In Trust Center
The In Trust Center podcast is hosted by Matt Hufman. Walk alongside theological school leaders and innovators as they explore issues relevant to North American seminaries, all while helping institutions live out their missions more intentionally. Find more at intrust.org/podcast.
In Trust Center
Ep. 88: A shared future - rethinking seminary administration
As theological schools consider how to prepare for the future, a Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative grant is offering institutions an opportunity for shared services. AdminWise Shared Services, a nonprofit started out of a Lilly Endowment grant, is now offering a slate of administrative functions to help theological schools. Jeff Williams, the president of the group and director of the grant program at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary that created it, talks about how the group can provide expertise to schools and provide strategic direction. AdminWise Shared Services website is here.
Hello and welcome to the Interest Center Podcast, where we connect with experts and innovators in theological education around topics important to theological schooling. Thank you for joining us. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Good Governance Podcast. I'm Matt Hoffman. One of the exciting projects, and they're all exciting, but one of the exciting projects to me in the Pathways for Tomorrow initiative that Lily Endowment has funded has been the change initiative out of Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. Now, what's exciting about it to me is it it attracts one of the things we don't often talk about is the shared services, the kind of back office services that are often a huge driver in seminary education, theological education. There's a lot to it and a lot of expertise needed. And the change initiative has been working for the past few years to try to get a handle on how schools could come together. Now we've had president of Anabaptist on, along with Jeff Williams, who's the executive director of the change initiative. And I'm joined today again by Jeff. Jeff, you're no longer just the executive director of the change initiative. You're also the president of a new nonprofit that has come out of this called Admin Wise Shared Services. So welcome back to the program first.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you, Matt. It's great to be back again.
SPEAKER_02:And as I said, I'm excited about this program, and I'm excited about so many of them. There are such great programs. But one of the things that I really appreciate you doing is that you've taken a look at costs that we all have as schools, that every one of our schools has, and there's an expertise to it as well that you need when you're talking about financial services and others. But let's go back to the beginning. Let's start about what the initiative is and what led to it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:The initiative started well, I think ATS leaders have been talking about shared services for decades. That's been part of the feedback that we've we've gotten over the over the time. Is people have talked about this for a long time, but it's been slow in developing. And I have been thinking about this for many years and and had the good fortune of connecting with Ron Ringingberg, um, who was the CFO at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary for a number of years. And we teamed together to say, hey, let's try to figure out a way to do this. Um, let's try to figure out if we can get a grant and use that grant to research and then design shared services that would serve ATS theological schools. Certainly, as you say, Matt, um the primary driver there has always been cost reduction, trying to figure out ways that our theological schools could control what in many cases are spiraling costs uh on the administrative side. So, how could they do that? And how could they do that in a way that could make them more sustainable? Uh, so not just saving a little bit of money, uh, that's good. Right. But trying to um rethink the model for how schools provide uh administrative services for themselves in ways that would that would make them more sustainable. Um we were also though particularly drawn to this project because of the challenges that schools have, not just around the finances, but also the expertise piece. So the project, so the project was very much geared toward trying to help solve that problem for seminaries, as well as try to mitigate some of the risks that seminaries currently face. And that's something I've been attuned to a lot more recently.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, let's talk about that for a second. And and forgive me, my introduction, what I didn't explain is that not only do you hold a PhD in Christian history and you're a historian, uh, but you also have a long history in administration in theological schools. You were at Bright Divinity School for many years, holding administrative roles. You got interested in that. And one of the things um I found when I was serving on the cabinet of a university with a uh uh an embedded seminary was we ask people, right, who are trained in um in all of the things that we train them in, to be scholars and practitioners, you know, whether that's pastors or ministries, uh pastors or missionaries or chaplains uh or scholars. Um we don't train them to be administrators. And and as you noted, it one of the things about the work that you've done and the project you do you've done is is to look at expertise. Because again, you know, you come into a position, oh congratulations, you're now the dean or the president. And and nobody's you know, in in seminary. We don't teach people to read balance sheets typically. There are certainly schools that are dealing with that. But the expertise of things, particularly in the world today, is something I think that's uh an interesting and attractive draw to what you're doing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and you know, I think another piece to that, Matt, is that in my experience, so many presidents and deans come into positions and um they may be new to theological education or certainly new to that that position and and are not familiar with overseeing a whole group of people uh who are who have administrative