Six Qualities That Keep Nonprofits Strong In Turbulent Times: Meet Dr. Brandi Rae Hicks

Funding is moving, deadlines are looming, and your team is stretched. In this episode, Dr. Brandi Rae Hicks, a grant strategist, educator, and builder of billion-dollar portfolios, shares a clear resilience framework that any nonprofit can use to stay steady amid disruption and grow stronger on the other side. Her Six-step framework includes: mission clarity, collaboration, community trust, servant leadership, transparent finances, and practiced optimism. Get your notepad ready. This episode offers practical advice you can use now.

Dr. Hicks also shares accessible pathways to upskill through Serve University’s training, capacity-building, and grant services. If you’re ready to replace anxiety with a roadmap this conversation gives you tools you can use this week. Subscribe, share with a colleague who needs it, and tell us which pillar you’ll strengthen first.

Guest Bio

Dr. Brandi Rae Hicks is a grant-writing and fundraising diversification expert dedicated to helping nonprofits and small businesses secure sustainable funding and grow financially. With over 20 years of experience, she has helped organizations secure over $1 billion in grants and major gifts, guiding them through prospect research, proposal development, multi-year funding strategies, and donor stewardship. As Senior Grant Writer and Managing Director at SERVE University, she specializes in building high-impact grant portfolios and creating diversified fundraising models, including FranklinCovey, Morehouse College, Center for Civil and Human Rights, National Black MBA Association, and CARE USA. Dr. Hicks develops grant writing training programs, toolkits, and workshops to strengthen organizations' fundraising capacity. She created grant writing certification programs at SERVE University and designed the Organizational Resilience Qualities Assessment Tool©, widely used by nonprofits and small businesses to evaluate financial sustainability.

 A Cleveland Foundation Fellow, Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Alumna, JumpStart Cohort Member, and 2025 Honoree of the Who’s Who in Black Cleveland, Dr. Hicks has led national grant training initiatives with organizations like the Georgia Center for Nonprofits, Grant Professionals Association, and Candid. She is a member of the Grant Professionals Association and the Association of Fundraising Professionals. Dr. Hicks holds a Doctorate in Organizational Leadership, an MBA in Marketing, and an MPA in Nonprofit Management. Dr. Hicks remains committed to advancing philanthropy through strategic funding and capacity-building.

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Ann Price 0:44

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to Community Possibilities. Today's guest is Dr. Brandi Ray Hicks, a powerhouse in grant writing and fundraising for nonprofits and small businesses. With over 20 years in the game, Dr. Hicks has helped organizations land more than $1 billion in grants and major gifts. She's the senior grant writer and managing director at SURV University, where she builds high-impact grant portfolios and teaches others how to diversify their fundraising. She's also the creator of the Organizational Resilience Quality Assessment Tool. And she's led national training initiatives with groups like the Georgia Center for Nonprofits and Grant Professionals Association. She is all about helping organizations grow and thrive through smart fundraising strategies. Get your pen and paper ready. Dr. Hicks is going to share six qualities of nonprofit resilience you need at this moment. Hi, everybody. Welcome back to Community Possibilities. Your favorite Grant Pro is joining me on our grant series today. Hi, Dr. Brandi Ray Hicks. How are you?

Dr. Hicks 1:55

Hi, Ann. It is a pleasure to be here today. How's it going on your nonprofit in?

Career Roots In Philanthropy

Ann Price 2:02

It's a challenge. Gotta be honest. It is it is a challenge. Some days are great, some days are uh some days are not so great. So, you know, we're just gonna keep on keeping on because there's a lot of work to do out there in our community. Absolutely.

Dr. Hicks 2:17

Absolutely.

Ann Price 2:18

So yeah, and it's kind of a dreary day. We're getting ready for the uh the the ice magedon or snow magdon. We shall we shall see here in Atlanta. You never know what we're gonna get.

Dr. Hicks 2:31

Yes, yes. Being from Ohio, I think that I can um I think I can navigate through the next couple of days. It's gonna be it's gonna be good times in the house just incubating. And actually, because I have a lot of grants due um in the next week, um, I'm gonna take it as a study hall. So we turn we turn um not so good situations into great ones.

Ann Price 2:57

Yeah, I love that. And uh coming from up your uh up north, I I would I would think you were probably more winter resilient than some of us who have never been north, well, never lived north of Atlanta. Of course, I've been north of Atlanta, which is perfect timing because that's what we're gonna talk about today. Nonprofit resilience. But um, let me just uh let everybody know that you and I met a couple of years ago at I think my first grant summit uh around the puppy den. And I have I have the most beautiful picture of you sitting on the ground um with a puppy, and you're probably like, who is this woman who took a picture of me and said, But anyway, so we're we're getting to know each other. We have a common client, so that's kind of fun.

Dr. Hicks 3:38

Yes.

Ann Price 3:39

Uh, but anyway, I'm gonna let you introduce yourself and just tell uh our listeners how you came to be who you are.

