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Accidental to Intentional Nonprofit Tech Leader with Gozi Egbuonu and Hugo Castro pt 1

• Community IT Innovators • Season 7 • Episode 24

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Hugo Castro, author of the Accidental Techie newsletter on Linkedin, and Gozi Egbuonu, accidental and now intentional tech leader, lead you through a discussion on the transformation from firefighter to strategic advisor.

In pt 1 they discuss the role of the "accidental techie" in nonprofit organizations and explore three bridges to transform your career: Skills, Relationships, and Projects. In pt 2 they finish up the fourth bridge: Communications, and take questions from the webinar audience.

If you never applied to a tech job, but somehow you are the person everyone turns to for tech help and assistance at your nonprofit, you may be the accidental techie of your office. Learn how to transform your valuable experience as a problem-solver into a professional career as a nonprofit tech leader from two people who have lived it.

Hugo and Gozi share what separates reactive problem-solvers from strategic technology leaders, and give you practical frameworks for repositioning yourself professionally. You’ll discover how to communicate your value differently, build the right relationships, and choose projects that showcase your strategic thinking. 

Learning outcomes

  • Build a transformation roadmap using four pillars: skills, relationships, projects, communication
  • Identify your position on the accidental-to-intentional spectrum and key mindset shifts needed
  • Reframe how you communicate your work to position yourselves as strategic advisors, not tech fixers-for-free.

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Community IT Intro

Thank you for joining Community IT for this podcast, part one. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and leave us a rating to help others find this leadership resource for nonprofits. Listen for part two in your podcast feed.

Carolyn Woodard

Welcome everyone to the Community IT Innovators webinar on the accidental to intentional nonprofit tech leader. If you've ever never applied for a tech job, but somehow you became the person that everyone turns to for tech help and assistance at your nonprofit, then this is the right webinar for you. And we're so glad you're here today. So today we're going to learn how to transform your experience as a problem solver into a professional career as a nonprofit tech leader from two people who have lived that journey.

Carolyn Woodard

My name is Carolyn Woodard. I'm the outreach director for community IT. I'll be the moderator today. I'm very, very happy and excited to hear from our experts, but first I want to go over our learning objectives. So we're going to talk today about how you go from being fixing things to being asked for strategic advice. We're going to learn the four bridges for transformation from accidental to tech intentional techie. I'm really excited to hear more about that. We're going to talk about how do you translate your work into mission impact. So this is a perennial problem, and so exciting to get some insights into how you can make that case that technology is important for your mission. And then we're going to leave with what you are going to learn and talk about one action that you will take this week to start building the bridge that speaks to you of the four bridges that we're going to learn about.

Carolyn Woodard

So with that, I'm going to turn it over to our speakers. Hugo, would you like to introduce yourself?

Hugo Castro

So welcome. I'm Hugo Castro. I spent the past 15 years becoming really, really good at a job that I never applied for. My first big project when I started working at Democracy Fund, a private foundation as an operations manager, was bringing in a managed service provider to transition all of our tech infrastructure from a family office to the foundation. That's how I came to know Community IT. Community IT became our MSP, and I managed the MSP while I was at Democracy Fund, which, you know, sounds pretty straightforward until you're the person coordinating network installations, A B systems, LMO migration. So thankfully, you know, like through an MSP, we're able to do that.

Hugo Castro

But I also was on -boarding five to 10 people every couple of months. We were growing a growing foundation, revamping our contracting process, and moving our approval processes from email to like an actual system. So there was a lot of different things going on. Then came an office move, implementing PGP encryption. I became the admin for Okta, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Meraki, CrowdStrike, and just about 15 other systems. And then eventually we hired our first in-person IT staff to really help get all this stuff in place.

Hugo Castro

My next role was at a fiscally sponsored growing organization with about 14 people, where I did another office move and I leaned to what I what it's like to be in the IT person on top of everything else that you're supposed to do as a director of operations. This was also around early 2020, which seems like 100 years ago. So we did an office move, and literally two weeks later, we had to go fully remote because of the pandemic. So we have to quickly pivot and figure out how do we do that work. So Zoom meetings, webinars, all that kind of stuff.