responsibilities of certain areas that are crucial to the life of the seminary, and they really don't know very much about those areas, and so it becomes difficult to supervise a uh director of financial aid, an admissions director, HR person, uh, when you know very little, it's not your background, it's none of our backgrounds in theological education. And so we have to figure out what questions are we even supposed to be asking this person who's you know in this supervisory meeting with me? You know, it's really difficult, um, and it's hard to provide the leadership that they need uh to do their jobs well, and and that's another one of the challenges that I think we're trying to address in this initiative is you know, how is it that presidents and deans are deploying their time uh and deploying the institution's resources toward the achievement of their mission? Um, and so while I think it's absolutely critical that deans and presidents uh be good supervisors of administrators, it is often taking them away from the things that is both their passion and their primary purpose, which is the programs of the school, the people of the school, raising funds for the school and for programs, these sorts of things. Uh, and so that's a fundamental question for us is you know, how do you want to deploy your resources as a leader in a seminary? Uh, and and how can you deploy more of those resources to things that will directly impact your mission rather than scatter those resources across a number of areas that the seminary struggles with.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, you know, in the Spring magazine that's coming up, we'll have a story about another Pathways program that is doing some shared services. But those are those are like shared services with schools that are around them in physical proximity. Um, one of the one of the I think the really neat things that you're using is, and I'd like you to talk a little bit about some of the services that you've come up with, what you found was that that you're you're bringing some expertise to areas where uh you don't need to be in physical proximity, and and you can bring some folks and leverage some things um in ways that I I don't think maybe 20 years ago you would have had the ability. But now in this post-pandemic world where we're all used to Zoom, we can use Dropbox, we can share files and all that. It it works and works well. So talk to me a little bit about what you found in the research, you know, as you were all you were talking to ATS accredited schools, and then where you're at in terms of uh what you've struggled with.
SPEAKER_00:Sure. Yeah, we you know, we had such a great group of collaborators, uh, collaborating institutions from ATS schools who could help us think about, first of all, what did they most need? Where were their biggest pain points in their administrative life? And a lot of that, Matt, came down to the difficulties of attracting the qualified personnel. Yeah, they were experiencing situations where uh key administrative offices were empty for long periods of time because they couldn't find the people that they needed to fill them, and that when they did, um they often struggled to hire someone that really had the expertise that they needed. And so they were finding people that um that were committed to the work of the seminary, which is so crucial, um, but they were sacrificing in a lot of cases uh the skills that they that they needed. So, what were those areas, right? Is is one of the questions. Where are you seeing that happen? Was the first question. The second one then was could this be an area that that we could deliver externally? Not there are certain things, as you know, Matt, that have to be done on a campus. But right, increasingly those are fewer and fewer. And part of what contributes to that too is that as so many schools have introduced online programs where students can complete a very large portion of the degree online, or maybe even all of it online, the presence of students on campus has has fundamentally shifted.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:And so that opened a whole new possibility for leaders to say, well, do I have to have somebody on premises all the time to meet with students? Well, no, if students aren't on campus all of the time, then maybe we don't need to have somebody sitting in the in the office. So it opened up a lot of possibilities for those types of schools, but even for schools that that do have a primarily residential community there, uh, the technological developments that we've seen over the last you know five or 10 years uh definitely make it much more feasible for a lot of services to be delivered remotely. So what we've already introduced are a few services. Uh the first one is a CFO service, um, where we can come in and help a seminary, particularly at the strategic level. Um, and that was one of the really important things we learned in the research phase was schools can find a certain level of expertise, um, a lower level of expertise is more realistic for them. Right. Uh it's the strategic expertise that they often struggle to find. And that's tied often directly to cost, yeah, because those folks are very expensive and they're harder to find, they're fewer anyway. Um, and so that was one of the things that that we learned um very early on was so many seminaries struggle with the strategic CFO leadership that they need. So could we come along and help a seminary in that way? So we're providing CFO services, we're providing uh financial aid services, uh, which is both um helping schools manage their Title IV program, so student loans uh being the main driver there, but also in some cases for schools helping them with their institutional aid as well. Um and uh that came about uh because a number of schools uh have a single person in their office. There's no one else there to manage their institutional aid. So could we help them both with the Title IV process and their institutional aid? So we offer financial aid services, we offer HR, Title IX, and then some virtual uh IT services, again on the strategic level, the a virtual CIO and a virtual CISO, what we call a CISO or security officer, um, to address some of those high-level IT challenges that a lot of seminaries face uh in being able to access that expertise.