Katrina, Messaging, And Early Grants

Managing Federal Funds And Homelessness Efforts

Dr. Hicks 3:46

Oh, amazing. You know, my journey in um uh philanthropy. I can remember growing up in giving back. Um, my parents um really believed in um helping in the community. Um, my dad is a retired principal. So, really, community development was um a fabric of who we were as a family. Um, and my first job in philanthropy was in the student athletic department at the University of Cincinnati where I went to undergrad. I was in um, it's called UCAT's office, uh University of Cincinnati Athletic Team Scholarships. And we were the office that generated the scholarship funds for the student athletes um to um attend the school. Um, and so that's where I learned about donor relations and individual gifts and giving and how to run a campaign. And at a young 19 years old, I was um working on a team, and our goal back then in the uh late 90s was $3 million. Um, and so that really ignited um just my interest in um of a career in philanthropy. And so when I relocated here to Atlanta, Georgia, um my first big girl job um in philanthropy was a sponsored loan executive at the United Way of Greater Atlanta. And that was during um, well, for those of you all that um are like what's a sponsored loan executive? It's when um an individual comes to work for the United Way for during their campaign season, which is August through January or February. And we were responsible for going to corporate partners and encouraging them um to um give through the United Way through their payroll contributions that started at the top of the year. Well, as my first job in fundraising and asking for individual gifts was right when Hurricane Katrina happened in 2005. Um, and so what I learned is a very valuable lesson about messaging um and how to ask individual donors um for gifts in the middle of um a global incident. Um, or it was at that time, it was the first um uh natural disaster in our lifetime that happened in the United States. There was no blueprint um of how to handle Hurricane Katrina in Houston was number one, and Atlanta was number two for the number of um people who resettled from uh the Gulf Coast. And from there, from a sponsored loan executive, I was promoted uh as a program manager over this. Oh gosh, I think it was maybe $10 million then. Um it was a neighbors helping neighbors campaign. Um and so how um the federal dollars worth, again, my first time working with federal grants, is that um FEMA gave money to GEMA, which is uh Georgia's emergency uh management agency. And because homelessness is a city issue, GEMA gave that uh, I think it was $3 million to um the United, uh, to the City of Atlanta. City of Atlanta turned it over to the United Way, which was the launch of the Regional Commission of Homelessness, as well as Gateway 24-7. And so I helped um manage those funds off of an Excel spreadsheet, not these fancy CRM tools that we lean on today. And so that was kind of my first um real exposure to nonprofit messaging, individual gifts, working it with corporate and private foundations, um, and then on the federal level. And so fast forward, I've had a career um as a successful consultant, as well as working with um Atlanta's um small as well as large uh nonprofit organizations, and then my consulting firm branched out um uh nationally and also internationally into Kenya. And so um I went back to school to uh get my doctorate of education and organizational leadership and um with an emphasis on um nonprofits. And at the beginning of my research, I wanted to look at executive exit because I was working at nonprofits and senior leaders were leaving. But again, we were at a time where CRM tools, that's when we were kind of working with Razor's Edge, but Salesforce hadn't entered the chat yet. Um, and so I really wanted to look at systems and methodologies that would help those senior leaders that had these institutional knowledge that kind of walked out the door with them. Or as a grant professional, we sometimes come into an organization where those file systems only worked for that person that was there. So um uh uh grants uh narratives um were uh not complete or the final version wasn't there or different variations of budgets, or we didn't know different protocols within a development department. So I started my research reading this Forbes article from 2016 that says um something around your uh nonprofits, um, your favorite nonprofit is going to fail because it didn't have an executive um exit plan. Um, and so as I started to do my research and I was finishing with my classwork in um March of 2020, here comes a global pandemic. Um, and so within that, um it kind of shifts your research. Um, and so I sat with my chair and we were thinking about what's going to happen in this global pandemic that we need to do some research on, because in the analogs of history and time, somebody's gonna take a look at this research to look at nonprofits, to look at how are we going to keep our doors open without interrupted services and then survive through this? Because in March 2020, this is a global pandemic. Again, something that has never happened before in history, right? Similar to Katrina.

Ann Price 10:55

So that's can I just stop you for a second? I mean, yeah, I just love I love the threads, which is why I always ask people, tell me who you came to be who you are. Because what I hear you saying is I learned this philanthropy stuff, like it was boot camp, right? It was experiential, super young, right? Learning all of the pieces and parts of Katrina COVID and now the times that we're in. What an amazing that that kind of that kind of thread doesn't happen by accident.

Dr. Hicks 11:30

Yes.

Ann Price 11:31

Yeah. So yeah. Continue. I love it.