Hugo Castro

And then most recently, I worked as a director of operations at TAG, the Technology Association of Grantmakers, where I did a complete digital transformation, moving our association management system from a legacy platform platform to Salesforce and a WordPress deployment. And that's where I met Gozi. So after 15 years of this, I realized two things. One, this journey from accidental to intentional is something that almost everyone in the nonprofit tech and operation goes through. And two, nobody should have had to figure it out by yourself. So now I also run Flourish Collective, working with nonprofits to exactly uh enact these kind of technology transformations. And I also write the accidental tech in newsletter, which is basically me documenting everything that I wish somebody would have told me when I studied on this journey 15 years ago. All right. Go zi, would you want to introduce yourself?

Gozi Egbuonu

Thank you for that. Um and I'm really excited to be joining you. I'm Gozi Egbuonu, I am the director of programs at the Technology Association of Grantmakers, otherwise known as TAG. And uh as H shared, that's where we met.

Gozi Egbuonu

But my career in uh accidental techie actually began um not in the philanthropic sector, but actually in the fashion, um in the copy and copywriting world in terms of e-commerce. And so in those early days of e-commerce and uh moving to getting all of your things shipped to you as opposed to going into the brick and mortars, um was my opportunity to really see what it was like working in this fast-paced startup world. And of course, we were just kind of learning as we were going. And um,

Gozi Egbuonu

As my career continued to grow, I started to really understand that there is this technical component that you need to have. And I never was, you know, trained in SEO, but I had to learn it in order to support a lot of the copywriting expectations. And so that was kind of my foray into um technology and then ultimately continue to do that um in fashion, but on the promotion side. So I had to handle the promotions for global um events that we would do and had to be really, really good at checking my emails to make sure I didn't set anything on sale that shouldn't have been on sale. Um, but also realizing the um the technical components that go into when something bad does happen on a website, when you have to refresh it. Um

Gozi Egbuonu

So from that on, um, you know, definitely continued in that kind of role of trying to learn these technologies and then ultimately went into working for a SaaS company now known as Bonterra. And that's actually how I got introduced to TAG, working um at this space where we were really trying to encourage growing the technology infrastructure for nonprofits through investments in their technology infrastructure was how I got to learn um a lot about tag and there was a similarity there. Um and so

Gozi Egbuonu

Taking all of these really um important things about technology and technology infrastructure, being able to talk about it fluently has been really beneficial to my work, but ultimately I needed to go deeper. And so hopefully I'll be sharing a little bit more about how I started to do that process. Um and it, you know, it takes time. Sometimes it doesn't all come clearly to you at the beginning, but by the end, you you, you know, you've you start to see some ways to um, you know, help yourself and ultimately grow your career. So I'm excited to talk to you all today.

Carolyn Woodard

Thank you so much, Gozi and H, for being here. Really excited to hear about your journeys and get um people in the audience as well to start sharing. Uh,

Carolyn Woodard

But before we begin, if you're not familiar with community IT, I have to tell you a little bit about us. So we're a 100% employee-owned managed services provider. We provide outsourced IT support. Uh, we work exclusively with nonprofit organizations, and our mission is to help nonprofits accomplish their missions through the effective use of technology. We are big fans of what well-managed IT can do for your nonprofit. We serve nonprofits across the United States. We've been doing this for 25 years. It's our 25th year anniversary year. We are technology experts. We are consistently given the MSP 501 recognition for being a top MSP, which is an honor we received again in 2025 for the eighth year in a row. And we believe that we're the only MSP on that list uh serving nonprofits exclusively. So

Carolyn Woodard

I want to remind everyone that for these presentations, community IT is vendor agnostic. So we only make recommendations to our clients only based on their specific business needs. We never try to get a client into a product because we get any kind of benefit or incentive from that. But we do consider ourselves a best of breed IT provider. So it's our job to know the landscape, what tools are available, reputable, widely used, and we make recommendations on that basis for our clients based on their business needs, priorities, and budget.

Carolyn Woodard

We're gonna leave as much time as we can for QA with our experts at the end. Please submit your questions through the chat feature anytime today. We got a lot of good questions at registration. So we're gonna try and answer as many of those as we can. Anything we can't get to, please join us and our experts today on our in our community on Reddit at r slash nonprofit IT management. We're gonna continue to answer some questions over there about 30 minutes after the webinar. So until about 4:30 Eastern.

