Louise Baxter, Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director, Starlight Children's Foundation

In this episode we’re thrilled to speak with Louise Baxter, CEO and Executive Director of the Starlight Children’s Foundation. Louise began her career in marketing in the corporate sector, transferring to the non profit world in 2001.  She’s had over 17 year’s experience with Starlight and has been leading the organisation since 2009. Louise steered Starlight through the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis as well as through the Covid-19 pandemic and yet despite these signficant challenges, under her leadership Starlight’s revenue has grown exponentially. Louise is a stunning and ever so compelling example of a CEO taking on the role of Chief Philanthropy Officer.

We hope you enjoy this conversation.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Welcome to How Hard Can It Be. I'm Frankie Eric. I'm Marisa Mandil, and together we are Philanthropy Squared Academy. In this episode, we're thrilled to speak with Louise Baxter, CEO of the Starlight Children's Foundation. Louise began her career in marketing in the corporate sector, transferring to the nonprofit world in 2001. She's had over 17 years experience with Starlight and has been leading the way as Chief Executive Officer since 2009. Louise steered the organization through the aftermath of the global financial crisis as well as through the COVID-19 pandemic, and under her leadership, Starlight's revenue has grown exponentially. We hope you enjoy this conversation.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Chief Executive of Chief Philanthropy Officer was has always been a favorite title of ours, and we couldn't think of a better chief executive than you.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

You know, I have that point of view that the CEO needs to be able to confront donors and be a storyteller and ask, no matter what, and be interrogated. Be able to answer the questions a donor wants to have answered and to ask. So no matter if the CEO comes from a you know marketing background like I do, which probably would seem a more natural fit to fundraising, or whether it's a research-based organization and that person comes from the research side of it. I've seen people who are stellar at this coming from both those directions or from different directions into the CEO role, but must be able to engage via stories of impact and change, and must be able to answer questions and ask. Everybody at Starlight is part of our impact. The change that we make every day. It doesn't matter if you're on the reception desk, if you're in our office, if you're in a finance, an IT team, everything that we do, every role is incredibly important in ensuring that our impact is the strongest it can be. On the other side of that, every single person at Starlight is also part of the fundraising effort because they all have a chance to be an ambassador and they all have that moment. When they're on a sideline at a soccer game or, you know, at a dinner party, when someone says, What do you do? How you respond to that question can in that moment convert someone to becoming a supporter of the organization. And so I think it's really important that if you have siloed organizations, charity organizations, that's a problem. Because then one part thinks they're the people doing the good. And somehow often the fundraising part is the evil part. I'm not quite sure why that's the case, because in Able is more the the people who are involved in the service delivery, the program, are doing good, and the people who somehow raise the funds are somehow not good.

SPEAKER_02 3:09

Because that's the other thing that we often find that is missing in these conversations is this idea of vision. And I don't know you mentioned about storytelling, but vision is so critical in drawing people in and letting them be part of every single decision we make at Starlight is based.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

So, you know, our vision is very big and bold and is everyone experiences happiness in childhood. Our mission at this moment in time and has been since we were established, but could change into the future and could evolve, is to brighten the lives of seriously ill children and young people because their ability to be happy is significantly impacted. And every single decision we make at Starlight comes back to okay, if we do that with our IT, with our this, with our that, how will that improve what we are doing for the children and young people? So it really makes things very simple because you have absolute clarity around everything. You know, and we also have one value at Starlight. If you are somebody in front of a donor for the first time, the question you ask yourself is, Am I shining? And how can I shine more brightly? And it works for everyone. And everyone knows how they can do that.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

I loved what you said about talking to donors. They want to see the chief executive as the person who's responsible for running the organization and ultimately spending the money. They want to be able to see the org the chief executive and trust the leadership will to deliver. I'm interested in your role as CEO in how do you manage up as well as how do you manage down? How do you manage your board and bring them on side to the shine piece? What sort of involvement do they have in looking at looking at the organization, but obviously working with donors? But what do you expect of the board? What do they expect of you? And then obviously the managing down piece as well is how do you share that and draw everybody in with you?