SPEAKER_02:In that research that you did, and I know you had several collaborators, you had discussion partners, several schools went in with you. Um I know uh ATS was a conversation partner, certainly. Uh you certainly chatted with the entrust center and others. Um there are a couple things. I mean, one, there are other shared service providers out there we know of. You and I have talked about this. There's a big difference in terms of what you're providing versus what theirs is. I mean, first, there's there's a huge cost in some of this. Yes. At least, at least if you were to go to and and I'm not going to name names, but there are other providers who who have a pretty big buy-in. What's it look like for somebody coming to your school?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, great question. And I mean, we're grateful for the Lilly Endowment for certain uh you know, for being able to fund this uh initiative and absorb a lot of the upfront costs. I think that's where um, you know, some of the other uh shared service providers that are out there don't have that benefit. And so they they have a lot of startup costs and they're gonna pass them on then by necessity to their clients. Um, and it's also true, uh, and this is one of the gaps we were trying to fill, is that so many of the shared service providers that are out there are really targeting a different type of school. They're targeting a larger school that has more resources, uh, because many of the things that we're trying to address in terms of the problems that schools are facing are ones that liberal arts colleges of 2,000 and 3,000 are experiencing, mid-sized universities, 5,000 and 10,000 are experiencing. Everybody is experiencing these challenges, and they're all turning to shared services to try to address those challenges. So a lot of the shared service providers that are out there are targeting those better resource schools. Um, and and so we're we are trying to fill that gap to say, you know, smaller schools also need these things, yeah. And they need them in some cases in a slightly different way than uh than some of the larger schools. They they need them in a more personalized way for certain. And that's one of the you know challenges or or or questions that we get is hey, you know, we're we're a very small school. We need to provide very personalized services to our students. Um, and a lot of those service providers don't do that, they want to do just the back-end work. Uh, and and what we realized was if we were going to really serve ATS theological schools well, we needed to do the front-end work of that administrative service as well, right? So that, you know, in the financial aid world, you know, good example is, you know, somebody goes and they they have to fill out a FAFSA. Uh you know, and well, what is that? And and while it has been simplified, they say, Matt, uh, in the last year or so, we all remember that painful rollout. Yep, it's intimidating, it is not obvious in some questions. So, how do you do that? Well, we couldn't just say to a school, that's not our problem. You know, we had to be able to say, okay, we'll work with your student to figure out how to fill out their FAFSA and submit that. Uh, we'll work with the student to think about what it means to even take a student loan. Should you take a student loan? Um, if you're taking student loans, are you taking too many of them? Those sorts of counseling features that are so critical to the uh functioning of financial aid office in a seminary, um, we need to take on as well.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's an interesting thing you talk about financial aid because that is I always thought that was one of the more difficult jobs to hire for. Because if you hired somebody, and it's often what I see is there's somebody who's great on the mission, they love the school, they may be a graduate, but by the time you get them trained, that may be the time they leave. Or, or, you know, the the training that you need to understand what you have to do, uh, just in terms of the legalities of it, much less uh to counsel somebody to say, you know, to have the wisdom to say, do you really want to take out this well?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Or is this the best way to go? Um, those are difficult questions, I think, to teach and to in especially now with the complexities of what's happening, um those are very difficult things to deal with.