplished. So they can help you with researching, sending the letters, following up with your board. They can also do things like research and grants. You teach them what it is that you're looking for.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
That is time consuming. It takes between 10 to 20 hours to research effectively grants because you gotta open them up, read each line, cuz sometimes towards the end that's when you find out that you're not qualified. But you can allocate 10 hours a week for a person just to do research on grants. That's something that you don't have to do that you don't have the time to do. So what am I saying about this project-based staffing approach? Look at what you can write down in terms of projects and then you can then hire somebody to accomplish these projects. Things that you won't get to, things you don't wanna do. I mean let's just keep it real. Who wants to sit there and do data entry? It's important because you need to put into your systems; who donated, who needs a donor acknowledgement letter, who needs a follow up?
Speaker 2 (08:03):
All of those things are important, but your time should be spent somewhere else. But if you have 15 projects you can say, Okay, here are the top three I need done this month. Here are the next three I need done the following month. You get these tasks accomplished and you move the needle forward. So in a typical nonprofit, you're going to sit down and you're going to interview this person, you're gonna hire the person. Two months in, you find out that the person doesn't work. So then you've gotta send out another job description. You've gotta schedule the interviews. That's so much time wasted. If you work with a virtual assistant organization, I'm sorry, agency, if the virtual assistant doesn't work out, they just send you another one. You see how much time you you've saved. So I'm saying let's look at staffing in a nontraditional way.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Look at it as what can I do to efficiently move the needle quicker without investing so much of my time, so much of my revenue into one person. Create tasks, partner with the virtual assistant, get those tasks accomplished. And here's the thing, once you do identify those grants, hire a grant writer, get you some money in. And when you get to that point where you actually need an administrative assistant on site cuz they're gonna help you with the event. Here's the other thing, you can hire somebody to help you with the events. You don't need to have an assistant for that. You can hire somebody for that too. There are a gazillion websites out there where you can hire people just for the day or just for the week. Think about staffing as a way to accomplish your goals. Don't think about staffing, especially in the beginning as a way to build out your organization.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
You're not there yet. You need to get to the place where your organization is solid, but do it from a nontraditional approach. <affirmative>, that's what I want you to know. The other thing I want you to consider is what type of resources are out there. Now I am a for-profit, I support nonprofits, but I am a for-profit and what I've been doing, especially during the aftermath of the pandemic, is looking to see what type of resources is the government providing? The government wants us to get back on our feet. There is no sector more deserving than the nonprofit sector because we, you guys, provide direct services. There are tons of dollars out there in the American Recovery Act just for you. So I have an example, I had an organization who does trauma therapy and she's like, Yeah, I'm not really big on government funds. And I'm like, don't sleep on government funds.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
What she was able to realize because I sat through all of those webinars, it's all right. I do a lot of things for my nonprofits because you guys just don't have the time, is that there are programs out there here in Los Angeles, there's a program out there called Transitional Subsidized Employment, TSE. And it's where the county will pay for an employee to work with you for eight months and they will subsidize it. I'm saying. So what typically happens is especially during the pandemic, when a lot of people were laid off, they have the skills, they just can't find a job. So what the county is trying to do is to get people back to work. So they say to you, nonprofit, if you work with this person for four months, we will completely cover their salary. On the fourth month. If they work out and they qualify, you hire them.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Then for the next three months, we will subsidize $500 of their salary to continue to work with you. Look at that. If you do those projects, like we mentioned before, you get all of these projects completed in the three or four months that the government completely subsidizes them or if they happen to bring help, you bring in money, you can. You've already invested four months training them. Now you've already had the opportunity to get to know this person on somebody else's dime and you can say, Yes, I wanna hire this person. And for the next three months you can continue to subsidize. If you're not ready, they don't make you hire them. But think about it, you've had eight months to get these tasks accomplished on your government's dime. I'm just saying they get to build their resume, they get to be exposed to the nonprofit sector.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
You get those tasks completed, it is a win-win. This is a nontraditional way of staffing your organization. Not only is it nontraditional, but it's budget savings. You've just had the government pay for this person, these people, cuz sometimes you get up to three people to actually work for your organization. So take a look at your workforce investment board, see what type of programs are out there. They're called subsidy programs on the job training programs, return to work programs, displacement programs, American Recovery Act programs. As a nonprofit, you are a business and you qualify for these types of programs. So go check them out, find out how you can get staffing and don't try and get them for forever. Try and get them so that these tasks that you've identified so that you can get those tasks done to move your organization forward. If they get half of the tasks done that you weren't able to do, then that's moving your organization forward.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
So I know people wanna look at staffing as they're gonna be your forever people, but they can be your right now people just like in your relationships. This is my right now person versus my forever. Let your right now staff get you to the place of your forever people. I'm telling you, this stuff is so exciting. It's exciting for me because this is a way that you can save money in your budget. This is a way that you can help build out your organization. And let me tell you just one thing quickly about the subsidy. You get to interview the people. They don't just send you people, they send you people to interview. They screen them. If you say, I need someone who can do accounting because I need to do my nine 990s, and so I have to have all of the financials, I need my chart of account set up, I whatever you need, or I need someone who has experience with social media, they will send you, you three, four people. You interview them, you try them out. This is a win-win situation, people. So, today we're talking about a nontraditional approach to staffing. We're gonna break right now for a quick sponsor video. When we come back, we're going to Ask Amber.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
Do you have a tool that organizes your company's paperwork and takes care of all your record keeping? Does your current record keeping system send you 90 day alerts to remind you that your key documents are about to expire and need to be renewed? Can you find contracts and procurement opportunities in seconds from any of the 50 United States so you can grow your business?