Doctoral Pivot During COVID

Dr. Hicks 11:36

This this this purpose-driven um life mission that I was that I'm in um in March of 2020, like there was something to learn in this tragedy. And so I started looking at how did other organizations, you know, we've gone through companies that have gone through the Great Depression, companies that have sustained through different world wars or major exits of their senior leader and mergers and acquisitions and all of these things that describe disruptive times. Disruptive times and disruptive funding landscape is conditional to the lens of who that organization is happening to. And I was doing a lot of research with businesses. And as we know in nonprofits, a lot of our board members come from a business executive background. So we're looking at, you know, merging these two philosophies with business and philanthropy. And so as I was studying organizational resilience, I saw that there were common themes within nonprofits that we could also adopt. And so I was doing some research with some scholars, uh, Whitmer and Mullinger in 2015, 10 years now that they've done that research. But back then, um, we were looking at different resilience qualities that these huge corporations were able to sustain over their disruptive times. And how could nonprofits adopt those same philosophies to navigate through the disruptive times of 2020? And so um within those resilience qualities, you know, um, there is uh commitment to mission, there is, and we could go in depth in this, um, improvisation, uh, community reciprocity, servants and transformation of leadership, physical transparency and hope and optimism. And so when I did this research and published my dissertation at 2021, it was like, you know, the world was coming back outside and we've quote unquote made it through. And what do you know?

Ann Price 14:00

Yeah, yeah. Four years later. Right, yeah, exactly. And then then another four years later, right? So yeah, it's so interesting because you know, I did my um, I did my research on uh resilience, but resilience uh in terms of teenagers, right, adolescents who had witnessed both community and domestic violence. And that's typically when we think of resilience or at least service providers, right? We think about individual resilience. We may think about, I'm a community psychologist, so I think about community resilience. And so I love this like take on nonprofit resilience. What does it take for a nonprofit to be resilient in, you know, in uh, you know, to your point, disruptive times and disruptive times are not all bad, right? We have opportunities to maybe look at some things that we needed to be looking at, or um, where we could actually improve or where we could serve you know our community better. So where where would you like to start with these six qualities of um a resilient nonprofit? What what do you think is most important for folks to hear about?

Defining Nonprofit Resilience

Dr. Hicks 15:15

Well, I deployed this research. Um uh and with every client that comes into our firm that's looking for executive services, we walk them through a resilient quality framework. And so they take this questionnaire and assessment, and we look at these six resilient qualities. And depending on how they score and rank as an agency, then we'll drill down and we create strategies around those six um resilient qualities. So let's kind of map through what those six are again and how other nonprofit leaders that are listening to this call can resonate or lean in or look to say, hey, this may be a quality that we need to work internally to bolster what it is that we have or we don't have in order to navigate. Because as we have seen in the last year, nonprofits that were heavily dependent on uh federal funds, um, there's tremendous risk within that. Everybody is kind of nosediving into corporate and foundation relations. And so that market is becoming um saturated. Um, and then those um nonprofits that haven't really tapped into individuals or major gifts, this is an opportunity to look at the development portfolio in a holistic view.

Ann Price 16:48

Right. Yeah, yeah, gotcha. And uh I love that you start. Well, I'm an assessment girl, so I I love that you start with, you know, that you have your framework. You've um, you know, you did all this research, all this work on uh resilient nonprofit, and you use that in your company to to to help organizations know where to enter. What door should I enter first? Because you you you it's it would be too stressful, it would be impossible to, you know, target all of these six qualities. And I can imagine an executive director goes, oh my, we're in a lot of trouble. What do I do? So I love that you target your your focus, your work on the qualities that they most need to work on. So yeah, maybe kind of walk us through some of that, or even a even a case study, you don't have to name a name, but that that's always helpful.

Dr. Hicks 17:36

Sure, sure. So let's look at these six qualities.

Ann Price 17:41

Okay.

Dr. Hicks 17:41

The first one that always rises to the top and why donors give and funders give is mission. Strong commitment to the mission. What is within those heart strings, or if it's a transactional uh type of relationship, both are are great for the cash flow of our nonprofit, but why is someone committed, not only once, but recurring giving to your organization? That's the foundation. Are you communicating your message over and your mission over and over again? So either A, it introduces um donors to what it is that you do, or B, it reconnects and reaffirms to those that are already giving their time, talent, and treasure to your organization. And so for some Dr.

Ann Price 18:36

Hicks, can I ask you a question? What is the what do you mean by transactional relationship? I just I want to make sure that we dig into that word a little bit.

Dr. Hicks 18:45

So transactional, because we like to be very uh, and we'll talk about fiscal transparency as one of those um those qualities. There are donors that are at the end of the year that have a wealth manager that just need to give money away. Gotcha. Um and they are doing Google searches, they are reading um newspaper or looking through YouTube or what have you, and they need to give money away. There are different corporations that um, you know, their business is whatever their for-profit entity is, um, but they need to give money away, or there needs to be that halo effect within the community where they want to give back to the community that their employees live in. Perfect. And so that's where we need, or there's a sponsorship opportunity.

Ann Price 19:36

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. I want to make sure we got that definition in there.

