Doomed for the Drawer: Alex Montgomery on What Makes a Nonprofit Durable

Why do some nonprofit strategic plans become how an organization actually works, while others get approved, praised, and quietly put in a drawer?

Alex Montgomery has spent more than 25 years inside the nonprofit world in nearly every seat there is: lawyer, Skadden Fellow, fundraiser, operator, executive. Today she consults with nonprofits on strategy, leadership transitions, and board governance as Managing Director at Team VKA. In this conversation we get into what boards get wrong at every stage of a nonprofit's life cycle, why the best strategic plan she ever built happened in a coffee shop, the difference between redirecting work and piling it on, whether a plan should survive a leadership change, and the question she wishes every board member would ask at their next meeting.

Find Alex and Team VKA at teamvka.com or alex@teamvka.com.

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Transcript

Marc (00:04.92)
You're listening to Marc My Words, real conversations at the intersections of truth, story, and what really matters. I'm Marc Bulandr, joined by my creative partner, Verity Gray, an AI voice grounded in nuance, empathy, and insight. Together, we explore what it means to live and lead with intention. Let's get into it. Welcome to Marc My Words, where we talk about truth, transition, and transformation.

Today we're talking about why some nonprofit strategic plans become part of how an organization actually operates, while others get approved, praised, and quietly get put in a drawer, and why the difference almost never shows up in a dashboard. My guest today is Alex Montgomery. Alex is a lawyer by training, University of Chicago.

Alex started her career as a Skadden Fellow, representing survivors of domestic violence. That was the beginning of more than 25 years inside the nonprofit world in just about every seat there is. Fundraising, operations, executive leadership. Today, Alex is a managing director of Team VKA, where she consults with nonprofits on strategy, leadership,

transitions and board governance, which means she's the person organizations call when the plan on paper and the organization in real life have stopped talking to each other. Alex likes to say her job is to answer the so what question. And that's exactly what we're going to do for the next hour. Alex, welcome to the show.

Alex (01:51.79)
Thanks for having me, Marc.

Marc (01:53.036)
Before we get into the work, beyond the resume, what part of your path shaped the way you see nonprofit leadership today?

Alex (02:03.48)
So a couple of things, I was actually just talking to a college student earlier this morning about how he just finished law school, but he wants to help people and he's not sure if that means actually being a lawyer or working in some other way. And I said, one of the things that I found that from my legal training is the thread through all my work is what we learned, which is issue spotting. Like what is the true

problem? What is the critical piece of the problem or the critical thing that needs to be fixed in order to make movement? Because it's very easy when you're working somewhere that has fires everywhere. If you're working in nonprofits, there are fires everywhere all the time. That is constant. There's never a day where everything's, you know, you're dealing with people who have multiple issues. You're dealing with underfunded organizations. And so what is the one thing we can work on or one

practice we can shift or one way to solve a problem that will really truly be a lever for change. So that's one thing that has remained true throughout my old career. And then a second thing is because of all that pressure, making sure that organizations are nice places to work despite it. So the culture of organizations is also something that's really become increasingly critical to me as I'm working with nonprofits.

Marc (03:29.838)
You know, one of the things that struck me when you were talking through this and having been publicly held companies where you'd have boards of directors that have really a different set of fiduciary responsibilities. There's a lot more risk when you're with companies that are nonprofit. I feel in terms of some of the economic liabilities that can be associated with that. But when you talk about, when you think about it, you talk about boards of nonprofits. What's been your experience in the boards you've worked with, the board makeup, what makes a good board and are there any trends that you see in best practices on how to find the right board members at any given nonprofit?

Alex (04:22.936)
So my first reaction to that question is there are different phases in the life cycle of a nonprofit. So the right board will change depending on where you are in that life cycle. And by that, I mean, I worked with a friend who was starting a nonprofit from scratch, from the ground. So her board is her and her neighbors. And so when she met in the neighborhood, one thing that I advised her at that very early stage is make sure that your board members really believe in what you're trying to accomplish and then make sure that you've got board members that hit different skill sets that you need. want your finance person, you want your marketing person, and you want your subject matter expert. This was a, this is for musical theater and that was my friend, but you want, but one thing that she sort of missed was not everyone was there for what she wanted it to be about. And that's causing a lot of conflict.

They're like, I think this organization should be this. I think it should be that. So that's sort of that really early phase. As you move into more maturity as a nonprofit, you have paid staff, you have funding coming in, you're starting to create structures. Your board should start sort of detaching from that day to day and really be about, you have the right processes and procedures? And also frankly, fundraising. Are you your friends to...

Donate money, do you believe in this? Are you showing up to meetings and helping? And then at really high levels of maturity, you're talking about like the Art Institute, that's just money. Just bringing in money and while they are overseeing the organization, the organization should be well-staffed to be well-run. So it really depends on where you are in that nonprofit life cycle.