Carolyn Woodard

You can find all of the videos, podcasts, transcripts, articles on our website. We don't have a paywall. It's all freely shared information. So we hope some of those past webinars also will be useful to you.

Carolyn Woodard

A little bit more about us. It's as I said, our mission is to create value for the nonprofit sector through well-managed IT. We also identify four key values as an employee as employee owners that define our company trust, knowledge, service, and balance. So we seek to always treat people with respect and fairness, to empower our staff, clients, and sector to understand and use technology effectively, to be helpful with our talents, and we recognize that the health of our communities is vital to our well-being and that work is only part of our lives.

Carolyn Woodard

So, with that said, I want to hand it over to you, H, to share your presentation with us and let you and Gozi take it away.

Hugo Castro

Thank you so much, Carolyn. And I just want to, you know, thank you and Community IT for the invitation for Gozi and I to come and share this framework. Uh,

Hugo Castro

So that's what we're here to talk about today. So, how do you go from being the person who accidentally became the tech person to being intentional about where your career goes? Because I did this the hard way. I learned by trial and error across different organizations.

Hugo Castro

And what Gozi and I realized is that there's actually a framework to this transformation. You don't have to just stumble your way through it like I did, and that's what we're going to be doing today.

Hugo Castro

So before we go any further, further, I want to hear from you in the chat. Tell me, where are you joining? Well, you already joined us from, but how do you end up in your tech role in three words or less? It can be my boss, or you can be whatever. Yeah, no one else will do the job.

Hugo Castro

Hopefully, you're seeing a pattern here for you all, right? Like this, you're not alone on this. Uh yeah,

Hugo Castro

IT Director retire 100%. I usually that happens. Yeah. Perfect, folks.

Hugo Castro

Let me ask you a few more questions really quick to see if you're truly an accidental techie. So,

Hugo Castro

Question number one Do you ever apply for a job with the words technology, IT, or systems in the title? If you say no or you're thinking no, you might be an accidental techie.

Hugo Castro

Question number two has anyone ever said to you, this should be pretty simple, right? And then they proceed to describe something that was absolutely not simple. If you're cringing right now, you're definitely an accidental techie, right? Uh Salesforce implementation or doing this quick like website update, right? Um, and

Hugo Castro

Question number three have you ever trained someone on a system application that you learned about 40 48 hours earlier and you hope they wouldn't ask a question you couldn't answer. Yes, 100%, right?

Hugo Castro

So welcome to the club, folks. Here's what makes you an ascendal techie. You found yourself in this role by chance, not by choice. You became the tech person because you figured out something out that one time, or because someone quit, or because you were the only one that could make the database work. And now you spend most of your time reacting to immediate needs. Password resets, system crashes, quick questions that turn into three-hour troubleshooting sessions.

Hugo Castro

But here's what I learned uh after 15 years and hundreds of conversations with people just like you, this doesn't have to be your story forever. The shift from reactive to intentional isn't just about your personal growth. So that is important. It is about organizational impact.

Hugo Castro

When you move from being the person who fixes things to being the person who shapes technology strategically, your whole organization benefits. Better decisions get made, resources get used more effectively. Technology actually starts supporting your mission instead of getting it in the way.

Hugo Castro

That transformation is what we're here to talk about going from accidental to an intentional leader, from reactive to a strategic. And it's absolutely possible.

Hugo Castro

So here's the question that drives everything that we're going to be talking about today. How can someone transition from being a fixer to a strategic advisor for leadership? This session is going to focus on that journey, emphasizing that it requires a genuine shift on self-positioning, relationship building, project selection, and communication.

Hugo Castro

This approach we term it the four-bridge framework. And I want to be honest with you, this is not a quick fits, right? It's not by the end of the week, you're going to be like a strategic leader. It's not a rebranding exercise. It's not just speak more in meetings.

Hugo Castro

It's a genuine shift in how you position yourself, how you build relationships, and what you choose to work on, and how you talk about what you do. And we call it the four-bridge framework.

Hugo Castro

So let me introduce that uh to you really quick. The way we're gonna be doing this transformation is I'll talk about the each of the bridges, and then Gozi is gonna explain uh from her experience how she was able to see that on her own, right?

Hugo Castro

So here's how I think about this transformation. There are four bridges you need to be able to get from the accidental shore to the intentional shore.

Hugo Castro

Skills, relationships, projects, and communication.