Assessment Framework And Funding Mix Risks

Dr. Hicks 19:40

Yes, absolutely. So we understand mission, but one of the other resilient qualities, especially now where we're looking at this turn on in this um this giving uh season that we're going through, is improvisation. And that's the ability to improvise and innovate using existing resources. Sometimes when nonprofits are faced with huge uh funders that are being reduced or sunsetting or um cutting back on funding, or um, we're experiencing some disruptive time, some organizations panic. And rightfully so. But we really need to take an assessment of what it is that we currently have that is in the tangible resources that we have around the building or that we can put our hands on. That is taking an assessment of the people that we have. Do we have enough people or the right people doing the work that we need to get done? Or do we need to make sure that we are um leveraging collaboration? Here now, um, more than ever, collaboration is going to be key. Um, to give you a case study, I was working on a government grant maybe a year or two ago, and it was a federal grant that had a national footprint um that was around um homeless services. Um, and so when I was meeting with a client and we were going through um the different collaboration sections, and we were looking at the various different collaborations, and that client had mentioned that maybe out of the list of the collaborative partners, 10 of those partners was applying for the same funding. I said, wait a minute. Maybe I should have done a better assessment at the beginning during the consultation period because had I had known that 10 other people that Are your partners that's also going to name you as a collaborative partner? And the application was applying for the same funding, and it was only three awards nationally, it would have made more sense that all 10 of us came together and submitted one application because a pinch of something is greater than nothing of the whole pile. Right.

Ann Price 22:26

Yeah. And it makes the sector look just disorganized.

Dr. Hicks 22:30

It makes well it it yes, it does make the sector unorganized, but it also where we have to kind of think about improv improvisation. We need to come together collectively because funders are looking to make a greater and maximum impact in a community. And so if 10 organizations came together and they had a statewide impact, that speaks louder to a national funder that you have a larger impact in your community versus a siloed approach in well, I'm just gonna concentrate. And so what it is that we're doing. So we need to kind of take assessment and improvise and use the existing resources, which also includes partnerships.

Ann Price 23:19

Gotcha. Okay.

Pillar 1: Mission Clarity

Dr. Hicks 23:21

Very good. So the third resilient quality is community reciprocity. This is the trust and credibility that organizations in the surrounding communities have as you as a thought leader in the field that you're doing. And what this means is that donors are going to think, who do I need to call in the event that something happens? Um, for instance, what I was just describing in regards to um the displacement of uh families um with Hurricane Katrina. When homelessness is a city issue, the city leans on the United Way. What is it that you're doing within your specific industry? Is it foster care? Is it homelessness? Is it food insecurity? Is it nutrition education? Whatever your jam is for your organization, how are you becoming a thought leader in your industry? And then how are you contributing your voice to the community as well as contributing your voice to your donors? Because when we continue to educate our donors, that we know that we know what it is that we're doing, we're instilling this trust in our donors. So if and when that we are dealing with when we had SNAP, um, when a lot of agencies were experiencing the reduction of uh SNAP ed benefits, or um if you're dealing with um uh food insecurities or low-income housed individuals or low-income or unhoused individuals, when you send out that call to action to ask for donations to come in, if you've been continuously talking about the mission and sending out monthly newsletters and updating them on what it is that you're doing, the moment that you start to ask for help, they're gonna trust you and that community is going to speak your voice in rooms you haven't stepped in, or they're going to donate and respond to you at times, especially that's happening now.

Ann Price 25:30

Yeah, the the um the related piece to this for me is when I'm uh working with nonprofits, I always talk about like if you were to lose a major piece of your funding, like it's the old if a tree fell in the forest. Is anybody gonna care? Is anybody gonna come to your defense? Because you're trying to build that, you know, that community of support and wrap that around you.

Dr. Hicks 25:54

Absolutely.

Ann Price 25:55

Yeah, perfect.

Pillar 2: Improvisation And Collaboration

Dr. Hicks 25:56

Visibility, visibility and community meetings and Zoom meetings, especially what I encourage my uh clients that are in rural communities, is jump on as many Zoom conversations and turn on your camera and ask questions that you may even know the answer to, but the visibility, even if you're in areas where you can't physically get to meetings to do those handshapes, you can do it through um technology. I love it. Love it. Yes. So, yes, so the fourth pillar is this servant and transformational leadership. Now, this is this is a biggie for um leadership at times, is that this is this non-ego motivated, mission-driven leader who encourages collaborative problem solving. I like this for some of when we deploy this assessment tool, we just don't give it to the uh the ELT teams or the board of directors. We also even give this to um team members or selected team members to really get this holistic view of the organization, the real intimate, um uh anonymous surveys that they can complete. And so it's really important um for leaders to really, yes, this is something that you want to do. This may be a program that you want to launch, but what is most important is that we are taking the lens and asking those that are going to be impacted by the decisions that those that are leaders that are making. This is why in a lot of grant applications, they are starting to now ask about the demographics of your board and stakeholder voice. Is stakeholder voice at the table when you are making decisions? They're asking about where does your board members zip code, where do they live? Are people that are making these huge decisions for your board of directors, living and working in the community that they're making the decisions for? It's always good to consider having an alumni of your program to either have a voted position or be a part of the advisory because they've lived experiences. They've gone through um the reasons why they needed your services, they've gone through a successful completed completion of your services, they're now instituting the um the skill set that they learned in your organization. So why not have someone that has matriculated through your programs to have a voice at the table?