SPEAKER_01 4:58

I think taking people on the journey is the most important part of leadership, which is often overlooked. And I think that the way you need to do that is even if you, in your mind, have reached an endpoint, and even if you've got it on a fabulous one-page strategy or whatever you've got, if you truly want to collaborate and take people with you and also hear them, if you're surrounded by great people, and I am, then they will have amazing input to refine and craft and improve whatever you've got. And I always say to people, if you walk into a room with that one pager, people immediately, even if they completely disagree with it, will change the way they respond because it's like, oh my goodness, look at this, it's all done, a lot of work's been put in here. How am I gonna move this along? Whereas if you plonk yourself on a chair in someone's office to have a chat and you've got nothing written down, and you say, What would you think about if we did blah, then that person will honestly respond and you get the information you need. And you might be sitting there thinking, oh, that's really interesting. I thought that they'd go direction A and they're actually going direction B. But if you put that page in front, so I think what happens when people speak of collaborating, I'm not sure that and taking people on a journey, I'm not sure that people do it well.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

The image I have in my head is that you are conductor rather than composer.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

And you're not really defining, you're helping people play the music. I mean, you have a music, you have you have a set of uh score that is shine. Yes. Um, but it could be played a hundred ways with some instruments and not others. But actually saying that you're conductor, you're drawing people in and saying, how would you like this played without being too prescriptive? And I like that also because when you take that out to donors, um, I mean, we're strong on saying that the the best philanthropic outcomes are co-created. They're not a perfectly polished stone saying we've worked really hard to polish this stone, will you pay for it?

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

It's actually no, you know, we have this issue, we have this opportunity to shine for kids, but we could do it a hundred ways. What are the ways that you would really like to see kids shine? And so you can hand it back to the phone.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

And we also have to do that because we work in partnership with health professionals specifically every day.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Too often, really, there are some really, really strong CEOs out there, um, and they can sort of speak for the public face as well as the internal face. And there's some really strong CEOs who are great on the internal side and not so good on the public face. I think the issue there is helping those CEOs understand how the market works, I suppose. Um, and there is a great strength from you being a marketer, because you do understand that there is a market. The market feeds uh itself. It's not it's it's not obliged to give. It has we have to earn that money somehow. And so you need to speak to it in such a way because it has a set of behaviors. Uh we see chief executives who don't want anything to do with the fundraising and treat it like it's a separate thing. And as a consequence, the organization doesn't speak to its donors.

SPEAKER_02 8:12

But is that part of the evil that you mentioned earlier that there's this negative association with the actual art of fundraising, the act of fundraising?

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Fundraising is really interesting to me because there are so many people who are passionate about their purpose. And if you are passionate, I'm not asking anyone to give to Louise Baxter. I'm asking everyone to give to starlight children, to children who are seriously ill, children and families whose lives have been turned upside down. That impact is forever. And if you see and you recognize the power of happiness in childhood and that these kids are missing out, and every moment of happiness we give back to these children improves their resilience and well-being. Well, why the hell wouldn't I ask anybody to support that? So I don't know when people say, and even my own internal fundraising team will sometimes say, Oh, we've asked them for a lot this year. It's like it's that's not your decision to make. That's their decision to make when they feel that you've they've given enough this year. People who want to, who are truly philanthropic, see giving as an opportunity. And so why do you decide on their behalf and remove that opportunity from even being put towards them? Asking is great and it's a wonderful thing. And when you see the joy that your donors have from giving and you recognize and understand that they they know the power of what they're doing and that they enjoy that. I don't know why you you filter for them. That's the one thing that annoys me the most when I see people saying, No, I can't go back to them. I've asked them for too much this year. And it's like, who said? Who said? Because you might go to them with this and they say, Do you know what? That's spectacular. I've just had an extra XXX that I was wanting, thinking about what to do, and that's perfect. They might say, No, I think you're at your limit this year, but I'm looking forward to next year. Like they're not going to say, No, I hate you, never speak to me again. You have to enjoy asking. And I don't understand if you are so passionate about the purpose, why would you not ask people to support that? So I don't get that gap when people say they're really proud of their purpose but and passionate about it, but they don't want to ask. Why not?