Speaker 4 (15:39):
Is your business organized so that you can tell which key documents are needed to efficiently run the business? How about woman owned, small business or disadvantaged business enterprise certifications? You have a checklist of all the key documents you need to become certified. Does your current system allow you to conduct market research from multiple sources and provide you industry and market data in seconds? Well, Small BizPro does all of that and more. Small BizPro is the number one business management compliance, procurement assistance, and market research assistance tool on the market today. Download the App now and you will be amazed. It's like having three additional employees working for you, but you don't have to pay them. What are you waiting for?
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Welcome back. You're on air with Amber, and today we're talking about a nontraditional approach to staffing. This is the time of the episode where you get to ask me your pressing questions. As you can see before the commercial, I get excited about what I wanna share, but I want to be able to answer the questions that are burning inside of your mind. So this is Ask Amber. So go ahead, Ask Amber.
Speaker 5 (16:54):
Hi Amber. This is Sophina calling from Studio City. My question is about salaries, specifically, How do you determine the salary of the Executive Director when building out the budget for a new nonprofit? Is this something that I decide or the Board of Directors decides? Yeah, that's my question. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Hey Sophina, thank you for your question. It's a very good question. I'll approach it this way. If you have a seasoned board who knows what they're doing, then according to the IRS, they should be establishing your salary because the Board is responsible for hiring, supporting, and firing the Executive Director. So in that space, they are responsible for setting the salary. However, 90% of people who start their nonprofits, it's started by the Founder who then becomes the ExecutiveDdirector. And typically for the first two years, the Board is not very engaged. With that said, we know that you are putting together the infrastructure of your organization. So I'm gonna say this, you should set your salary in a way that it's in alignment with what the current market supports for an Executive Director. What do I mean by that? A salary in Los Angeles is going to be higher than a salary in Ohio or Idaho or Wisconsin.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
So check salaries.com or look on Indeed and look to see what the going salaries are for an Executive Director in your city and put it in right there. I just wanna point out though, the purpose of your salary is to allow you to run your nonprofit organization. So for those of you who think that you should be getting a $24,000 salary and you live in Los Angeles, no bueno, a Funder's gonna look at that and say, How can a person survive off of $24,000 in Los Angeles? You can't, and you shouldn't. Do not sacrifice your livelihood for your nonprofit. The way you wanna approach that is you wanna recruit seasoned board members who understand your role, your value, and they're gonna fundraise to cover your salary. So make sure that your salary is high enough to meet the cost of living in the city that you live in, and make sure that it circles around the market rate for other nonprofits in your area.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Sophina, thank you so much for your question. I appreciate it. And if any of you have your own burning questions, you can reach me on my social media. You can email me at amber@amberwynn.net. You can leave your question on Anchor like Sophina did, whatever it is. Reach out to me cuz I'm here to support you. I am your biggest cheerleader. All right, now it is my favorite time of the episode. It's when I get to put a spotlight on the hardest, most amazing working people in the industry. That would be you, my nonprofit founders, my executive directors. Today I am putting the spotlight on the American Civil Liberties Union. You guys know the ALCU. They've evolved over the years and now they are the nation's premier defender of the rights enshrined in the US Constitution with more than 1.7 million members, 500 staff attorneys, and thousands of volunteer attorneys and offices throughout the nation. The ACLU of today continues to fight government abuse and to vigorously defend individual freedoms. Let's take a look at the ACLU.