Ann Price 28:50

You know, and when the community is not represented, I mean, your board may be very well-meaning, but they're making a whole lot of assumptions about people that they probably have never met, they've never been in their neighborhoods, they might not have been in their grocery stores or been in stepped in their schools, right? And you just you you can't you can't be in somebody else's skin. And I've seen a lot of boards, and I bet you have too, where the board looks nothing like the community that they're trying to serve.

Dr. Hicks 29:22

All right. Yeah, yeah. Correct. And that's why on grant applications that they ask those questions because they want to make sure that there is someone with lived experiences at the table making those decisions. You're absolutely right.

Ann Price 29:38

Yeah, gotcha.

Dr. Hicks 29:39

Very important. Awesome. Well, my favorite pillar, like they're all my favorite, like puppies. Like, as you like, we met at the puppy station. Like, I love all puppies, but my favorite puppy of the Brazilian qualities is fiscal transparency.

Ann Price 29:56

This is interesting. That's your favorite. That is my favorite leadership.

Dr. Hicks 30:05

Well, that is a favorite.

Ann Price 30:08

But you have to lead with fiscal transparency. So there you go.

Pillar 3: Community Reciprocity

Dr. Hicks 30:12

As a grants professional, fiscal transparency out of all of these, what I will say is that fiscal transparency always ranks low with our um with nonprofits more than you ever know. Because it requires open written and verbal communications about business and fiscal statuses of the organization. The reason why nonprofits score low in this category is that the fear of we don't want to tell our employees that we're not in a good place because they'll leave us. But how you establish trust within those that are boots on the ground that are actually doing the work is having communications with them and empowering pro, this is key, and this is one of the questions on the assessment. It's empowering program managers with their portion of the budget of a grant award. Most importantly, including and asking those program managers about the application before you write it. How do you write a grant application about getting money into the organization? Because as parent professionals, we are words mess. We can cry some really great language together and get a funder to say yes. But the moment the money comes in the door, we send an acknowledgement and our work is done. It's up to the program people to implement it. But if they're not brought in on the front end in consideration before we put pen to paper and we get funds in and we cannot spend it down, that's going to create a trust disruption with our funders where we're not reporting and we're tracking and spending down on um on our funding. We get to the end. I was working with a client that had a $100,000 grant for um education and and and buying supplies. And because it was um an early childhood education, um, you know, you only have kids in in a certain time. And you have semester one, well, you have the first half, you have semester two, and you have the summertime. And so in order to buy supplies, it has to be on a cadence, typically three times a year makes sense. And so it was, I was sending updates once a month. One of the things that I like to do, if I have, for example, a hundred thousand dollar grant and I'm also the writer and the manager, then I'm going to track you every 25% of how the money is going to spend down. We're going to meet on, we're going to meet. Tell me when you get the funds, give me a budget and let me know how you're going to spend it. I'm going to check on you and accounting when it's 75% done or spent, when it's 50% spent down, when it's 25% spent down, and when it's at 10%. So we don't overspend. And so I just came into this organization and we had 90 days before the grant expired, and not one dollar of the $100,000 had been spent.

Pillar 4: Servant Leadership And Stakeholder Voice

Ann Price 33:41

OMG. And can I tell you, I've seen that too on the evaluation end, right? Like we we said we were gonna serve 500 kids, but we couldn't get an XYZ school because we didn't really establish those relationships, or there was a new whatever, new principal, new administration, whatever, and we couldn't get access, whatever it is, right? But it all stems from, you know, um, that that fertilizing that needed to happen in the garden didn't happen, or, you know, you know, somebody didn't really consider the, to your point, the program people. I've seen that many times where somebody designed a program and never asked the program people, hey, is this gonna fly in our community? Is this feasible? Do we have the capacity to reach all? Oh, I've seen this so many times. So many times. So I love that that grants management piece that kind of comes out, so yeah, you got the money, but then you have that grant grants management piece that really puts all that uh, you know, being a good steward, it's really about being a good steward and managing that whole process.

Dr. Hicks 34:47

Absolutely, absolutely. And it tells another message to the funders about your fiscal stewardship. Because if it's a grant report that you have to attach receipts to, they're gonna look at the date that you purchase those items. And so if you spend $100,000 in 30 days, what does that tell the funder? Right. Yeah. Yes.

Ann Price 35:12

That's not yeah, that's not a good look.

Dr. Hicks 35:14

Not a good look. But we got it spent. We we made the deadline. I was gonna make sure we made the deadline. Um, but yes, it's it's one of those pillars that we have to trust the the team that is going to um be responsible for spending the money down. We have to communicate to our teams um and to the broader organization where we are fiscally, and it gives a sense of hope. Um, and we're moving into the next pillar, is that um one of my favorite nonprofits, um uh when there was a shift in uh the federal funds, they wrote a contingency plan. They wrote a contingency plan to not understanding exactly where we're going, right? If we need a roadmap, when this thing goes left, what are we going to do? And that gives your team members some sense of our leader is navigating through these disruptive times. They can see five miles ahead of the road while we are doing the business, and your team is going to stay with you because they trust you.