Hugo Castro

You don't have to build all four at once. That's probably a recipe for doing nothing. You pick the one that fits where you are right now and you start there. Like I said, Gozi and I are going to talk through you each one, and I'll set out the shift, what you need to shift, and she's gonna share what it looked like in her work at TAG and before then. We'll give you concrete actions that you can take this week, not someday, but this week. Gozi.

Gozi Egbuonu

What I love about this framework is that it respects that we all come in at different places. I came to TAG with a background in community organizing and program development and a deep interest in ethical technology. My my path through these bridges looks completely different from someone who came up through IT operations. You get it. And that's the point.

Gozi Egbuonu

This is about where you're going, not where you started.

Hugo Castro

Yeah. So let's talk about the first bridge, the skills bridge.

Hugo Castro

This is your ticket from fixing chaos to crafting mastery, right? In accidental ticket mode, usually uh you're being the firefighter for tech disaster, something goes wrong, you learn just enough to patch it up, and then it's off to the next crisis. So you move from crisis to crisis.

Hugo Castro

In intentional mode, you become, I guess, the maestro of your own career. Uh, you choose the skills you want to be famous for and you hold them with purpose. For me, when I was at Democracy Fund, that was systems thinking and change management. Right. I pursue a human-centered design certification because I kept seeing technology implementations kind of stole a little bit because you know we we just were doing a lot of different things at once, and we needed more change management to help people really take on the new technologies that we're using.

Hugo Castro

So it wasn't that we were bad at technology, we just needed better change management. Uh, I also attended NTENS conference, uh, NTC every year. I joined a group of tech decision makers in DC, and that was really helpful for me as well. Um, so ,

Hugo Castro

How do you get your strategic skill development?

Gozi Egbuonu

Well, uh, my skill bridge for strategic skill development um was pursuing my doctorate in behavioral health while I was working at TAG. Um, and more recently completing a program in AI and healthcare through Johns Hopkins. So

Gozi Egbuonu

These weren't required for my role. I pursued them because I believe the future of philanthropy and technology is inseparable for our understanding of human behavior and ethics. At TAG, that meant I could lead conversations about tech adoption from a people's -first lens, not just a systems lens. And

Gozi Egbuonu

I became the person on the executive team who could bridge those worlds more comfortably. The skill I chose wasn't a technical certification, it was depth, the kind of thinking that lets you see technology decisions in their full human context. That choice shaped, that choice shaped every single program helped and will continue also to influence how we look at our publications and reports moving forward.

Hugo Castro

Yeah. Let me uh before we talk about which skill to develop, I want to share a framework that I came across uh from this guy, uh Gay Hendricks, in a book called The Big Leap. Uh, in this book, he identifies four zones where we operate. Three of them keep us stuck, and one kind of unlocks everything, right?

Hugo Castro

So when he talks about in the book, the zone of incompetence is things that you don't enjoy and aren't good at. You know, the feeling you're frustrated, you wish somebody else was doing this, somebody else absolutely should be doing that, right?

Hugo Castro

Then we comes the zone of competence. These are things that you can do just fine. Uh, here's the thing like others can do them just as well, usually faster and better. This is maintenance work, it's fine, but it's not strategic. Right.

Hugo Castro

Then it comes the zone of excellence, right? This is where most accidental techies, most of us get stuck. You're good at this work, maybe better than most people. It's comfortable, you know how to do it, but it drains you. Right. It just, you just at the end of it, you just feel tired. All right. Your passion dies the longer you stay here. And that's a warning sign for you.

Hugo Castro

I want to talk about the zone of genius. This is where kind of uh if you've ever been, kind of the time disappears. You're doing what you're neatly gifted to do. It feels effortless to do it. It kind of looks like magic to everyone else. This is your zone.

Hugo Castro

So here's what happens when you are building your skill bridge. You start developing skills and your zone, uh, you stop developing skills on your zone of incompetence, uh, incompetence and excellence. You start asking what skill will move me into my zone of genius. That's the strategic skill gap within define not what I need to learn to fit the next problem, but what would I need to be excellent at what to do in the work that I'm doing.

Hugo Castro

Obviously, right nowadays, if you're in tech, everything is about AI. I highly suggest folks to maybe learn more into it, but use your genius, right? You don't have to be vibe coding everything. You can actually learn in in lean to your zone of genius on how your organization can implement in artificial intelligence or not at your organization.