SPEAKER_02 10:33

So I love how you phrase it if you love your purpose and you believe in your purpose, the ask really shouldn't be so difficult.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

Exactly, which is why we have Get Connected, which is something that I introduced when I came back to Starlight, I realized that there were a few people who had started while I was away who had never been into a Starlight Express room. So they were working at Starlight and they had not seen the impact of Starlight. And that to me was just crazy. Because when I see a child come into a Starlight Express room, especially for the first time, with their head down, their shoulders down, the body, you can tell it's looking like no child should ever look. They're in a wheelchair with an IV drip, and you see them, they're just spent. And you see them come in and you see them start to lift as they come into a space that's so different to the rest of the hospital. You see them start to take it in and they start to sit up and their heads up. And to see that same child within 10 or 15 minutes roaring, interacting with Captain Starlight, roaring with laughter, completely forgetting where they are and why. In that 15 minutes, I now feel and see and know the impact of Starlight. And so when I came back and I recognized there were people who were working within our organization who had not experienced that, we introduced something called Get Connected. And every person who is part of Starlight must participate every quarter in something to get them connected to our impact. Because when they are standing on that sideline of a soccer field on a weekend, when they're at a church function, they're at a dinner party or a barbecue, whatever they're at, their cousin's wedding, and someone says, What do you do? I want that person to be able to say, I work at Starlight, and the next person comic will often say, What does Starlight do? Or that might be rewarding. I want that person to share a story like that one that I just shared now. Because in that moment, that's why I say every person who is part of Starlight is part of our fundraising team, and every person is part of our programming pact. That's the way we need to look at it because that's what we're doing at Starlight, and everyone has a role that delivers that.

SPEAKER_02 12:50

So, Louise, in an organization that has these big dreams for these children, which is quite extraordinary, how do you balance the fundraising for short-term needs versus long-term opportunity? How do you balance the two?

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Well, when I first started at Starlight, I think the number was like 1.26% of our revenue was recurring. Now over 40% of our revenue is recurring. So one of the great lessons of the crisis of the GFC, and all crises have fabulous learnings and opportunities that exist with them, was the fact that we had been incredibly strong in our corporate fundraising. We were an organization that had been built with a lot of people that had the same skill set that I had, came from a marketing advertising background. And so corporates, what they know, and we were built with a national brand, which is fabulous, and I thank them every day for that. But they thought corporate was the be-all and the end all. When I came back and the GFC had hit, whose dollars were the first dollars to completely like disappear? Corporate dollars. Which really highlighted the fact that we needed to have a diverse revenue stream. Since I first joined Starlight, when I originally joined back in 2001, we had $8 million of revenue we raised, and this year we're raising $50 million. Of the incremental $42 million each year, now over 42% of that is recurring or multi-year. And the other thing is 75% of it is from new revenue streams. And included in new revenue streams is our sustainable monthly donors, so our monthly giving program. And philanthropy is another one of those. So, you know, straight donor, and then our community and digital, which actually that's a more COVID story, which when we were able to use that crisis, which was, you know, in some ways a gift of time to fast track a lot of the digital program support and fundraising that we already had underway. So now we have a diverse revenue stream, uh, revenue portfolio. We have much higher recurring and multi-year. COVID hit us and it hit you know the 25% at that moment in time that were events. But that's all it hit. Everything else was there. That alone proved the value of that diversification because all your revenue streams are not going to be hit. Well, I would hope, simultaneously. It's a business. You need to make sure that we are, I always say, more effective and efficient than the corporate sector because we are guardians of the donor dollar. If we can be the most effective and efficient we possibly can, we are doing more for our purpose. So we have to have that efficiency, but you also need to look at it with a business lens. So that diversification of revenue and recurring revenue, you know, locking people into multi-year arrangements was missing and is incredibly important and helps everybody sleep at night.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

So you've got regular giving, and presumably you're asking people to set up direct debits, and that that's consistent. Yes. At the philanthropy level, um, you'll have multi-year commitments for specific projects or programs or yes, we do.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Yeah, we do. We have multi-year commitments. And then also with our corporates, we've also moved to setting up. And do you know what? With our corporates, it completely flips it from being a transactional arrangement to a partnership. And you see the way that they even change. Even sometimes it takes a while to get a corporate to agree to multi-year. Some sense that they're going to keep us honest if we're just on this one-year string and you know we have to keep, I don't know, jumping through the hoop to. And then as soon as you move to a multi-year, you see the light go on for them, and they start thinking about, do you know what? We learned that we could have improved on that. Next year we'll do much better. So the partnership, it goes from being a transactional, and when it's year, and you have to then bid for it to get it for the next year. You're spending your timing on the on that pitch in between, and it's really disjointed. And when you have that multi-year partnership, you're thinking for the longer term. So Starlight requires funding seven days a week. So we can't, we need to have something that is regular and not lumpy. And over the years, we have moved from being event-based, old school event, direct marketing, uh, campaign, you know, based to having longer-term relationships. And we've also, the other areas of revenue that we've built, they have a level that they deliver year on year, even though it might not be locked into the same people, etc.