Marc (06:08.554)
So speaking of this, and I think this ties in so nicely to this concept of durability. So when you talk about the board makeup, I get you in that depending on where you're at, different skill sets will come into play and maybe others that were on the board just naturally make a transition out. But talk to me a bit about your thoughts and expectations around board. What's the board's role in fundraising?

Alex (06:45.782)
Yeah, so I mean, I think that's the kind of thing that a lot of people might be uncomfortable with. But the truth of how nonprofits run is you constantly have to be developing relationships and fundraising constantly. And so you really want your board to understand that and be a part of that. Now, some board members are going to have a lot of contacts, maybe wealthy contacts. And that is they're sort of evangelists for the organization and trying to bring in their friends and contacts to donate. Others may not have that kind of network, but they still should be evangelizing. What you really need is to continue sort of the message of your organization that hopefully leads to fundraising, whether through events or connections at foundations or whoever, the constant networking. And so that is one of the most valuable parts of what a board member can do for an organization. So a board member who comes to meeting hopefully contributes or comes to meeting and doesn't contribute and then doesn't evangelize is just less useful to the nonprofits. It's constantly looking to find connections for raising money to keep continuing the mission.

Marc (08:02.35)
Expanding a bit on this on this concept of durability and and I want you to think about this in the context of maybe one real organization in in your experiences thinking about some of the different decision making the conflicts turning points I want to I want to talk about because really fundraising is just one part of what an overall strategic plan would be so when you think about the creation of a strategic plan and all the iterations that takes place. Once a strategic plan is approved, what do you think has to happen in the next 90 days that tells you whether it's gonna live or die?

Alex (08:50.926)
So I would actually go back to the process, which is what you said at the beginning, right? The difference between it ends up in a drawer versus it's active. I feel like even the term strategic plan has to people this like mystical, like it's sort of a magical thing that has to operate a certain way. I worked at a school and I worked, I was the head of operations and I worked collaboratively with the principal. And I think our best annual strategic plans was the two of us in a coffee shop being what is important to us and what can we actually accomplish this year? And then let's make that our goals and then go back and plan our year accordingly. So I think first is who's involved in creating this strategic plan. I've also been involved in strategic planning process. That's essentially the board and maybe a couple of staff. How is that gonna work? The board then goes home. They're like, okay, bye. Now I'm gonna hand this to the staff, wasn't in the room.

Who still has their own work and did you just add work? Was anybody involved in that? That ends up in a drawer. That you're sending out to say, you wanted me to do a strategic plan, I didn't want to hear you go. But the truth of my day-to-day work has not changed because you didn't accommodate for that. So that kind of strategic planning process, which is often how people think of it, like, oh, the board's gonna do this and they'll come up with all these goals and objectives and they'll work, then they'll hand it to the staff and they'll go home and the staff will say,

I already have a full time to what, how do I incorporate that? So that, that's how you're handed that. don't know. The next 90 days are, what do you want me to stop doing in order to do these things? What do you mean? And then you're essentially redoing the strategic plan. So to me, you want to sort of have everybody engaged. And then the next 90 days are, okay, I already know what I was thinking so I can talk about how I'm going to adjust my work to get towards these goals.

Marc (10:44.418)
Thinking about the creation of a strategic plan, you had mentioned, know, some of the best ones are within, you know, with just a couple people in a coffee shop, right? And then, then magic happens. How do you, well, I guess my question would be two things. Number one, how do you identify within the nonprofit who those go-to people are? And then secondarily, who within the organization do you think should have ownership of the creation of the strategic plan.

Alex (11:19.896)
I think, I mean, I'm just a really big believer in all levels. I don't believe in, you've got this title, so that's where it stops. Or, you're at this direct service level, so I'm not even gonna talk to you. I think it's kind of the opposite. think, I believe in enabling leadership and that the people doing the work know the most about the work. And so that a lot of people should be involved. And the owner, should be the person who's owning that work anyway. think again, if you have a big organization and you leave it at the CEO, the people two or three levels down are like, that's not gonna work. That's actually not what we need to do. So if you have them in the room as subject matter experts, you make sure that whatever the strategic, that aspect of the strategic plan is trying to accomplish, you've got the person who's actually gonna operationalize it, a part of what that strategy is. Because sometimes you can get these big, big high-minded goals

And if that person who's not going to implement it has a vision for how it's going to be implemented, you're on a path to it not working out. But if you say, this is sort of what I'm trying to get at. Now, let me bring in the people who do the work, the operational executors and who are directly the clients and say, first, let me smell test this. This is where I think we need to go. You know, how do you experience this idea? And then if they say, if once you get to agreement, you hand it to them and say, okay, figure out how to get us to A.

let me know, but you figure it out. Because it's like, if you haven't done the work, how can you tell them how to get them to A? So I just really believe in engaging on all levels and assuming that everyone wants to get to goal A. And they may have different ways of getting there, but the closer you are to the work, the better you'll be able to figure out the path.

