Welcome to Nonprofit CEO SPARK the podcast for bold leaders ready to navigate growth and change with energy and confidence.
I’m Marcia Beckner, nonprofit founder, former executive director and culture strategist, with nearly 20 years in the social impact world.
Each week, I help nonprofit leaders stop spinning out set boundaries and design inclusive cultures where all staff can thrive.
If you’re ready to reignite your leadership without sacrificing your well being, hit subscribe, and let’s spark your next chapter together.
You know culture is never static. It’s either moving your mission forward or it’s quietly derailing it.
And when there’s staff misalignment and friction and tension. You know that no strategy, goal or urgency is going to fix this, and that’s why it’s so common to say culture eats strategy for breakfast, right?
Well, today, I’m joined by Kelly Duncan. She’s the president and CEO of Colorado Gives Foundation, and she leads a staff team of nearly 30 people.
And she continues to drive record breaking fundraising outcomes, even through complex years like 2025, and that’s why I wanted to have her on the show today.
What she shares in this conversation is real wisdom from the field, how to stop taking things personally, for example.
Why culture metrics are one of the most underused tools in leadership.
And how an 85% retention goal, which is what she has, is actually guiding who she hires, who she retains, and how she’s able to recruit the top talent that she needs.
This isn’t theory. It’s a master class in how CEOs, executive directors, and leaders who want high performance and staff well-being can achieve this without burning themselves out.
Marcia Beckner
And before we dive in, a quick note that if this conversation stirs that familiar thought, like I want to lead with more confidence. I want to stop second guessing everything, then I created something for you.
It’s a 90 minute burnout to boundaries strategy session.
You can find it at my website, at culturecares.com, and click on the Burnout to Boundaries tab.
You deserve a confidential, private space to really explore how to reset and recalibrate your leadership this year and how to stop spinning out. So I hope you’ll take advantage of that.
Now let’s get to my conversation with Kelly.
Kelly Dunkin, President & CEO of Colorado Gives Foundation
Well, welcome Kelly. I’m so glad you’re here.
What I appreciate about your leadership is that it’s so grounded and human and deeply strategic, and I’m excited to unpack how that shows up in real life, not just in theory.
So to start us off, I’d like to go back a bit, because leadership never starts at the title of CEO, right?
I want to know first how you came into your role at the Colorado Gives Foundation, and what you love most about it.
Kelly Dunkin
I think very few people go to school to work in a foundation. Most of us end up at a foundation, sort of by happenstance, working in the nonprofit sector, transitioning from somewhere else.
So it’s my years at the Colorado Health Foundation. Very formative years. I learned so much, so grateful for my time there.
And then my family decided to live in Lima, Peru.
So we had been back from Lima for about a year. I was doing some work for 101010. Then I decided that that probably wasn’t a long term fit for me. And so I started to think about what I wanted to do next.
I was just about to sign a couple of long term contracts for consulting work when I was approached by a recruiter for the job at Colorado Gives Foundation. And I had thought after I left the Colorado Health Foundation and spent time in Peru, that I really didn’t want to work at a foundation again.
I wanted to do something else, and then I got approached for this job. I started to look at the organization, went through the search process and got really, really excited about it.
So it is kind of the best of all worlds. You have the grant making piece, so you get to do that thing that a private foundation does.
You also have fundraising, so you have huge accountability to the community, because if you can’t raise funds, you can’t actually serve the community in the way that you want to through your grant making.
And then finally, we had this online giving website, ColoradoGives.org, that we used annually for Colorado Gives Day.
So just the multi-dimensional aspect of this job made me super excited for it, and then I was sure I was not going to get it and just feel, to this day, tremendously grateful and fortunate that I ended up here.
And that was, I can’t believe it, but it’s been almost seven years.
Marcia Beckner
That’s incredible. And I want to acknowledge the fact that last year in 2025, Colorado Gives Day had a record breaking year.
Kelly Dunkin
Every year is record breaking. I have gray hair, and it’s not my kids. It’s Colorado Gives Day, because every year I’m so nervous that we’re going to let the community down.
It’s not going to raise as much money for nonprofits as the prior year, but this year, we saw more donors than ever participate in Colorado Gives Day.