Ann Price 36:33

Yeah, I bet, I bet you're thinking of the same leader I am, and and and uh she is the only nonprofit leader I know, and I've been doing this like you a skinny minute. She's the only one I know of who did that. Yes. How brilliant is that, right? Very to think about you know, plan A, plan B, plan C. So wise.

Pillar 5: Fiscal Transparency In Practice

Dr. Hicks 36:59

Very, very, very, very. Which leads me into the sixth pillar, which is hope and optimism, is that when you have a leader that shares that fiscal transparency, that hope and optimism leans to those organizations that are focusing on opportunity instead of barriers. Look, we've all been impacted, even those organizations that did not dip their toe into the federal funding and the corporation, and they stayed in the corporation and a foundation space, like making sure that we're keeping a positive mindset, um, that we are doing team building activities. We are looking at um opportunities that we can grow deeper and richer with the communities that we serve, and also making sure that we're taking care of our staff and the people that are doing um the work. And so, yes, we may all be focused on um this federal turn or foundations that have locked the doors to say invitation only. Let's look at the opportunity again, collaboration and partnership, going back out to the community. And another thing that I encourage nonprofits to do is go back to the old school days of um uh individual giving. Start at $25 a quarter. $25 ask four times a year and make that fourth ask in September. That way, if you go to them in November and December and tell them this is what your $100 gift gave in this calendar year, do you would you like to match it with another $100? You've taken a two-digit donor from $25 in maybe February or March to giving $200 by the end of the year. You think that they're not going to do it again that next year or encourage? And if you find 10 individuals to do that, now you can multiply your giving and you're looking at this opportunity instead of the barrier of losing a funding source.

Ann Price 39:21

Yeah. You know, that makes me think of um, you know, my husband and I are finally to the point where, yay, we get to give back and it's so much fun. It really is so much fun to uh be able to like support our favorite nonprofits. Um, you kind of get off my list if you don't say thank you.

Dr. Hicks 39:38

Absolutely.

Ann Price 39:39

Right. Just that handwritten thank you, even if it's the same thing you're, you know, and you just change the name written by the executive director or somebody on the board or somebody you served, that thank you is so important. And I love it when they say, this is what your donation was able to do. You're absolutely right. It creates that that that loyalty, right? Oh, I remember you.

Dr. Hicks 40:04

Yes, yes, yes. Say thank you often, say thank you every month, and always share what a $25 gift does. Because if someone can give you $25, there's someone else that can give you $250, $2,500, $25,000, and the list goes on.

Ann Price 40:26

Yeah, yeah, for sure. That's awesome. Have we gone through the six pillars?

Dr. Hicks 40:31

Those are the six pillars.

Ann Price 40:33

Do you want to repeat them just for our own just to help everybody kind of wrap it up there?

Dr. Hicks 40:38

Absolutely. The Hicks Resilience Quality Framework.

Ann Price 40:43

I love it. Oh, yes. I wish I'd thought of it. It's brilliant.

Dr. Hicks 40:48

Thank you. Um, number one is mission, number two is improvisation, number three is community reciprocity, number four, servant and transformational leadership, number five, fiscal transparency, and number six, hope and optimism.

Ann Price 41:07

That is awesome. That was really helpful. So speaking of hope and optimism, if we have um an executive director out there or maybe somebody who's a staff or even a board member and a nonprofit, and they are not feeling so resilient right now, what would you say to them?

Dr. Hicks 41:25

You know, there is also a resistance to resilience because it also makes us um just stick our head down in the sand and like keep trudging through. And one of the, because I was a keynote for the closeout um at the most recent grant professionals conference, and I talked about grant writer burnout and survival techniques. And we need to make sure that as if things are not going as expected and planned, I want those nonprofit professionals that are looking, are listening today, is to really make sure that you're taking care of yourself, people first. Because when you're taking care of yourself, um, whether it is through therapy, either or through journaling, or it's going outside, connecting with family and friends, sleeping eight hours, um, whatever your jam is for wellness, that is going to be key because it'll allow you to get back out there and continue to look for funding opportunities, write those prints, and be innovative and creative enough to figure out what the path is going to be best for your organization.

Ann Price 42:47

Yeah, I love it. Take, yeah, take care of yourself, right? Yes, fill your cup. Fill your cup. Fill your cup, yes. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Um, I wanted to give you an opportunity to talk a little bit more about your company, what you do, and the services that you offer.