Marc (13:08.576)
And it sounds like it's gotta be the lead. Whoever the lead is on this has to be the employee of the foundation, not the board member. So before I go on to another question that I have against that, let's talk about that in your experiences. How often does that happen where you have a leader at?

at the, you know, a paid person at the foundation versus the board member. Have you seen, have you seen issues where there's a butting of heads? Have you seen one, you know, where you've seen a board member take ownership and wants that, or have you seen a, I'm just curious overall what you're seeing in terms of the creation of that and what are best practices and what sort of conflicts have you seen that?

could be avoided.

Alex (14:05.55)
I think a lot of it comes down to the board's trust of the staff. So if there isn't trust of the staff, if there's a sense that the board's like, know the right thing and I don't think you do, that's where you may have a board trying to get what I consider to be overly involved in the strategic planning. Like if you're not doing the work and you don't have both the background of what that work takes and also you're not gonna be the one implementing.

It doesn't make sense to me that you're the final say in what this plan should be. But if the board doesn't trust the staff, that can happen. And that's a different problem. Because if the board doesn't trust the staff, then you need to figure out, should that staff be there? Should that board be there? Do you believe in this organization? Do you believe in how it's being run? If you don't, you should be speaking up to fix that, or you might not want to be on the board. But if you do have trust,

then that back and forth is easy. So I've worked in, fortunately, many positive environments like that. We've had very good relationships with the board. And I know what their role is, and they know what my role is. And they're happy to say, we come to an agreement, and they're happy to hand it to me. And then I go off and do it because there's trust. So that's really where it comes into play. Not so much the strategic planning process itself.

but the relationship of the board to the staff and that everyone understands their role. The board understands when to say, this is the end of my role in the beginning of yours, and I trust you and that's okay with me. And the staff also saying, I have a good relationship with the board, so we all want the same thing. So this is not a problem to sort of work together this way.

Marc (15:47.006)
What you just said struck me that this idea of almost creating, again, I want to hear, I want to hear your thoughts on this, but a clear definition of the roles and responsibilities of the participants, be it on staff or on the board. What is your experiences been in, nonprofits in terms of the

roles and responsibilities of a title at a, you know, do people have a really clear understanding of what their day to day needs to be and what they need to be focused on.

Alex (16:28.544)
In terms of board members or staff, board members? Both. Yeah. I think they're different. So for board members, like I said, the phases of a nonprofit, it can get messy. So early on to moving into like some level of maturity is where the board member, cause you go from what's called a working board, like they're actually doing the work of the nonprofit to stepping back.

And that's where people are figuring out where they should be. And that can be really messy because you do have board members who end up being staffed or you have board members who want to do the work, but it stops being their job. So that part is just messy. And I think you board members of nonprofits are typically not working in nonprofits. So you've got this weird dichotomy of like, it's your job to be overseeing a nonprofit, but you actually don't understand the work as much as the people doing your work.

And so there is, I think the board member understanding of their role. The more mature the organization, the easier it is because you can talk to someone and say, this is what we want. We want you to come to board meetings. We want you to participate and help with our marketing and our finance from a high level and then go back to your regular life. And they're like, great, got it. And so you, you do need to educate every board member if they're new to it and what this looks like. For staff, it's a job, like any job. So it should be clear.

you know, both like what you're responsible for, but the higher up you are, you do start to understand the board is my boss. I've had that many times with my boss is the board, but the board is like, I don't even, I understand your work, but I've never done it. I've worked in a nonprofit. And so I have to do a lot of guiding where I'm like, this is what you need to know. I will tell you anything you want to know, but this is what you need to know and react to or be aware of to do your duty. And I'm.

mostly pretty independent. will say it's not, it's one of those, this relationship of the board overseeing nonprofits, it has many risks to it because the board is not a great supervisor of a staff because it's just not like built that way. So to me, it's fraught.

Alex (18:43.822)
But in the best of times, if you've got that trust and everybody is, you know, under and clear about like, I want to do a good job. We all want the same thing for this organization. I'm a professional and you are here with me, then it can work well. When it doesn't work well, it's sort of hard to find its way. If the staff person, if the staff leader isn't great, it's really hard to find your way out of that. Cause the board is acting as a group and it's sort of not sure what to do.