SPEAKER_02 17:32

One of our favorite topics, Louise, is fundraising and strategy. The two often don't sit hand in hand in our experience. Tell us about how you work in terms of strategy and fundraising and planning ahead because of those three-year part, multi-year partnerships. That requires planning, that requires strategy. How does that work at Starlight and for you?

SPEAKER_01 17:55

Uh well, if it's not linked, it doesn't work. Uh, so that's that's simple. And the thing is that our fundraising and marketing teams and our programs teams are always talking. And our philanthropy team, as soon as they hear the slightest whisper of something new that's happening, they're onto it and want to know when they can talk to their donors about it. Getting that connection, that they're integrated, that they collaborate, that they speak to each other the whole time, is really important because, and we sometimes have to be going, uh, settle down, fundraising team, just wait. We need to do XYZ before we can have you chat to anyone about that. Um, and so, and we have a register in-house so that nobody ever offers something that's already been, you know, funded by somewhere else. So, although if we've got a couple of props out in the market and um both were successful, that's a problem I'm willing to have and possibly negotiate around with one or both of the you know supporters. Because the only thing that inhibits us from growing further is our funding. It is incredibly important. And and the thing that's happening, our costs are all going up at the moment. All of our costs. And we have a lot of people costs, we have a lot of travel costs, we have the nature of our business. It's a lot of face-to-face with seriously ill children. So we have hundreds of employees, you know, working in the hospitals. All our costs are going up. Even if our fundraising goes up, it's going up at a rate that's lower than our costs, which means our programs are actually able to be less year on year, which is not where we need to be. Exponentially growing our funding is incredibly important. And looking how we do that and looking at future new revenue streams is also important to us.

SPEAKER_02 19:46

Do you think the Australian market is becoming more sort of more acclimatized to that need?

SPEAKER_01 19:52

When I've had people ask me that and I've said, can I just ask you a question? You know, when you're looking to invest in a company, do you ask them about their cost of goods or do you want to know their return on investment? And the answer is always they want to know their return on investment. And I say, okay, now ask me that question. Because that then moves them to start to think about your impact. When we have a social return on investment, which is $5.70 for every dollar invested, that's where they need to be chatting to me about, not chatting to me. But I think I actually don't think they want to know that. I think it's just an easy go-to question when you don't really know anything about the sector. And so if you ask why they want to know it, and then if you put that business spin on it, mind you, I've also said that over the years, and not definitely not a case of my board at this moment in time, but I have seen boards in the past and I say you have these great business minds, but somehow when they walk into a charity board, they leave their business acumen at the door. They come in and think it's a um softer sector, and we shouldn't be. We should be judging ourselves in the same way that we would if we were in the for-profit sector, because just being in the for-purpose sector doesn't change that.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Yes, uh, they uh yeah, there there is a there's a sort of a a tacit uh expectation that those who can do and those who can't go and run charities, and um and and that's just wrong.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

I I know I feel the number of people who say to me, Are you a volunteer? Yeah, and then they say to me, Do you work full-time? And I say, I wish I only worked full-time. That would be great. It's uh it's very interesting that they somehow think that an organization that's in every children's hospital around the country in 140 indigenous communities has over 400 team members, is raising 50 million dollars, is something I can just puddle about with on my spare time.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

I've really enjoyed listening to the conversation. Is there anything, Louise, is there anything you wish we'd asked you that we didn't?

SPEAKER_01 21:58

An interesting thing to me. About philanthropy is that just because someone has capacity doesn't mean they have any interest or connection to you. And where we have found most of our philanthropy support is within our existing database.

SPEAKER_02 22:17

We hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as we did. We'd love to hear your feedback and we'd also welcome any ideas you may have for future topics of discussion. Our email is hello at philanthropy2.com. And if you'd like to speak with us about our new fundraising learning programs, including our hugely popular onboard program developed specifically to get we hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as we did. We'd love to hear your feedback and we'd also welcome any ideas you may have for future topics of discussion. Our email is hello at philanthropy2.com. And if you'd like to speak with us about our new fundraising learning programs, including our hugely popular onboard program developed specifically to get boards more engaged and more involved in fundraising, we'd love to hear from you. Again, our email is hello at philanthropy2.com.