Spending Down, Reporting, And Trust

Dr. Hicks 43:03

Awesome. Well, Serve University, I created it because I was a grant professional that was um at the entry level. And a lot of the professional development training was reserved for senior executives. And it was, it cost a lot to go to conferences and to attend classes. And so at Saraz University, we have three ways uh to engage. Um, and so you can come into our uh trainings, which start at $27. You can jump into a live class or you can um take our self paced classes because if you're um nonprofiting through your nine to five and you want to do some of this professional development, it's self paced, you can do of such within our campuses. Um, then we have capacity building for those. Organizations that are looking for more in-depth strategic planning, uh feasibility studies, um, case studies, um, more in-depth research. We have a team of uh researchers that can dedicate time and space to actually not only give you the assessment of the um resilient qualities, but also create these strategies in order to develop any one of those um these resilient qualities and provide a 12-month work plan to help your organization go through that. And we can have checkpoints within whether it is a monthly or quarterly assessment. Um, also within that uh capacity building is board of director training. We have a lot of yes, yes. Board of director training at whatever level you are within um your organization's board journey. Those that are startup that need those foundational um courses and training up until skilled executives. I have an inkling of reaching out to some uh local not-for-profit organizations here that are in the midst of um not understanding the complexities of what board governance means to organizations. And then our third service is the grant writing services. And so for organizations that have the capacity that is looking uh to build and bridge their grant portfolio, um, we uh do grant searching, we do grant readiness, and we do grant writings for organizations and even for organizations that is in between um a grant professional, grant manager, or grant uh writer within their organization and need some interim support, we're there to help them as well. So we've got the training side, the capacity building side, as well as the um executive grant writing side.

Ann Price 46:17

I I love the way you are a deep thinker. I mean, it's very obvious that you've been very thoughtful about your process. And I love a good process.

Contingency Planning And Team Confidence

Dr. Hicks 46:28

Well, you know, it it came from experience. Yeah. When you are working and have had a lifelong career, I promised myself that I was going to be what I needed when I was starting out young and in my career. Listen, I got my training by being a conference crasher. I would volunteer for a conference. Yeah. I would volunteer. I would volunteer for a conference, and I would be in the room being a volunteer, listening and absorbing all of the knowledge and putting something back then. I was putting like $50 a paycheck away in order for me to save, to go to conferences and be in the room in the space. And so I encourage you, if your organization has a lean budget, ask for at least $1,000 for your professional development. $1,000 could pay for a course, a membership to grant professionals association, association of fundraising professionals, or taking any type of online courses that you can engross yourself with or come over to Serve University. We've got something for you for you to learn and develop your skill set.

Ann Price 47:51

Yeah, I love that so much. Thank you for that. So let me ask you a few questions as we close. What is giving you hope these days?

Dr. Hicks 48:02

So many things are giving me hope. Um, the hope is for me is improvisation. Well, I'm gonna use what we have to get through these disruptive times. And with every organization that I connect with, we are taking an assessment of the every all the assets that we have: assets from people, assets from tangible things that we have, assets to how much money do we have in the bank, assets to the donors that we have, assets to the community partners that we have. And then we're going to get in a room or Zoom conversation and we're going to whiteboard it out. We are going to create connections and paths and stewardships and strategies around using existing resources and making decisions to for some organizations, they're going to have to consolidate programs or they're going to have to increase the pay of those individuals that are doing the work because more responsibility is going to be shared with them.

Ann Price 49:12

Right. Yeah, that makes sense. I wrote that down. Use what you have.

Dr. Hicks 49:17

Yes.

Ann Price 49:18

I think I'm going to do some journaling on that myself. So yes. Thank you for that. So, what's one piece of advice you have for nonprofit leaders as we start the new year? It's only January 23rd, 2026.

Dr. Hicks 49:38

That's a loaded one.

Ann Price 49:39

Yeah, it is.

Dr. Hicks 49:40

Um because one of the things that um we have to think about. Oh my goodness. What can repeat the question one more time because I'm swimming in so many answers.

Pillar 6: Hope, Optimism, And Individual Giving

Ann Price 49:55

I know. You know, and we've given you given a lot of advice. Um, so maybe we go back to that. But what is one piece of advice you have for nonprofit leaders as we start this new year?

Dr. Hicks 50:08

For leaders? I would say I'm gonna go back to people first. I need you to check in on your team members. You're gonna have a laundry list of things to do. But the first thing that I do with my team when we jump on a call, whether it's three o'clock in the afternoon, sometimes I have 3 a.m. staff meetings. I have team members that were different time zones. And sometimes the only creative thought is when they have a quiet house and everybody in the house asleep. I'm gonna ask you two questions. How did you sleep? And did you eat today? And if you didn't do one, if you didn't do both of those things, I need you to go be a human. Any one of my team members will ask, Dr. Brandy, Dr. Hitz is gonna say, I need you to go be a human. Because we cannot do this work if we are not taking care of ourselves. So for leaders, I need you to check on your people because they have a life outside of nonprofit. They may be caretakers, they may be parents, they may be um working adults that are going back to school. They may be experiencing their own financial hardship and they're making their way in order to do the work that they're doing for the most vulnerable people, and they also may be vulnerable. So I want you to take care of your people. Yeah. That's number one as a leader, as a nonprofit professional, just generally in this organization. I need you to take care of you, and I need you to connect with community. I need you to jump into a professional development organization, whether it's your local grant professionals association, whether it's AFP, whether it is um uh online communities, I need you to jump into a community that looks and thinks and moves like you, because only someone that has been in nonprofit can understand what it is that you're going through. Our industry, similar to the healthcare industry, is going through extreme burnout. And I need you to find safe spaces, um, which some people may think that, oh, well, maybe they were talking, maybe she was going to uh say something around work productivity or, you know, um, you know, uh something around grantsmanship. No, in this season, we've got to take care of ourselves, people first.