Marc (19:11.31)
One of the struggles I've had, because I've sat on boards of nonprofits during my 35 years of working for publicly held companies and sales roles that have these revenue expectations and you don't make them, you're fired. mean, it's a very, you know, and one of the things that I found, actually my wife and you know, Jennifer well,

has, has helped guide me or counsel me on that is that, you know, your role as a board member, if you're going into nonprofit, you can't come in with that level of aggressiveness that you have when you're working at, at, at publicly held companies. And that is, that's almost like one of those things that would be a good.

sort of reminder, because I think a lot of board members that come in that have that, I don't think they're doing that intentionally. I don't think they want to come in and they want to intentionally upset people. However, if they're used to doing something in their current role, and then they're coming in here, some of that can bleed over and some of it can create not such great feelings. And just one other thing that struck me that I think is,

A best practice that I brought in from the corporate side and maybe not, maybe, maybe some more sophisticated nonprofits do that. A lot of the ones that I've been with have been mostly kind of startups with some a little more, a little more developed, but there's this concept. And have you heard of the concept of, of a racy form? R a R a C I. And it seems to me that in, in a lot of respect, if we want to make sure.

that each of the people associated on a strategic plan knows who's responsible, knows who's accountable, knows who needs to be consulted, needs to be informed. Do you see either a firm implementation of RACI or a rough one in the strategic plans that you've been a part of?

Alex (21:28.062)
Yes, they would. In my experience, again, all of that would be paid staff, right? So unless you want to just put board under like in for consulted informed, you know, maybe in there, maybe they're in the sea or the eye, the consultant or the informed, they're not responsible or accountable in the sense that the work itself is being driven by the staff, you know, is being counted by, you know, maybe they're accountable and that they're accountable to the organization. But certainly in organizations where

You have multiple departments. You have stakeholders at different levels. You have important initiatives that are being done by one person, but you really need the CEO to know that they're somewhere on that racy chart. But I would still say in terms of the board question that unless maybe you've got some fundraising stuff in there, but really the other pieces in nonprofits, boards are volunteer. They're volunteers who go to your meetings.

You don't really say, you had a deadline, you know, board member, where's your work product? That's not how it works. You know, you just sort of like you were talking about being tough. The relationship is different to me, because your North Star in that relationship is who are you trying to help? That's what I always think about. Who are you trying to help? And actually for nonprofits, I always say, ideally you'd close your doors. We did it. I mean, it doesn't happen, but

We did it, we solved the societal problem. Let's close our doors. It's not to grow forever. We don't want the problem to get bigger. We want to say, we've ended homeless lists. So we don't need this organization anymore, which is a really different mindset. So not to digress, but I think that's the other piece is that board members are coming to feel good, to try to help the staff and the organization and to, you know, and then they go home. So giving them a bunch of work or a bunch of responsibility doesn't typically work.

Marc (23:22.094)
Well, one other question and then we're going to move on to, to some, to some examples you've, you've, you've experienced, but thinking about the executive director or the CEO or the person that is, know, ultimately is running, you know, is the face of the organization, right? As the, you know, the head, whatever you want to want to call them, what are their, so their staff, their paid, what is their

obligation in terms of fundraising relative to their salary.

Alex (23:57.39)
depending on the maturity of the organization, but in general, it's their number one job. It really should be their number one job. I've a couple times heard of executive directors thinking that that wasn't a core part of their job and I've never understood that because the organization will not be there if there's not fundraising and people want to talk to the CEO and the CEO is the face and sort of embodies the organization. So particularly as an organization matures and a lot of the operational work.

is at other levels. In my experience, like a CEO is out all the time. Fundraising, doing maybe some thought leadership, doing some like sort of visioning and sort of thinking how the organization can grow and adapt and pivot. But a huge portion of our job is fundraising. And you may have a fundraising team and they are constantly working with the CEO and executive director, just constantly.

Marc (24:52.184)
Do you think that part of the measurement of CEO's performance is to tie, so let's say just for ease of discussion, let's say they're compensated a couple hundred thousand dollars a year. Do you think that there should be a percentage 2X, 3X to their salary that would be a metric to determine their effectiveness within the organization?

Alex (25:21.582)
I struggle with that because the North Star is whatever your organization's mission is. While money is important, it's a vehicle to that. So if we tie your effectiveness to money, we're losing sight of that, right? We're losing sight of what this organization is about. Now, is it critical? And also a struggle with what control you have over that. I can only imagine your sales career, right?

are like, I can control my effort, but I can't force people to give me money or buy things, you know? And so really making sure that that, you know, KPI or that metric is tied to the right things. can also imagine a nonprofit where, know, you had, imagine what's happening now with public funding, you know, and with organist, you know, philanthropic organizations changing their strategy.

or changing their leaders, then what happens is that they'll just say, listen, we loved funding you, but we're going in a direction and you don't fit anymore. And so there's a lot of reasons, or you have some sort of upheaval at your organization and you need to pivot and adjust and maybe you did a great job. That's not gonna be tied to a dollar amount. So I struggle with using a dollar amount as an effectiveness metric when there's so many other inputs. And when that's...

that while their job is to raise money, their job is to keep the organization healthy and strong. And that's a really big part of it, but there are other parts of it. So I know it's sort of both sides, like it's your number one job, but also don't use that as a metric. You could use it as a metric, but not as a number one. And I think you can also explain.