Hugo Castro

And there's a ton of different skills that you can think of, right? These are the action steps that we're sharing with you. So this week, you pick one strategic skill skill, not a fit skill, a skill that moves you from towards where you want to be in your career.

Hugo Castro

Ask yourself if I could be known as the expert in one thing in my organization, what would create the most value? And start there.

Hugo Castro

In the next 30 days, take one course, join a community of practice, NTEN, TAG, there's plenty out there, and document what you learn, not for yourself, but do it in teaching language. Write a Slack post, run a lunch and learn, share it with your manager or ED. Uh,

Hugo Castro

Teaching cements expertise and builds visibility at the same time. Right. So take a course not for the sake of uh taking it, but use it to teach others how to do what you learn. Anything you want to reinforce on this, Gozi?

Gozi Egbuonu

Thank you. Yes, um, I, you know, as you were talking, I was just thinking about um the, you know, I'd I I I just really wanted to add that you I don't want you to assume that your employer will fund a lot of this work. Um, it's one of these things where, you know, even at TAG, I've seen members invest in their team's professional development and the return is real and it's it's very impactful.

Gozi Egbuonu

But if the budget isn't there, there are free resources. So, you know, think of NTEN, TechSoup, community forums. They're all legitimate starting points. I used a lot of Google and Coursera. I highly recommend folks, you know, leaning into those um resources as well. Do not get stifled from the fact that maybe it isn't being invested in at your organization in some formal way.

Hugo Castro

Yeah. Thank you, Gozi. Uh,

Hugo Castro

Let's talk about the relationships bridge. So, this is about moving from being the go-to fixer to becoming the trusted advisor. So,

Hugo Castro

Usually in accidental mode, people call you when things break. You're helpful, but you're invisible in strategic conversations.

Hugo Castro

In intentional mode, you're in the room before decisions are made. So before that CRM gets chosen, you're in the room before you have to figure out how to implement that CRM that somebody decides to buy at your organization.

Hugo Castro

For me, uh, the different organizations that I worked at, it looked like setting up meetings across all departments to talk about how we were serving them. At Democracy Fund, we became a mission-driven operations team. That means that we were serving leaders. We were asking how we might be able to be in service of the mission of the organization. Uh, you know,

Hugo Castro

One of the things that I did as well there is that I implemented a program where once a month staff will get paired randomly with someone from another team to have coffee chats. That broke down silos, we're able to kind of bring out any issues before they became like big issues because people were meeting from different departments that usually wouldn't often meet.

Hugo Castro

Gozi. How do you become a trusted advisor?

Gozi Egbuonu

That's a great question. Well, at TAG, my role is really built around relationships with members, with sector thought leaders, with practitioners who are all doing incredible work in Philanthropy tech.

Gozi Egbuonu

But the bridge I had to build wasn't just external, it was internal. When I joined TAG, I had to earn my seat as the strategic thought partner, as a strategic thought partner at our on our team. And that didn't happen because of my title. It happened because I was consistently showing up curious, not just as a program implementer. I asked questions about the why behind technology decisions, not just the what. I facilitated conversations between members and subject matter experts and created space for people to think out loud.

Gozi Egbuonu

Over time, that made me someone people wanted in the room, not just someone who could deliver a great event. And so that coffee chat principle translates everywhere. I've helped build partnerships that, you know, brought in at least 100K in investment by first understanding what a funder cared about, not by pitching.

Gozi Egbuonu

You know, relationships built on listening compound over time. And I really think it's one of the critical skills people really should really invest in active listening, deep listening.

Hugo Castro

100%. I think listening is key, especially as accidental techs, we like to explain a lot of things. And at one time, we have to probably just, you know, like for a lack of a better word, just shut up for a second and listen to what the needs of the other person or programs are.