Ann Price 52:49

Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. So I want to thank you so much for joining me. I personally have learned a lot, and um I can't I just can't tell you how much I love your framework. It just makes so much sense. And I can really see how you're able to really focus on areas to help your clients through the framework. So I just thank you for that.

Dr. Hicks 53:13

Thank you, Anne, and thank you for the work that you're doing. Having, again, a stakeholder voice for nonprofit professionals and allowing them to listen to this podcast while they are doing the tedious work of um development or as they're writing to or from um their office to do the great work that we're doing in the community. Thank you for providing this audible safe space for grant professionals.

Ann Price 53:45

Yeah, thank you for that. Um, before I let you go, Dr. Hicks, what when you look to the future, rather, when you look to the future, what community possibilities do you see?

Donor Stewardship And Thank Yous

Dr. Hicks 53:57

We are going to save ourselves. We are going to, because nobody's coming to save us, but the community, the nonprofits, are going to be here to literally help us save each other. We're going to provide those safe spaces. We're going to provide those resources that we couldn't get access to or that we were excluded from. We're going to nonprofits to get the education that maybe we're not able to get in another space. We're going to nonprofits for that community. And so when I look to the future, even in the fundraising uncertainties in these disruptive landscapes, nonprofits are going to be resilient and we are going to be the resource that everyone needs to get by.

Ann Price 54:48

Yeah. We are going to. Yes. We are, we are going to. So, how can people learn more about serve you and get in touch with you and your team?

Dr. Hicks 54:58

Awesome. Well, you can look us up at serveuniversity.org. You can find us on LinkedIn at Serve University, as well as Instagram and Facebook, which you can always follow my journey in grantsmanship, as well as surviving as a grant pro at uh Dr. Brandi Ray Hicks. And that's B-R-A-N-D-I-R-A-E-H-I-C-K-S, Dr. Brandi Ray Hicks.

Ann Price 55:29

Thank you for that. Hey, and you can also get really cool t-shirt on your website too.

Recap Of The Six Pillars

Dr. Hicks 55:34

Absolutely. Your favorite grant pro or your favorite grant writer. This is actually a marketing tool in the community. So if you're a grant professional and you are looking, listen, let me tell you this quick story. I was in um Shaker Heights, Ohio, taking care of my parents during the pandemic. And I needed to meet friends after we've all been, you know, tucked away in our homes. And so I went and got these t-shirts made, your favorite grant writer. And this is how I made friends because everybody says that they need a grant writer. And so my actually my business grew like 142% just by wearing this t-shirt in my home community. My email list grew 300% in 12 months by wearing this sweatshirt in Atlantis Airport, which is the busiest airport in the world. So if you're a grant professional and you're looking to find your community or expand your consulting practices, go over to serveuniversity.org to look at some grant merch and join our community of grant writers.

Ann Price 56:42

I'm telling you, that sweatshirt looks very comfy indeed. And Dr. Hicks is not only uh brilliant with a beautiful smile, she is always well turned out.

Dr. Hicks 56:54

Thank you. Thank you.

Ann Price 56:55

Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Hicks 57:00

Awesome. Thank you so much, Anne, for this wonderful experience.

Burnout, Wellness, And People First

Ann Price 57:04

Yeah, you're very welcome. Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in to Community Possibilities. You know, this time of year is a great time to pause, reflect, and set a new direction. I hope you're ready to start 2026 refreshed and ready to go. There's no better moment to invest in yourself and the work you care about. Here's the beginning of the year with clarity and purpose, ready to do your best work yet. As someone devoted to making a difference in your community, I know how rewarding and challenging this work can be. And I know firsthand how much heart, energy, and care goes into every project you take on. I know you struggle with questions that leave you wondering whether you're making a difference. You might be wondering if you're reaching the right people or during reporting time, you and your staff struggle to find the information you need to show your work is effective. I want to help you be more thoughtful and intentional so that you can get off that struggle bus. I created powerful evidence, evaluation for non-evaluators, an online course just for leaders like you to answer these questions with confidence. My online course simplifies the evaluation process, giving you practical tools to understand your work and help you see what's working so you can make informed decisions going forward. In this course, you're going to learn practical evaluation methods with easy-to-follow techniques that anyone can apply. You'll learn to understand your results, collect and interpret data, and assess your program's performance. You'll be able to take immediate action by applying these insights to improve your program right away. And oh my gosh, the workbooks that come with the course are gorgeous and so easy to follow. Head on over to Community Evaluation Solutions.com to find the course and lots of other resources you can put to use right away.