Marc (27:04.814)
It's got to be a part of, you know, these sort of five to eight things are the key things. you know, revenue has to be part of it because, or I call revenue, we call it fundraising, but, you know, it's effectively the same thing. It's money.

Alex (27:21.558)
You could also have budget health. And then you of course want to contextualize it because I guess I think of it not so much as like how much money did you raise, but like is our whole budget healthy? Because when it's money raised, it does sound a little bit more like a sales target. As opposed to is our budget reflecting our priorities and can we do what we want to do? So just looking at it a little bit more in context.

Marc (27:47.559)
Take me inside an organization where a plan really did become part of how people worked. What made the difference?

Alex (27:57.452)
I mean, I would go back to, I'm actually working on one, actually maybe I'm working, we're working on one now and there's sort of two pieces to it. I think it's going fairly well, though there's a little bit of like, this is what I want you to do. And like, you can't be too prescriptive, but I would say looking at a strategic priority and then handing it over for sort of operational implementation. So that sort of goes back to what I was saying before, where you have an

an organization that on the higher levels, at the board level, but also at leadership level said, okay, these are the strategic priorities. This is sort of the kinds of things we want this organization to do. This is the goal we have. The goal we have is to develop our partnerships and relationships with other organizations, for example, because we think that's gonna both, that just deepens the work, that helps the community. That's just a smart way to work. we wanna be better and more formalized about that.

Okay, that's it. So now we're gonna say there are multiple ways that we do this work. We do it actually in our marketing communications team. We do it in our government affairs team. We do it in our community engagement team. You know, we do it with these other projects and programs. And so we're gonna hand it to those teams and say, now implement this. Figure out, first of all, if you're already doing this, can we document it to sort of understand where we are and build upon it?

And also keep this in mind that this is a strategic priority. It's not just something that's at the side of your work. You may have been doing it already. It's now in the center of your work. I think that process that I've seen can be really effective. We're still sort of in the middle of it. I also have a little data background. So I'm like, yeah, I gotta have baseline. And then we gotta be able to prove that we moved up. You know, we had this many partners and now we have this many partners. How do we define a partner? You know, all that work. So that's sort of, guess, an example of a strategic plan.

like a process of how you pass that ball and keep it moving forward.

Marc (29:59.598)
So building on that, where do plans most often go wrong? Plan, the process that built it, or condition, landed.

Alex (30:11.192)
Yeah, I think that the sort of the plan and the drawer that you talked about before, where I've been a part of a plan where it was like, let's, this is a whole new, you know, we should do all of these things. So you have a very busy, fully run organization and you come over the streets, your client says, here's all the other things we should be doing. And again, you don't have staff in the room or you don't have the right staff in the room. That's doomed to fail because you've got.

a running organization that's got plenty of work to do and now you're just piling something on top of it and calling it the new strategic plan as opposed to this is the work we're doing. Is it getting us where we want to go? And if the answer is yes, how do we grow it and move more resources there? And if it's no, we should pivot or if it's yes and it is, but maybe we should tweak the direction that makes a lot more sense, which is why I talk about the strategic plan and the coffee shop.

We know what's happening on the ground and we also know where we want the organization to go. And so we're not piling on work, we're redirecting work. I guess that's what I would say is the difference. Giving a whole new set of work is doomed for the drawer. Giving a redirect that involves everyone could mean you can get better. can head closer to the direction you want to go.

Marc (31:27.82)
Two things come to mind as you say that number one, you have this creation of a great plan and you've got all the stakeholders associated with it. What's the execution cadence with the team track your progress?

Alex (31:46.444)
I like the track your progress, but first I want to say like, like how or if your work changes, right? Like, okay, you handed me the strategic plan. Here's what I do every day. I'm a big believer in the operational workflow too. Like every day I, I, you know, I deal with clients and here's the intakes and here's what I do every day. So number one is, we need to change any of that? You know, do we want to track something that we're not already tracking? Do we want to ask some questions? We're not already like, is there a change to your day-to-day work? Because I think we sort of ignore.

that there are habits and workflows and that we say, but now we have a strategic plan. I'm like, yeah, but how am I going to show up differently at my job tomorrow? And what am I going to do based on this strategic plan? You got to figure that out. And as you figure that out, you say, okay, how do we know what we're doing today and how we will be able to measure against it? And so give a really simple example, like, we're going to do, we want to reach more clients.