Hugo Castro

These are the action steps for you this week. So schedule one conversation that has nothing to do with fixing something. Uh, it's a 20-minute listen as a program director. Uh, I saw somebody from Florida. Uh, so maybe it is for you. Uh, you take them out for a Cuban sandwich for a cubano. Uh, that's perfect cubano and coffees. Um, and ask them what's one technology challenge that's slowing down your team. Don't go in with solutions, going with questions. Um,

Hugo Castro

In your next meeting, maybe offer a perspective instead of waiting to be asked. Uh, and start building your peer network, right? This is a pattern that I'm is across all the four skills. Uh talk to your peers, like this webinar right now, right? There's uh, you know, other 30, 40 other people that are accidental tech is just like you, right? Uh you can join the accidental tech newsletter community as well, right? People doing your job at other organizations are an invaluable resource for you. That's super, super, super important, right? Um,

Hugo Castro

Anything you want to reinforce here, Gozi?

Gozi Egbuonu

Yeah, I mean, I would push on the peer network piece. I mean, look at us. We were working remotely, um, although we were in the same state at one point, but that peer network um was really critical. And I really learned how to navigate that through my, you know, working closely with Hugo at, you know, at our organization. Um, but

Gozi Egbuonu

I also got to co-host a podcast that um it's in hiatus now, but we called it the Questioning Everything podcast. And partly because it forces me to stay in conversation with people outside my immediate world. Um, and so,

Gozi Egbuonu

Of course, you don't need a podcast, but please, you know, I recommend finding your version of that. Uh, the sector is small. The relationships you build now will follow you. And it is really critical to understand how to really nurture those relationships from authentic places and ultimately in ways that enrich you, but also enrich the sector and the work that you're doing.

Hugo Castro

Yeah, 100%. Um,

Hugo Castro

When we talk about the third bridge, uh, this is the project bridge. Uh, we want to focus on transforming chaos into strategic achievements.

Hugo Castro

So when you are in the operating the accidental techie mode, your project list usually resembles a collection of unresolved issues, persistent complaints, and better reminders, right? The latest update, uh somebody's laptop broke, uh, we need to push this update to a bunch of different people. Or oops, we found out that there was a leak on this uh application that we use. So now we need to like check a bunch of different stuff, right? Uh

Hugo Castro

In intentional mode, you become the missionary conductor. You know, you're you're proposing projects not only captivate but also propel your organization forward. You're not waiting for challenges to arise. You are identifying unique opportunities before anyone else notices, right?

Hugo Castro

Honestly, I mean this bridge represents a monumental transformation, particularly when your schedule is already packed to capacity. So this is where you create when uh what I call win-for-all solutions. A win for you, a win for the other person, a win for their organization, and a win for the for the whole. Uh,

Hugo Castro

Here you need to be documenting everything so you can teach and you pass it on, right? I think that's one of the things with accidental tech is is that we are moving from firefighting to firefighting that we forget to document. So, one way is you almost kind of work yourself out of the job, right? So you can focus on the strategic stuff, right? By documenting things, eventually somebody else can take over some of the the different fires that you're putting your uh you're putting out. Uh so you need to focus on intentional and strategic projects. Um, and um

Hugo Castro

We want to be intentional, not arrogant, right? It's uh you're not choosing projects that that only fit you, but like I mentioned before, it's a win-for-all kind of solutions.

Hugo Castro

One book that I highly recommend here is a book that maybe came out a few years ago. It's called Indistractable, How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. This book has really, really good um, you know, down-to-earth and and frameworks on how you can better use your time in a way that it just frees you up to do more, really. And

Hugo Castro

It's about saying no to a lot of different things. Uh, it's your phone, right? Like the distraction, uh, Slack notifications, right? Uh, you know, or team notifications. Uh, those are, you know, drives all of us crazy. But distractors for doing actual meaningful work. For me, it looked like working on projects that save organizational time so we can focus on uh mission development, fund development, and doing more of the things that we wanted to do to achieve our mission. Right.

Hugo Castro

So, for example, when I mentioned earlier, I moved our contracting system from an approval email to an MVP, to a most viable minimum product, which was kind of like a Trello board that we were able to do that in, right? That saved us about like 10 hours a week. Then after that, it was more formalized. And we were able to kind of like give people more insight into stages of the different contracting process, payments, and so on. And then

Hugo Castro

Eventually became like a dashboard, right? So that not only saved people time, but whenever somebody needed an answer to a question, they didn't have to come to me or somebody on operations, somebody on finance to find the information. There was a place they were able to do it and find the information themselves.

Hugo Castro

So think about these kind of different projects and how you can lead strategic initiatives, right? It's gonna look for you, it's gonna be different. So I'm not gonna tell you what project you need to work on or what project is gonna unlock everything, but you have to do this work uh yourself.