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, they they are. And um, you know, of course, part of my own story is uh and part of how I got into this work was many, many, you know, decades ago, finishing a PhD, needing a job, getting hired at a seminary to do financial aid when I had never done it in my life. And you know, that's that's always informed this project. Uh, and because I began recognizing that lots of seminaries do that. And what lots of seminaries, though, don't do that I had the benefit of, was the seminary that I did that for hired somebody to train me and and spent many weeks with me. Um, and that's not always the case, as we found in our research, is that in a lot of cases people end up getting hired, and it's an office of really half a person, okay, and that person's gone, and there's no one there to train them, and there's no one else that knows how to do that work. Um, and so it's pretty scary for folks to enter into those situations. And certainly when you think about financial aid, that is so heavily regulated by the federal government, um, and the penalties for failing to observe those regulations are so significant that it really introduces a tremendous amount of risk to a school's environment that um that doesn't serve it well. And you know, our our financial aid uh director uh likes to say, you know, one of the problems with the Department of Education is that they don't care whether you are um, you know, a university with 25,000 students and a financial aid office of 25 or 30 people, or you are a small school with 75 students and half a person in your financial aid office, you all have the same regulations that you have to follow. And you have to follow all of them to the same extent. They don't give you any grace, right? Um, and and and that leaves schools really in a difficult and often vulnerable position. And we've seen folks, you know, get onto the bad side of the Department of Education. Um, and and those those penalties can be significant and it can be financial for the school.
SPEAKER_02:Right, and and it can be devastating too. I mean, the fines from from that and what the federal government wants. Um, I want to we haven't talked about this, but but I want to throw this by you. There's been a lot of discussion in the field in the last few years about executive turnover, you know, presidents and chief academic officers. Um what we haven't talked about is like the cabinet level, the next level down, you know, CFOs, CIOs, what you're talking about, uh even financial aid directors and in what that looks like. I I would see that you know, one of the things that admin wise would be beneficial to is is one the strategy. Because even sometimes when you're growing somebody into a position, they may not be thinking on that level. But two, uh, in terms of turnover for some very key roles. Um, you know, a good CFO is is worth her or his weight in gold. Um somebody who can think in certain levels, right? That you may not be able to land. So talk to me a little bit about how you're seeing that if you're seeing schools approach you in that way.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. You know, one of the things we definitely want to try to address is this issue of the continuity of leadership, the continuity of service that schools are able to um, you know, provide. Um, I mentioned earlier we what we found when we were doing our research is in a lot of cases offices were were going empty for a long time. Well, what's the implication of that? Then that service is not, you know, or that work is not getting done. Uh and that that can be true in the CFO office, and that can be true at the next level down at the director level. Um, and and the school and its constituents are are not well served in in that kind of situation. But there was another thing that we learned in our research that was really quite fascinating to me as a scholar, I guess. Um and that was that every seminary that we talked to also had some really extraordinary staff. Um, and in many cases, though that extraordinary staff was hired in just the way that I I described earlier as a problem, right? That is that they were hired and they didn't have a background in the area they were hired in. But they were smart and they were hardworking and they were really committed to the mission of the school, and they learned and they figured it out, and they became a really good employee for the seminary. And so the seminary gave them some other things to do too, and they learned those things and became really good at those things, and then they gave them some more stuff to do, right? And they became really good at and they got to a point, Matt, where they became absolutely irreplaceable, yes, because they were so good at so many things and they had their hands in so many areas that when or if they left, the hole was literally impossible to fill. Right. Because there's no one else on the planet that has those competencies in all of those areas, or at least they would be willing or able to come to your seminary, and so that was a different kind of uh of a disruptive threat, or at least a threat to disruption, uh, for seminary leaders. And I would ask them, so what are you going to do when that so-and-so leaves? Because they're really quite extraordinary, right? And and I always got the same answer. It was remarkable. That's too horrible to think about. I just can't think about that. Right. Which I would say the same thing if I was in their shoes. Yes, it's too horrible to think about. I can't think about that. Uh, but the reality is that you know, someday that that amazing person will leave. And the seminary then has to figure out what I am going to do. I'm gonna have to hire three people to do the work of this one.