Episode 24: 10 Lessons From Working In A Nonprofit

• 1. Other duties as assigned can apply almost anywhere. Bonus: keep a clean trunk.
• 2. People are worth the effort. 
  • Bump the Lamp Theory
  • Thanksgiving at KARM
• 3. Your talent and passion can be a full-time job. 
• 4. It is expensive to run a nonprofit. 
• 5. So much of leadership is listening. 
• 6. Serving a nonprofit isn't just for retired people with extra time. 
• 7. You don't have to be good at everything, but surround yourself with a great time. 
• 8. Age doesn't always define leadership or maturity. 
• 9. Community is essential in our line of work, especially after you clock out. 
• 10. Have FUN! 

Sticky Note: Make your own reflections list today. 

Sponsor: KARM Stores - The Thrift Store With A Mission

Interested in learning more about us? Please visit karm.org or reach out to Celia at clively@karm.org today!

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:10

Hey everybody, welcome to the Homeword Podcast, the show where we illuminate the human stories behind homelessness, redefined what home truly means through real voices, honest conversations, and education that fosters empathy, awareness, and action. Carm is highly rated by Charity Navigator, recognized as the best Christian workplace, and accredited by the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. We are one of 30 rescue missions in the country rated as excellent and distinguished from Citigate. And most recently, we are an Emmy Award-winning organization with our documentary. You can click the link in the show notes to watch that today. I'm your host, Celia Lively, and today I'm on the mic with myself. We're doing things a little bit differently today. So this week is my birthday, and so my birthday always makes me a little reflective. And so we thought of doing the episode a little bit differently. And so I was thinking of different things to title this I'm turning 31 this week, and so I was thinking 10 things I would tell myself 10 years ago, or things that I've learned, or so we settled on things that I've learned since working in a nonprofit. So mostly at CARM, but my career has been a little kind of everywhere in the nonprofit realm. And so I've worked at a church, I've worked at a nursing home, I've worked at an international nonprofit, but I've been here at CARM for over three and a half years now. And so I have some things that I've learned that I think could really apply to anybody who's working in a nonprofit space, whether that be a church or whether you're working here at CARM or in another shelter across America. And so let's settle in. Here's 10 things that I've learned. The first one is other duties as assigned can apply almost anywhere. And we joke about this here at CARM that at the bottom of every job description it says other duties as assigned. And so you never really know what you're getting into, but it's always worth it and it's always really fun. For example, today my team had to help me unload tables to set up for all staff that we're having tomorrow. That's not in any of their job descriptions, but it's part of making this thing happen and part of getting the job done. And we always have a good time when we do it. With that, I would also say keep your trunk clean because you will probably be moving things from time to time. And it's good to have a lot of trunk space. I take my team places, we go out to eat together for lunch, or like today, we were loading and unloading tables for an event tomorrow. And so it's good to have some trunk space. Number two, people are worth it. I have a sign on my desk that says worth the effort. And where this comes from, and so I mentioned that I used to work um at Lifeway, and so one of our core values at LifeWay Summer Camp was to do one more thing. And what that would mean is it's kind of borrowed from Disney World a little bit, actually, is that when somebody would come to you, say it's a youth pastor at Summer Camp, they would come and say, Hey, my student lost their name tag. Can you get me another name tag? Instead of just saying, Oh yeah, name tags are in the lobby, they're under the table. Instead, you walk with them and you go get the name tag and you talk to them while you do it. It's just doing one more thing. And what this comes from actually is from Disney. It's from the Roger Rabbit Bump the Lamp theory. And so I'm gonna read what that means to you because it has reframed my entire leadership mindset. Um, and so bump the lamp came from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which is a movie that came out in 1988. And so in this movie, there is a lamp that is swinging. And this is something you guys probably have never even noticed, but in the background of it, there are shadows. And so what they could have done is they could have left it how it was. Nobody probably would have noticed it was fine. Um, but when the lamp is swinging because somebody bumped the lamp, they wanted the