Hugo Castro

Gozi, how do you lead strategic initiatives?

Gozi Egbuonu

Um you know, for me at this one, it's it's a lot of listening, like I've shared before. Um, but at TAG, you know, for me, this project's bridge as far as strategic initiatives, it was, you know, co-developing our publications and content that showcased member innovation and philanthropy tech.

Gozi Egbuonu

Gozi Egbuonu

Gozi Egbuonu

That's not just content creation. It's strategic project, it's a strategic project that builds tag's reputation, deepens member relationships, and positions us as a thought leader in the sector. But the project I'm most proud of is how we've been responsive in our development in our different programs in general.

Gozi Egbuonu

For instance, when we first learned of the attacks on nonprofits and DEI work, our first thought wasn't to stop doing the work, but reimagine what that looks like under these circumstances and with the rapid expansion of AI in our everyday lives. So we reviewed our resources and curriculum and identified ways to close certain gap knowledge gaps that we know leaders will need to be equitable practitioners of philanthropy tech work.

Gozi Egbuonu

That required an ability to understand the conditions and forces that could negatively impact our objectives for the program and developing the systems and capacity to deliver on the desired outcomes of the programs.

Gozi Egbuonu

You know, Hugo's point about documentation is especially critical. I contribute grant writing for TAG and securing funding requires translating program impact into language that funders obviously care about. That's the same skill that applies internally. And, you know,

Gozi Egbuonu

If you can articulate what your project uh accomplishes in terms of leadership, in terms that the leader actually cares about, you won't get to do it the next time. So it's really critical for you to make sure that you're understanding what the business needs are of the different folks on your team who are helping to make decisions about your work and you're speaking their language.

Gozi Egbuonu

It's not as easy as it looks, but you know, as as Hugo said, those coffee chats and those opportunities to have more casual, you know, connections and building relationships with people in your organization can help you get closer to understanding exactly how should you best approach these initiatives to ensure that you have champions and people that support the work.

Hugo Castro

So yeah, 100% Gozi. Uh

Hugo Castro

These are the action steps that you can take this week and the next, you know, kind of a few weeks for leading projects, which by the way, I do have a kind of 30, 60, 90 day plan that you can follow. Uh I'll make sure I'll send a link to Carolyn so that way when she sends all the resources, you have that there as well. So you can start working on something, right? Um,

Hugo Castro

So let's dive into some action steps for choosing leading successful projects. So one thing that you can do this week is out at your time. Spend 20 minutes writing down everything you did last week, then label each time as was this a reactive or a strategic use of my time? Does it drain or add energy to you? Most people, when they do this exercise, they're shocked how little time they spend on anything they actually initiated. It's usually initiated by others. So that is your is your starting point because from then you can figure out how you can do time blocks in your calendar to help you work on those strategic projects.

Hugo Castro

Think about first about improving processes, right? So like don't necessarily think about right now overhauling the entire tech stack of your organization, right? Identify maybe one key area where you can enhance efficiency. So this is about making things work smarter, not harder, right? Think about what a small change could make a big difference in your workflow.

Hugo Castro

Next, document the impact is crucial, right? So communicate your results clearly to stakeholders. Uh, remember this is not just about the numbers, it's about telling the story of your project success. Okay.

Hugo Castro

And when it comes to a pilot project, propose a small initiative for testing. This is your chance to experiment and learn and keep it manageable but valuable, right? Uh

Hugo Castro

Finally, like I mentioned before, sharing the knowledge is essential. Educate your peers about your outcomes of your project. This not only helps them, but also positions you as a resource and a collaborative leader. This is super important.

Hugo Castro

So I think by taking these steps, you're not only going to lead projects more effectively, but also contribute to a better culture of continuous improvement and shared success in your organization. Uh any reinforcements here, Gozi.

Gozi Egbuonu

Um, you know, I was just kind of echoing this in the chat. Um, these are such great steps to really get you on that path to like dissecting the way that you work so that you can start to make those improvements. Um, you know, I think this is such a great metaphor for like how we should be looking at all of our processes from grant making to how we are looking at our professional development. You know, is is the way that we're approaching this work effective and you know, really thinking through it step by step. So great, great, great, great um uh process and activities. I'm excited to do my own. So thanks, Hugo.

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