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, that's just not financially feasible for us. Um, and and part of what informs all of that and the ability for that person to grow into all those roles is that so many of them don't require you to be full-time at any of them. Right. Right. So you can you can become uh you know an extraordinary administrator in a lot of areas because they're not they don't call for the same degree of time uh at a seminary. So that's really where the shared service comes in and works beautifully because you say, you know, you really shouldn't hire a full-time person to do this sliver of thing. Right. Uh you don't you don't need that. Um hire somebody like admin wise to come and do that for you, uh, and hopefully do it for you in a very cost-effective way. Um, do it for you in a way that brings the expertise that you need, um, and and get you out of that vicious cycle of you know empty offices or having you know this person that's irreplaceable, and then they leave, and and now you've got this dilemma that you cannot solve.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I think one of the things you said there is it's certainly true. I know from the seminaries I visit, from my own experience, where you have somebody who's got the business card the size of a legal pad because it's you know director of you know financial aid and and and and and uh and and they're also head of the pan party planning committee and orientation and keeper of institutional knowledge and all that, which it which is wonderful. And it's also I think difficult for leadership to get out of that because you you know you see this kind of multiplier effect. The question I think is is what happens when somebody leaves or somebody needs to, you know, move on, retire. Um so what do you because I think that's that seems to be one of the boundaries or or limiters that we think of is that we gotta have somebody in an office. There's gotta be a body there, and then you can just pile on more work. Right. Um, or or they'll get involved. What are you seeing in the field? So tell me, I mean, I've I've seen some folks go, well, I don't know if I can do a with a term in in corporate America as uh fractional rights, uh CFO or fractional marketing officer. Um, and and there's we're probably better than we were five or seven years ago, pre-pan, you know, pre-pandemic. But how are you seeing schools um talk to you? How are you seeing them in whether embrace this or not, the questions, concerns they have?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, right. You know, in a lot of cases, um where schools will come and approach us, uh, and it makes a lot of sense, is in a time of transition. So they have somebody that's already left or is leaving. Um, or in some cases, Matt, you know, we'll see a job posting and and I'll reach out to the school to say, I see you have this open position. You know, have you ever thought about you know, service like ours? Um, so that's where a lot of schools will uh will approach us, um, you know, in that in that time of transition or anticipated transition, uh, where we can come in and uh and fill a needed role. There are other circumstances that are different where a school may come to us because they have to do a re-org uh for usually for financial purposes. Um they know that they have to do something differently, uh, and they reach out to us um, you know, at a couple of levels. One is can you help us with that work? Right. Right. And that's that's where the CFO service comes in often. And so in some cases, the HR service. You know, how do you help us think about how to do that well? Uh and and including, by the way, Matt, you know, how do you how do you do that, you know, responsibly with your with your staff? Um, but but certainly how do you handle that from a financial perspective, from an HR perspective, from a legal perspective, those sorts of of things. So they may come to us for that level of expertise and and strategic support, uh, but also uh to then fill some of those roles uh for for the school so that they can uh achieve some of those financial goals that they need to. So those are kind of the two primary ways that schools tend to come to us.
SPEAKER_02:Do you see that uh leaders, boards, or uh or executive officers are looking more at this? Are they more open to this kind of project than they they may have been a few years ago?