And I want to acknowledge that it’s really the nonprofits are the engine that make Colorado Gives Day strong. And it’s the donors that step up and support the nonprofits. We just are lucky to get to be a part of it.
Marcia Beckner
Yeah, and well, it’s really what you’re creating within your team to generate that impact.
And you didn’t mention the number that you raised last year. How much did the nonprofits raise?
Kelly Dunkin
Yeah, so donors donated $56.5 million in support of about 4,600 nonprofits who participate in Colorado Gives Day.
Marcia Beckner
So cool. And for those outside of Colorado. I explain Colorado Gives Day as the Giving Tuesday of Colorado, but bigger.
Like Colorado Gives Day is everywhere, and so I don’t know how you’ve done that, but you offer this, like, free fundraising platform, really, for the nonprofits.
And these challenges that you’re talking about, like a business challenge is you’re giving these businesses across the state an opportunity to step up and support their favorite nonprofits. It’s really just like the snowball effect that you’ve created over the last seven years.
Kelly Dunkin
I can take no credit. People before me, I stand on their shoulders. They had this amazing idea.
And sort of the story goes that the very first year, they hoped to raise a million dollars, and it was, you know, getting later into the night, and it looked like they had raised $8 million.
And people weren’t sure it was true. So they had to, like, stay up all night and go through the numbers and make sure it was all right.
So I think they recognized they were on to something. And the whole idea behind Colorado Gives Day when they started was there was a study that came out that said per capita Coloradans were among some of the least generous, or charitable, in the country.
And First Bank, who was on the board of what was then called Community First Foundation, now Colorado Gives Foundation, and the leadership of Colorado Gives Foundation said: “I don’t think that’s true. We just need to give them an easy way to show how generous they are.”
And that was the impetus behind Colorado Gives Day, and now we’re sixth in the nation in terms of being charitable.
Marcia Beckner
That’s incredible!
I also want to mention this was in 2025 and acknowledge that it was a year when so many nonprofits were really scrambling with the lack of federal funding and the threats and the cuts.
So it also shows that donors are willing to step up and say, hey, the government gives some money to nonprofits, but we have the power as individuals and as businesses to allocate our resources to causes that we care about.
That’s like Colorado Gives Foundation and Colorado Gives Day is that kind of that generator, that energy generator, for the movement of donors becoming more generous and taking charity into their own hands.
Kelly Dunkin
Yeah, it’s absolutely amazing.
Lessons from the Peace Corps
Marcia Beckner
Well, thank you for the work that you’re doing and increasing Colorado from the least generous to the sixth most, that’s a huge accomplishment.
I also noticed in your bio or in your resume, when I looked at LinkedIn that you were in the Peace Corps.
And so I’m curious how that experience informed your career, because I’m assuming you were in the Peace Corps in your 20s. And then how did that inform that you went into the nonprofit social impact sector?
Kelly Dunkin
So I was a teacher. And I was in the Peace Corps as a teacher trainer. So I was in Belize.
And so most of the teachers in Belize, especially in the rural areas, so they had gotten a World Bank loan, and they had this rural primary teacher training program.
And so I would go out to villages and work with teachers. And then once a month, we’d have a workshop.
And I think the way it influenced me is, I feel best about the work I’m doing when I feel like it is making something better or giving back to the community in some way.
And when I was in Belize, I remember realizing that the goal isn’t to make everyone like Americans.
The goal is to assimilate and try to understand that culture and what they hope to achieve for themselves, for their communities, for their kids.
And I think I bring that into the nonprofit sector. It’s about, how do we bring out the best in people to create, cultivate, amplify the community that they want to live in, and so I want to give back in my professional life.
Marcia Beckner
I love that. Yeah, I think that you echo, you know what everyone who’s listening today believes as well.
And that’s why we all just get along so well, is we’re just trying to make the world a better place in our little corner, or bigger corner, as big of a corner as we can impact.
Can you share any like lessons learned from your career, from the Peace Corps to today, where you might have thought, oh, I should have done this differently?
If I now, what would you tell your younger self? Are there any lessons you can share?