shadows to move with it. And so instead of just leaving it how it was, they went back and manually redrew frame by frame to match the changing shadows and the light intensity. And I think that that is just so cool and really applies to nonprofit work. And honestly, whatever you're doing, whether that's corporate, whether that whether you're a school teacher, whether you're working at a church, anywhere in between, to bump the lamp, to do the things that maybe people would never think of, maybe they would never notice, but it matters. And so doing that one more thing, bump the lamp because people are worth it. Another example with that is my team is in charge of hosting the Thanksgiving celebration for our guest at CARM. Um, and I love this day. It's like our department Super Bowl. It's a lot of fun. We have a hundred volunteers, we serve about 400 meals that day, and we really go all out. And the reason that I love this is because people are worth it. And it it matters to do one more thing. It matters to for the effort. Could we put things on paper plates and just serve scraps? Yeah, I'm sure we could, but that's not what we're gonna do. And so four years ago we made a change. Um my first Thanksgiving year, we made a change, and so we use the same decorations that I use for my wedding. So we have gold chargers, we have centerpieces from our friends at random acts of flowers. Um, we really go all out. We have big tablecloths, and when the guest walks in, they are greeted at the hostess stand and walked to their table. So they're not going through the typical cafeteria line. Um, people are worth it. And so we need to we need to stick to that and treat them as such. Number three, your talent and your passion can in fact be a full-time job. A lot of people might think that a nonprofit is something you do with your church or it's something you volunteer for with your friend group, but you you couldn't actually make a full-time career out of it. And that is not true. You can make a full-time career out of it. You can love something deeply and be super passionate about it and be good at it and turn it into a career. My team would tell you that today. Um, and so I think maybe when I was growing up, I just thought that I always knew I wanted to work in a position that would help people in some way. Um, I didn't know that working in engagement at a nonprofit was a real job. Nobody was doing that at our career fairs at my schools growing up. Um, and so to see that actually in action and to see, oh, you can study communications and work for a faith-based ministry, I think that that is really impactful for someone to see that as a as a grown-up, as a career. You don't just have to do fit into one kind of box. You can you can do something that you're talented at and that you're passionate about. The fourth one is a little random. Um, but my husband and I were actually talking about this the other night that it's expensive to run a nonprofit and to run it well. Um and I know that that's not like flashy or cool to talk about, but I want you to think for a second. Think about your Wi-Fi bill, think about your electric bill, think about how much you spend on toilet paper. Now I want you to multiply that and think of a a nonprofit like CARM where it's 24-7, where there's over 300 people that stay the night here every single night. Think about that food cost and that toilet paper cost and that internet cost, and just to keep the lights on and to make payroll and to make it a good place to be and to work. It's expensive. And so running a nonprofit is more than just having a good heart, and it's more than just having a passion to do something. It it takes a lot of money and a lot of unflashy cool kind of cost to make this place run. And it takes really talented people to run it as well. Number five, so much of leadership is listening, or at least it should be. Um, I feel like probably 80% of my day is listening to my team and checking in with them. We have check-ins with all my direct reports every single week. We meet for 30 minutes or more. Um, and then we have a team meeting every week as well. And so sometimes people, you grow up thinking that leadership is the title, or it's the big paycheck, or it's, oh, you have all these amenities that are available to you. And being a leader is really cool. And I I think I have a cool title, but that is not what's important at all. It's listening to my team and maybe solving a problem that I didn't create and making my team have a space where they feel heard and they feel seen and they feel known. And that in turn makes them better employees and hopefully better people as they go. If you are in a leadership position and you're talking more than you listen, maybe let's have a reflection moment and maybe let's run that back a little bit and um try to listen twice as much as we talk. We're gonna take a break here and hear from our sponsors.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