Speaker 6 (21:01):
What kind of America do we want to live in?
Speaker 7 (21:04):
It's not like that.
Speaker 6 (21:07):
My body. My body. We defend our rights at every turn. We fight back when lawmakers try to undermine the fundamental principles of our democracy. Soon we'll exercise one of our most powerful rights, the right to vote and elect our leaders up and down the ballot. We have a job to do, make a plan to vote, then talk to your friends and family and help them make a plan to vote. Together we can use our power and take back our democracy. We can't do this alone. It's going to take all of us to build a nation that truly values liberty and justice for all.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
I like that beat. Okay, so for more information on the ACLU, visit them at www.aclu.org. All right, now it is time for my Mindset Minute and in my Mindset Minute, I am going to talk to you about tradition. For the last couple of weeks, we've been talking about a nontraditional approach to … And today I want to just throw something out there. I really want you just to think about it and it's this. A tradition is a tradition until you do something different, right? If your family meets every 4th of July for a family reunion, that is a tradition and it's a tradition because you continue to do it. If you decide that you no longer wanna meet the 4th of July and you decide that you're gonna meet on Labor Day weekend, then that becomes the tradition. I'm asking nonprofit leaders to take a nontraditional approach to whatever we're gonna be talking about for the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
And that means if you've been doing something and that's your tradition, if it's not working, change it. Create a new tradition, do something different. The goal for you as a Founder and Executive Director should be to make your life easier. I know that sounds a little bit weird because you're coming from a place of service, but here's what I want you to think about. You are doing the work. You're gonna do the work. You're probably doing the work and not getting paid for it. So how do you create a space where you don't burn out, you do the things that you do, but make it easier for you to do them. Does that mean then that you're gonna follow this nontraditional approach that's gonna take you two years to get to what you wanna do because you think that's what you're supposed to be doing?
Speaker 2 (24:08):
You think that a nonprofit means you gotta get everything donated? You gotta get volunteers to do things because you think that a nonprofit is not supposed to make money? Well, we already know. Nonprofit does not mean no profit. You have to generate revenue in order to support your programs, to hire staff and to pay yourself. So a nontraditional approach to staffing, which is what we're talking about today, a nontraditional approach to starting and running your nonprofit, which is what we talked about last week. A nontraditional approach means doing something different. How does that happen? It happens by you doing research. I am on the internet every day. I am in a webinar. I am at a workshop. I am looking at different resources. I learn every day. Mostly it's because I wanna provide you guys with resources and let's just keep it real. I don't know everything.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
I know quite a bit, but every day there's something new out there that I'm learning. You've gotta do that. That's how you grow. That's how you learn about new and exciting things. I just happened to be on a webinar for minority businesses, women own businesses, where the government was saying, This is how we can support you. I'm a solopreneur, and so if I can find ways to get resources, I need a video editor. I need a copywriter. And so I'm trying to stay lean. And if the government's saying, Well, as long as you're a minority owned business, which I am, or a woman owned business, which I am, we're gonna help you with your recovery. So I'm sitting on this webinar and they're talking about how you can have these people and the government will pay. And I put in the chat, Does this apply for nonprofits?
Speaker 2 (26:10):
And they're like, Yeah, actually it does. So what I'm saying to you is you can continue to try and push the boulder up the mountain and do it the traditional way, or you can push the boulder around the base and just not have the same push. It comes from you carving out time of your week to look at new things, new things, new ideas so that you can approach things in a nontraditional way. That's the only reason why I say what I say and do what I do. I'm constantly looking for new ways, easier ways, faster ways to get you to your end goal. And I can do a little bit, but you've gotta do some heavy lifting as well, right? You've gotta start sitting on webinars and looking for ways to do things better and do things more efficiently. So that's it from my Mindset Minute.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
I want you to think about that. Tradition is tradition until you do something different, do something different. People. You got this, I got you. This is your girl. You're On Air with Amber Wynn. And if you enjoyed anything that you heard today, if you think that anything I said would be beneficial to a friend, a family, a colleague, please, please share the link. Be sure to subscribe. Check me out on any of my social media handles. Reach out to me. You know, I love my community. You guys are amazing. So next week we're gonna continue with our series on a Nontraditional Approach To …, and I'll see you then. But until then, make sure you take care of yourself, like you take care of your community. Bye y'all.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe at 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.