SPEAKER_00:You know, there's a lot of skepticism coming into this. And I heard it even when I was dreaming about this years ago as something that I thought could could really help seminaries and other small faith-based schools. Um, you know, I heard, yeah, it's a great idea, but nobody's gonna do it because people are too used to doing things on their own. Right. Everybody thinks that they're so unique that only they can do it and do it in their way. And I think that some of that sentiment still exists, Matt, but it's been a pleasant surprise, actually, to see that schools are much more open to the notion of you know contracting with an organization for a service or more than one service, because that's one of the things we're trying to do is hey, you know, it's hard to manage multiple providers of things. Um wouldn't it be better if you had one organization that you could work with and engage um who who could do multiple things for you? Um but there's been a lot more openness to the idea than I think even I expected, and certainly some of the the naysayers from from a decade or so ago. And I think that's partly because the world has changed. Yeah uh and people organizations are using shared services a lot more, and so it's just part of our our ethos. But you know, I I I heard a term not long ago that stuck with me. I'd never heard the term before, um, but it it made sense for for what we're seeing right now, and and this person talked about a shared economy or the shared economy. Uh, and that and what it what the person was getting at there was we're just a lot more used to sharing things. Yes, we use Uber, we share cars, right? Uh we use Airbnb, uh, we so we share homes. Um, we we share a lot of things, and so it's it's maybe a little bit more natural for us to think about are there other things that we can share in other areas of our life, uh, or in this case in our work in at our institution that would help us. It's not a threat to us, it's actually making our our life and work better.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Give me a as we close, give me a sense of what you would tell a board. You know, boards come at this as a different level. They may be used to walking by people in offices when they visit, they may be used to hearing reports from CFOs, uh, from financial aid directors, etc. What's the messaging to the board? What do you want the board to think about?
SPEAKER_00:The the the main thing I would want a board to think about is how it is that shared services can ultimately help your school achieve its mission. That yes, it is absolutely critical that you free financial resources. And maybe you're thinking about that in the tens of thousands of dollars, or maybe you're thinking about that in the hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. And I think shared services has that kind of impact from the tens of thousands to the hundreds of thousands. Uh, so yes, that's important. And yes, it's important that your school needs greater access to expertise. And I can assure you that your institution needs to mitigate its risk, much of which that it doesn't even understand that it has. Schools are way too accustomed to a risk profile that they've accepted because of a financial reality that they have. Well, we're small and we're under-resourced, so that's just the way we have to live. And they don't even think about it, but it it it's it's placing them in precarious situations that are unnecessary. So all of those things are important. The financial piece is important, the expertise piece is important, the risk piece is important. But in the end of the day, you know, all of those things really need to be seen as tools for you to be able to focus your resources on your mission. So, why would you want to take on all of these other responsibilities and challenges that keep you from doing and achieving that mission? How can you think more creatively and energetically about your programs, about the people that are teaching those programs, about the students who are enrolling in those programs? You know, can you stay focused on that work and free yourself up from the other pieces or free the institution up from those other pieces? Um, that's really where I would want a board to think about the opportunity here and what's at stake. Um, because I think that's where where really the seminaries will benefit the most.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think it's an interesting time. I mean, if you were to start a seminary today, you would probably do some things differently, right? I I think of the strength finder movement of, you know, when that that came out in the 90s and they said, quit doing what you're not good at. Yes, you know, find others who can do it. And and I don't know that we've taken that to an organizational level and said, you know, what is it who we really are? And then where can we have others come in to help us?
SPEAKER_00:That that's that's absolutely right. Yeah, we that you know, we we don't need to do everything on our own. And in fact, we can do things better if we are partnering in strategic ways that allow us to do the things that we're most passionate about and frankly best at, and do more of those things and do them better.
SPEAKER_02:I think that's a good place to finish. Jeff, it's been wonderful, as always, talking to you. Appreciate what you're doing. We'll put a link to admin wise in uh on the podcast page, which people will be able to find at intrust.org slash podcast. Jeff, thanks so much for the great conversation.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks, Matt. Really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you for listening to the Intrust Center's Good Governance Podcast. For more information about this podcast, other episodes, and additional resources, visit intrust.org.