Today's episode is brought to you by Carm Stores, the thrift store with a mission. Did you know that nearly half of Knox Area Risk Communistry's annual budget is provided by its thrift operations? Over the last 20 years, local shoppers and donors of East Tennessee have turned everyday thrift into real community impact. Log into any Carm Store's location, and you'll find premium clothing brands, fine jewelry, and solid, beautiful furniture. And with thousands of fresh donations arriving daily, every visit is a true treasure hunt. You never know what you'll uncover or whose life you'll help restore. A three-time USA Today Talk Workplace, Carm Store's mission is to reveal Christ to all of our donors, customers, volunteers, and team members, to tell the CARM story at every opportunity, and to provide funding to CARM with 100% of our profits. Swing by any of our 26 locations in East Tennessee. We're open Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

All right, we're coming back with number six. Nonprofits aren't just for retired people with extra time. Now I will tell you, we have over 2,000 volunteers that come and serve here at CARM, and maybe your nonprofit is the same way. Um, and a lot of them are retired people with extra time. And that is great. We literally could not function without those volunteers who are coming to teach the classes and work in the garden and serve in the dorms. But it's not just them that make up our volunteer base. We have so many college-age students who come and serve. Now, granted, we are a college town, and so that helps us a little bit. But one thing I love so very much is we have volunteers who are coming with their parents, praying over our beds who are two years old, and they come in with their parents and they place cards on the bed and they pray. We have volunteers who are 80 years old. We have everywhere in between. It is a multi-generational nonprofit where you can serve as a family, where you can serve as a church or a small group. And I I my faith story is so impacted by serving as a volunteer in nonprofits and giving back to people and wanting to help, whether that's working with our friends over at Keep Knoxville Beautiful or at Young Williams Animal Shelter, or coming here and serving at CARM or maybe wherever you're listening from today, that you don't have to wait until you've made it. You don't have to wait until you're retired and you have a bunch of extra time. You can serve right now where you are. You can make a card of encouragement, you can pray, you can come serve a meal. There are things that you can do today. And so I would encourage you to do that. Number seven, you don't have to be good at everything, but you should surround yourself with people who are great at some things. This one is kind of hard for me because if you know me in real life, you probably know that I love to be the best at things and that I'm kind of a control freak. I'm working on it. I promise that I am. Um, but I am not good at everything. I am not good at math. That's not my journey anymore. Um, but I'm so thankful that we have an accountant here named Joe who is phenomenal and is so smart at math that so that I don't have to be. Um I'm not very good at identifying like properties and the facilities portion of it. And so I'm so glad that we have Steve and Breck who are really good at these things. I'm not the most empathetic person, which again I'm working on that. And so I'm so glad that we have somebody like Morgan and Whitney who are empathetic and can work with our guests in that way and be who they need them to be in that moment. And so I don't have to be good at everything. I need to try and be better. That's not an excuse to just stop working on myself and stop trying to become who God has called me to be, but I don't have to be the best at things, but I need to have the best people on my team. Um, and vice versa, too. You know, I just told you a lot of things that I'm not good at. I am good at hosting an event, and so my team gets to host the events. Um, I am good at having fun, which I don't know how that translates to a resume or a job description, but that is part of our job, is to make this a fun place to be and plan events for our staff to engage. Um, and so I am good at talking to the community, and so that's why I have a podcast, and that's why I go out and talk to churches and business groups, um, because God has gifted me in this way so that other people maybe don't have to do that. And so you don't have to be the best at everything, but surround yourself with really great people. Number eight, age doesn't define leadership or maturity. Now, this one could go a little bit of a little bit of different ways. Um, so I'm turning 31, and by the time you're listening to this, I will have turned 31. Um, but I have people on my team who are both younger than me and older than me. And that was one of the hiccups that I had to kind of go through and a hurdle maybe I had to jump through when I started, um, was that when I started the the direct report that I had was older than my mom. And so that was, you know, just a little bit of different, a little bit of a different mindset to think through of, oh, imagine telling your mom to clock in and out. You know, that's just kind of weird to think about. Um, it's a little bit easier maybe when people are younger than you, and um, and maybe, I don't know, maybe there's some birth order things to go through. I'm the youngest child in my family. Um, maybe there's an authority thing, who's to say? Um, but age doesn't define your leadership capability. Um, I think that it comes a lot from your posture and your willingness to learn and not just be bossy all the time. Um, the two people on my team that are older than me, I've learned so much from Mark and from Fred. Um, and I would have missed that opportunity had I said, oh, well, I only want to hire people younger than me. And I think from their perspective too, what a cool and humble thing it is to have somebody who's younger than you as your leader. And for them to also have that same posture to sit and to learn. Um, it makes us better as a team. I think when we look at a lot of ministry, so much of ministry is like same same age, same stage. Think of your small groups, think of maybe like youth group type of setting. And there's a time and a place for that for sure. Um, but I just think of how much I would have missed out on if I only had people who were around four years about my age. So maybe two years older or two years younger. I would have missed out on so much by the people who were younger than me on my team and the people who were older than me as well. We have so much to learn from each other, and I don't think your birth year is the only thing that defines your leadership capability. It's the posture of your heart. Um, and are you willing to learn? Are you willing to be taught? Are you willing to listen? And then go put these things into practice as well. Number nine, this