Right? we want, we have actually working on an initiative where in an organization's got a lot of programs and clients come in for one program. We want to make sure clients are aware of and access all the programs they might need. So, okay. Step one is you've got to show up differently at that intake. Cause you're like, oh, you're here for this program. I signed you up for this program to buy. Now we got to say you're here for this program. The signs you up for this program. Did you know about these other programs or any of these of interest to you? Oh yes. We'll sign you up for that program.

So what we need to start with is how many programs our clients engaged in. And then we got to keep tracking that to see if we engage them in more programs. But you've got to like back into the operational workflow, figure out what you've got as your baseline and then how you're going to measure against it. And, or maybe they aren't going to sign up for more programs, but maybe we want to track that we told them because again, you can't control that. It affords them.

So you gotta be like, here, we told all these people about the programs and before we had it. So making that strategic plan real in terms of what you show up and do every day at your job. And then what is it you wanna know?

Marc (33:53.036)
Yes, makes a lot of sense. And there's, there's a couple of things that made me, made me think about what you said there. Number one, there has to be. Pliability on the plan, right. In that the create the initial creation of the plan is, is a lot of theory. It's, and especially if it's, if it's, if it's a new plan, right. And then you come into the practice and then you look at the practical realities of it and you have to have.

You have have pliability in terms of being able to shift things around a little bit to make sure that the best people are assigned to the, you know, the best tasks and, you know, not creating unanticipated or unknown conflict. Would you agree? So let's talk about a left field thing that happens sometimes. The leader of the organization decides.

Alex (34:38.562)
Yeah, for sure.

Marc (34:48.413)
Right as you're starting to implement the plan, they're moving on. They've got a new, they got a new role. got to do something. And now you've got to face the organization, get this whole plan built around. Well, first of all, that's, that's a, maybe a harder question to ask, but does the, does the plan survive a change in leadership?

Alex (35:11.8)
So if the plan is built around a leader, you've got a problem to me. Because the North Star is who the organization's trying to help. Keep going back to this, right? This is also the difference between sometimes a for-profit and non-profit mindset, where I'm like, ultimate goal, the ultimate vision for the organization is who are you trying to help? is this...

this, you know, are we saving animals? Are we helping immigrants and refugees? Is this environmental justice? That is what it's about. Should not be about personality of the person or the person's visions in their head. So it really should be, does the plan help us, you know, reduce plastics? Does the plan help us, you know, feed people? If it does, and it is a strong plan towards that goal, then

The executive director of leaving shouldn't change that. Now, does that throw some operations into mayhem? Does that cause difficulties with fundraising because it was a charismatic executive director who had all these great relationships that were with that person that might be tricky to hold onto for the organization? Sure, there's gonna be a lot of stuff to worry about there. But the strategic plan should be to achieve, you know, to achieve

goals that are helping you feed people or reduce plastics or whatever. And so it shouldn't be like, well, we did this because Joe, the executive director said, this is what matters. every there shouldn't be, you should be like, I mean, I'm sad Joe's leaving, but this is going to help feed people. Let's keep going. So hopefully it shouldn't matter.

Marc (36:57.774)
I was just gonna say, sounds like the best plans transcend any one leader.

Alex (37:06.046)
And, and I always saying on my teams, I don't like to say people get hit by a bus. said, if someone wins the lottery and moves to Bali, can we keep going? Do we, do we know what we're doing? Are things documented? Do we know what we're doing and why? Because if it's relying on Joe and he's in Bali, he's not answering his phone, you know, is everything going to fall apart? That's partially operations, but yeah, it shouldn't be.

It shouldn't be a personality or a person. It should be the mission of the organization.

Marc (37:38.29)
One more question around this concept of durability and thinking about this question is durability always the goal. When does a nonprofit cross the line from protecting the mission to protecting the institution?

Alex (37:54.136)
So I will say that in my experience of trying to solve the problems of society, they don't often get solved. You're not often like, no, well, there's no more hungry people. But that said, I've seen a big trend. mean, this is maybe not as recent, but a few years ago there was a big trend and funders often like this of nonprofits merging.

with other nonprofits and it's really tricky. And that it sort of gets at your question of, know, in an organization might be shrinking or it might have something important to do, but as a standalone, it can't be as strong. And so, you know, but it's hard because people fall in love with the organization and its history and the people. And you just sort of.

you can't imagine sort of it not being the way it is. And you may be doing good work, but it's so small, the budget's so small that you can't, you know, pay enough in salaries or you can't, you know, can't fundraise enough. And so that's a definitely a different, a difficult process, but there are organizations, know Forefront's an organization that, you know, works with a lot of nonprofits and has helped with some sort of merging. you know, your organization becomes a program within a larger organization. So much like

boards supervising executive directors, nonprofits merging into other nonprofits is a really tricky, messy business, but I have seen it be successful and it sort of preserves that work in a more operationally healthy way. So I'm not sure if that's exactly what your question is, but those are the only two times I would think about what it means for a nonprofit to no longer need to exist.