Kelly Dunkin
How long do you have?
I have learned so much, and I have made so many mistakes.
When I was at the Health Foundation, I got promoted into the Vice President of Philanthropy, so I was overseeing all of philanthropy.
And as in any organization, there’s always things that are going really well, and always things to improve, and I took everything so personally.
So when someone would mention something that wasn’t going well, I felt like they were criticizing me personally, and I felt this immense responsibility to change it.
And in so doing, I think I got pretty defensive. I think I had a hard time really hearing what someone was saying, and I didn’t honor people’s roles in joining me and making something better, that it wasn’t.
It was a lot of hubris to think I’m the only one who can change something or make something better. And so I think as I reflect on that situation, as I reflection what I did, how I reacted.
I’ve learned to ask more questions. That it may have something to do with me, and I probably have a role in it.
But if I don’t truly understand what they’re telling me, I can’t adequately identify what my role is.
What are the roles of other people, and what can I do in partnership with them to solve the problem and make it better?
Marcia Beckner
That is a big one.
How do you not take things personally like you used to or like what mindset shift do you have specifically that others can adopt?
Kelly Dunkin
I mean, sometimes it is personal, sometimes it is something I have done. And so I have to reflect on that as well.
I think what I try to do is ask, get curious.
As soon as I feel like that pit in my stomach where I start to get defensive and oh, I could have done this. I should have done that.I wish.
I try to take a deep breath and get curious and start with a question. Help me understand that a little bit more. Where’s that coming from?
Other thing I do, I’m doing it now. I sit on my hands. That’s sort of my clue to myself to listen more.
Marcia Beckner
Ooh, like in your body, you’re listening more, you’re more focused.
Kelly Dunkin
Yes.
Don’t Take Things Personally
Marcia Beckner
I love that curiosity, to approach things with a curiosity mindset.
One of my favorite books, I don’t know if you’ve heard of, is called The Four Agreements.
Kelly Dunkin
I read it when I was in the Peace Corps.
Marcia Beckner
It’s a really old book, but it’s a classic, and I’ve just reread it in the last couple of weeks. One of the Four Agreements is to not take things personally.
And it’s worth that book, just for that chapter to just we always need to be reminded, because we have our, you know, we all have an ego.
We all have, you know, we’re all kind of like in our own heads all the time, and we have only of our perspective.But to yeah, open up and explore like more with more curiosity, is that.
I think a lot of people today are nodding their heads, and we’ll be trying that: sitting on our hands and asking one more curious question.
Just trying not to take it personally, but also taking responsibility for your part.
Kelly Dunkin
I don’t know if you have kids. I find my kids are really great practice, especially when they were going through the teen years, I remember.
I have two daughters, and they are wonderful, and they have their moments, just like the rest of us. And I remember taking those deep breaths and saying, I can make this better or I can make this worse.
And so figuring, I didn’t always choose better, but most of the time I chose I want to make it better. And then I could.
I could have a conversation with them, versus just reacting to the energy they were bringing.
And so I can do that in work situations a little better as well. When I see someone bringing a lot of energy. I can take that same approach, like, oh, I can make this better.
And the way I can make it better is I’m sensing some emotion about this. I’m sensing something around this to help me understand what’s going on.
Defining Culture
Marcia Beckner
That is such a good reminder for all of us. As you’re talking what stands out is about how much your leadership is shaped by people, which brings us to culture.
When you hear the phrase work culture, how do you personally define it?
Kelly Dunkin
That is such a good question, because we struggled with this for a long time.
So I’ll give you two different stories.
So the first is, when I started at Colorado Gives Foundation, I did a little icebreaker for me to get to know them a little bit, for them to get to know me a little bit.
And then I acknowledge, listen, you don’t know me enough to trust me, and I don’t know you enough to know what to expect.
So here are some agreements that I’m going to hold myself to, and I’m going to hold you to as we figure out how we’re going to work together.
And as we defined our workplace cultures, and then I got this idea from Laura Love at Ground Floor Media, so I have to give full credit to her.
We took a subset of our organization and we had them write personas. So describe to me your very favorite co worker, whether it was a real co worker or a made up co worker.