one is a little harder to talk about, I think. Um, but number nine is that community is essential in our line of work, especially after you clock out. So when I moved to Knoxville, I knew I think three people total, and including my husband. Um, and so I didn't know anybody at work. I didn't have a church, I didn't have a small group, I didn't have a group of friends. Um, it was very lonely. And when I had moved here, um I left a huge community in Nashville. I had deep roots there. I was active in church, I served in the kids' ministry, I hosted a small group at my house, I had a huge group of friends. I was very active at work and was super close with the people that I worked with. And people knew me and I was known. I knew people, I saw people. Um, and so deep roots are a lot harder to dig up. And so when I moved here, I didn't know anybody. Um, I didn't have any friends at work for the first little bit. Um, and I just remember how hard that was. And y'all, there's just something sad about eating Taco Bell in your car by yourself during your lunch break. And it's not glamorous at all. And I just remember how sad I was when I moved here. And this job can be really hard. Any any line of nonprofit ministry is going to be hard. You're gonna see people at their lowest and at their on their worst day. Um and working through that, you have to have community. You have to have people that you can talk to about it, that can listen, um, or that can take your mind off it entirely. And there were some things that I I remember seeing the first time I saw needles was in the carm parking lot. Um, I'd never seen that before. I came from an international nonprofit where a lot of our work was overseas. And before that, I wrote recreation games for summer camp. I had never seen um addiction up close. I had never seen mental health up close, and I didn't really know how to process that in a productive kind of way. And so that's one of my biggest things is you have to be in community. Get to know your coworkers. You're spending 40 hours a week with them, so you should know them. Um, have community outside of work as well, um, just people who can help you process this. My last point is the exact opposite of the point that I just told you, but it is to have fun. You will see a lot of hard, heartbreaking, and holy things while you work in a nonprofit. Things that you did not go to school for, things that you were not prepared for, things that you never thought in a million years you would see up close. And like I said in point number nine, you do need community to help you process those things and go through those things together. But also, y'all, this work is so much fun to see life change up close, to see people move into housing, to see people have hope again where they thought that maybe hope was lost, to work with some of the best people who love Jesus and love people and love the work that we get to do. Golly, it's fun. Some of my best friends that I've met have been here at work, um, people who love so hard and so deeply and who want the best for Knoxville and for our neighbors. And we have a lot of fun. Today, my team, I'm bragging on them a lot in this episode because they deserve it, but my team threw me a birthday party complete with disco balls and a dirty soda bar and ice cream, and we laugh so much. Last week we made a Batman mask for our IT director because he loves Batman. And we went and got Chick-fil-A. We dress like cows for free Chick-fil-A day on cow appreciation day. I mean, you can have fun and do this really important work as well. Those things don't have to cancel each other out. Um, they're not mutually exclusive. You can do both. You can have a lot of fun. And I think fun is what will help you survive, honestly, in nonprofit work, regardless of what you're serving in. Um and really, I mean, I would apply that to anything, whether, like I said earlier, whether you're teaching, whether you're um running a corporate corporate office, whether you're um working on a farm. I mean, you name it, you have to learn how to have fun. Um and it will make the day go by a lot faster and it'll be more enjoyable as you do. Those are the 10 things that I have learned since working at a nonprofit. I hope you have enjoyed them, as we do with every single episode. Um, we always want our listeners to have a sticky note of something they can take with them. It can be a challenge, a prayer, a word of encouragement, anything. So I'll ask myself, what is one thing from today that I want people to walk away with? Um, this reflection uh practice kind of came from my friend McRae. Um, so shout out to McCrae. Every trip that she goes on after she gets home, she always does a reflection series on her Instagram. Um, and so it can be just quick and simple things. And so don't get so caught up in the work that you're not pausing to reflect on the things that you've learned. This is really the first time I've sat down and thought, okay, what would I tell somebody who wants to get involved at a nonprofit? What are the things that I've learned? So don't let it be years before you actually sit down and write the things that you have learned and want to share. And so maybe do that today. Maybe um take take some time and write down the 10 things that you've learned in this last year, wherever you may be working. And then the last question, so since this is called the Homeward Podcast, I always like to ask our guests this question. You guys know this if you've been following along. What does home mean to you? So I shared this on our very first episode. Um, but I think that home to me means knowing where things are. For example, you go to somebody's house and maybe it's your first time there, and so you have to ask them, hey, where's your garbage can? People always put their garbage can in such a random place. It's never in a uniform place. Or where's your silverware drawer? Or can I get up and get myself a glass of water? Or things like that. And so to me, home is knowing where those things are. I know where the garbage can is, I know where the silverware drawer is. I know that at my parents' house we're using a Brita. They don't have the indoor refrigerator water. And so you know these things. And so being known and feeling known, being seen, heard, loved, all of those things remind me of home. And I know the spot on the couch that's the best for napping and that's the most comfortable and has the best view of the television. And so those things just remind me of home and being with my family. Um, I get to see them this weekend, which I'm very excited about spending time with my family. So those are the two things that remind me of home. Thanks so much for joining us today, everybody. Thanks for listening to the things that we've learned in a nonprofit. Remember to check the show notes for any relevant links, and you can find us on socials at Knox Area Rescue Ministries. Be sure to follow along so you never miss an episode. I'll see y'all at home.