Marc (39:37.556)
It absolutely does. I want to move on to this. One of the things that struck me and why I wanted to have you come on is you talked about this. So what? Here's the, this is the so what question and you've said, so what is how you filter the world. So tell me about a moment when asking it changed an actual decision.

Alex (40:04.458)
I I don't know about changing an actual decision, but I find often when I ask the question, it's about, you know, people are, I'm gonna use it in the span of data, because I think that's how we were talking about it, right? Like people talk about, we're gonna have all this data, we're gonna have all this data, we've got to collect all this data, we've got to get more data, we've got to, you know, and first of I'm like, data about what? And you're, or you're talking about data from several sources that may not, or may not be related. And this idea that like,

it will tell you, you'll just have a pile of it and it will say something to you. And to me, it's like, again, who are we trying to help? So what? Like you can collect all this information, but what are you gonna do with it? And so for me, you know, in terms of changing decisions, it's really more about like, you want us to go out and collect all this information, but you're not even sure what you're gonna do with it or why you want it. So just hold up.

Until you can answer that question, we're going to do that because you're going to send all these people on wild goose chases and then you're going to say, then you're not even going to circle back. So back up and ask that so what question before you do it. I think often at nonprofits we're moving a million miles an hour and everything is urgent. And so people are like, we don't have to ask that question. But then you spend a lot of effort and it doesn't get you anywhere that you could have been spending otherwise.

I'm like, can we just take a minute? For me, so why not just take a minute before we sort of burst forward in some new initiative.

Marc (41:38.53)
I want to double click a bit on data. I want to talk about data and you and I had a conversation that kind of led up to this. And I think we talked about it a little bit, but I want to, I want to get your perspective on and the way I break it out. again, Jennifer tries to challenge me on this to be not too cerebral in the, in the discussion of it, but, so I'll try that, but you keep me honest.

But when I think about a lot of data that's being used today, so much of it is quantitative, what I would call quantitative data, data that goes into a row and a column. Statistical data, things that you could grab a spreadsheet and put into a program and make some assumptions about it. But then there's this whole other part of data. There's this whole other element of data that I would call qualitative data.

qualitative data, things like, well, maybe taking the 60 minutes that we'll wind up discussing here and taking it and utilizing programs that can chunk the information and the key points that come out of it. Those pieces, the pieces of what maybe happens, the nonverbal cues, the pictures, the

things that go outside of what can be traditionally analyzed in a row and column. How much of that, as I would classify it, qualitative data, how much of that is being used in nonprofits today to make decisions about how.

Alex (43:23.054)
So as you're talking, it's making me think about my team knows I'm always talking about putting things into buckets. So I was like, yeah, you could take this whole podcast and turn it into like themes. Like they have different buckets of like what we were talking about. And then also how I'm always, when I talk to people who are like afraid of data and I'm like, it's just organized information, right? It's just organized information. So I come at that question from sort of an operational lens of like,

Okay, let's organize what we know to help us guide, you know, our decisions or processes. And how much is it being used in nonprofits? It really depends, you know, because it depends on the brains in the room, because some, you know, I'm a lawyer by training, so I things to be organized and logical and I like operations. So I would want to take those things. I am constantly like, how do I take these?

20 things you gave me and put them into three buckets or, you know, like that helps me like orient what we're talking about. Other people are like, I got 20 things to do and I'm just gonna do 20 things. So I'm usually the person in the room saying, hold up, those 20 things should be in a certain order and they should be attached to certain priorities. And then you'll figure out which of the 20 things we should really work on first versus later. So I don't find that it's really, it's necessarily

an organized way of working across nonprofits, but it's certainly something in my many years I've started to use. And now as you said, I'm like, I guess that is data, but I don't think about it as data, but it sort of is. It's qualitative data.

Marc (44:59.574)
Well, and I, and I was just thinking about it in the way I was explaining it. And maybe, maybe, maybe another way to net it out is think of it structured versus unstructured data, structured data is I know Alex Montgomery gave a hundred dollars every year for the last seven years. We also did a profile piece on Alex and her family on, you know, this and

that whole interview and, you know, has a lot of words and a lot of sentences and a lot of ways that it's not easy to put into a row or a column. It's unstructured conversational data. so thinking about it through the lens of structured versus unstructured data, how much do nonprofits take the time to

analyze unstructured data and bring it together to get a more holistic understanding of whatever it is you're trying to answer.

Alex (46:08.174)
I mean, I'm going to say the truth of the matter is it's very rare nonprofit, particularly when you're talking about mid-sized to smaller, that thinks of that as a discipline, that thinks of it as, let's review what we know and help guide our decision-making. It would typically be under the leader of whatever group. So if you talk about fundraising, they probably do more of that because they're constantly looking at

What are the trends of the giving? What are the trends of the donor? But then there's also a human piece of it. So you can definitely take that unstructured. There's a lot of that, right? Like, what's this person like? What are they interested in? What can we learn about them? So in fundraising, it's a natural part of that work. I don't think they think about it that way. They wouldn't say, I'm analyzing my unstructured qualitative data. They would say, I'm researching and understanding my donor base. And I'm researching and understanding, you know, these particular high net wealth donors.

And if you asked a program, you know, let's say you're, you know, you've got a preschool program. They're like, well we do certain assessments because we have to, when we look at that for how the developmental, you know, the kids and we understand the kids. So they might not call it that. But depending on the organization that may be doing a version of that. But I, they, they wouldn't call it that. They would say, I don't know anything about data. And then you would come and say, you're actually analyzing.

unstructured qualitative data, they would be like, that's a fancy way to say that I'm doing what I know to do, you know, in my job. So, so that would be sort of how I think about it. But in the fundraising realm, the best running teams are most definitely doing versions of that because that's part of understanding their donor base. So that would be good example.

Marc (47:54.69)
So I just have one last question and hard to believe, but we are almost at, we're like almost 54 minutes into this. Unbelievable, but no surprise. Your insights have been just amazing. Here's one question. So what do you wish every nonprofit board would, board member would ask at its next meeting?

Alex (48:22.99)
Well, off the top of my head is how can we help you? That's what we always want support to ask is like, I'm going to help. What do you need help with? What can we do for you leadership organization? You know, because really having that trusting relationship and being like, how do we help your organization succeed? And by that, I mean your organization make progress towards your mission, your goals, you know, your vision for the world. But I'm, I really am. These boards are.

Like I say, comprise of people typically who have not done the work. So ask the experts. Hopefully you trust them. Hopefully they're doing a good job. Ask them what they need from you. And it could just be a cheer. It could just be, wow, you're doing great work. Take a PTO, man. It could be that. But that's maybe not the most strategic question, but often what we wish boards would ask.

Marc (49:19.182)
I love it. love it. All right. So behind me or behind you, you've got Team VKA. I want you to take some time and tell the audience about Team VKA, tell me about the vision. Tell us about, tell the audience how they can find you and, where they, uh,

Alex (49:28.034)
Thank you.

Marc (49:46.252)
you know, where they would best be served and utilizing, you know, the clear thought leadership you bring.

Alex (49:52.802)
Thanks. Yeah, so Team VKA is a nonprofit consulting group with Velia Soto and Kevin Hooper and myself. We worked together in previous life and enjoyed that experience and sort of have a meeting of the minds. And so we work together with typically small to mid-sized nonprofits on operational issues, work governance, some of the strategic thinking.

Staff assessment, often when organizations are transitioned, we've got some leadership transition. And our approach is a lot of the stuff I've talked about today, which is pragmatic, problem solving, understanding the nitty gritty of how the sausage gets made and helping you come up with a plan, supporting you in that plan, holding your hand necessary. So I have experience in operations, in strategic, in...

fundraising and all the back office. Kevin has a background in finance and education and Velia has a background in education and operations and running schools. So whatever kind of work you do, we've probably touched it in some way and we're really here to sort of be a partner in crime and in whatever you want to solve. we're at teamvka.com.

Marc (51:07.598)
TeamVKA.com is the best place to find you. And then if they wanted to, if they wanted to email or get in contact with you directly, Alex, what's.

Alex (51:19.114)
I'm alex@teamvka.com.

Marc (51:21.768)
Alex@teamvka.com. Well, Alex, what a tremendous time here. You made it. You made it real easy for me to be able to just sort of think about, you know, as I think about doing, doing these and I've done some of them, my effectiveness comes by the depth of the questions that you or that you answer. And it just naturally allowed me to think of some that.

You know, I didn't even have here and I love when that happens. And I so appreciate you spending some time and I hope you felt this was a good use of your time as well.

Alex (52:03.202)
Yeah, so fun. Thanks for having me. I love talking about this stuff.

Marc (52:07.234)
That's amazing. I thank you. I wish you wish you all the best and look forward to continuing our conversation as opportunities present themselves.

Alex (52:18.2)
Sounds awesome. look forward to seeing it and say hi to Jennifer for me.

Marc (52:22.166)
I sure will. Thanks for listening to Marc My Words. If this conversation moved you, challenged you, or helped you to see something differently, send it to someone you care about. You can find all my work, full episodes, and coaching info at linktr.ee/marcbulandr. That's L-I-N-K-T-R dot E-E, slash, M-A-R-C-B-U-L-A-N-D-R.

And as always, grace and peace.