And then we just went through and we had like 25 of them. We went through the 25 and we started to pick out, what are the themes we were seeing, and then those themes informed our values.
And then we could say, okay, these are the values that we’re going to hold ourselves to. And then we evolved to the point where we actually defined our culture.
And again, I clearly have no original ideas. I stole this one from Netflix. Netflix has that whole culture deck.
Six Aspects of Our Culture
And so we found six aspects of our culture.
(1) Values
One was our values. We have behaviors that define each value. We hold one another to those values, we hire people who are going to be additive to our values.
And in the terrible case, when we have to let someone go, it’s often because they’re not living our values.
And we get to shout one another out and compliment one another on our values.
(2) PTO Policy
The other was sort of our PTO policy and our benefits. So we have really generous benefits and generous PTO, because we know that’s important to people who work here.
And we want to make sure they have time to recharge, time to celebrate with their family, time to take the time that they need for whatever it’s worth.
(3) Benefits
And then our health benefits and our 401(k), so that people can save for retirement if that’s what they choose to do. And health benefits, because we’re all going to need them.
(4) Hybrid Work Environment
And then we have our hybrid work environment, so in the office, a couple of days of work, because we know some work is best done in person and in collaboration. Then the rest of the time, people can decide where and how they work best.
(5) Career Development
And then the other is our career development, so everyone’s job has tiers, and we also benchmark your salary. So we lay that out so both the manager and the employee understand where they are and where they want to be.
And as part of that, we also have sort of career development.
You decide what it is you want to learn, and will help you learn those skills so that you can grow, either within your tiers, or if it’s into another job, into another job.
(6) Entrepreneurial Operating System
And then finally, our sixth component, we operate using the Entrepreneurial Operating System that sort of defines how we do things and how we document things.
So we actually define that. And every August we update it, see if there’s any changes we have made, and then we share it at the all staff meeting.
So we continue to ground ourselves in what defines our organizational culture.
Get it, Want it, Capacity to do it (GWC)
Marcia Beckner
I love it. It’s just very tactical, practical, and everyone can take something away from it.
I was soaking it in, and like the EOS or the Entrepreneurial Operating System. People haven’t heard of it, it is a way to run your organization.
And they have a specific culture piece about the people there: Do they get it? Want it, and have the capacity to do it?
So you’re rating every person, or you’re together, you’re rating, do they get the job? Do they have the skills? Do they want the job that’s so important and overlooked?
I think– because people get into a job, and then after a while, they don’t want the job anymore, maybe they’ve outgrown it.
And they want to move to operations or to fundraising or to program, and that a lot of leaders aren’t thinking of this talent mobility.
Where we have a great person, but they’ve, you know, reached their learning curve, and they’re eager to learn more and bring you know, and go into another department there’s then they’re limited.
And that really talented person leaves and so that’s a problem I see happening across the sector, is that, do you think that EOS or that get it, want it, have the capacity to do it helps people.
Kelly Dunkin
Absolutely it helps.
When we’re hiring someone, the hiring manager gets what we call a GWC buddy.
So one of their peers to join the interview and do their own assessment of, does this candidate get it?
Do they get the job? Do they know what this job is? Do they display that they want this job? And then finally, do they have the capacity?
Have they demonstrated that they have the skill sets, or they have most of the skill sets, and we have the time to train them. And we’re very clear in how we’ll train them up in the skill sets that they don’t have.
And then the last thing, and someone told me this, because I’ve had this where I’ve been reluctant to let someone go, I’m not sure it’s the right thing.
They looked at me and they said, “Who else can solve this problem? Is there anyone else that can solve this problem? And are other people looking at you and wondering why you’re not solving this problem.”
Marcia Beckner
So tell me more about your culture and if you see that you’ve defined the culture right with your team. It’s just not you on top seeing this is how we define our culture.
I just want to intersect that defining culture is, it’s different if you ask different people, but I want to share my definition. Which is something I heard when I was doing a team building workshop for Microsoft a couple years ago.
And the leader of that team said, I define culture as chemistry. The chemistry between people. It matters.
It matters. If you want to go in on those two hybrid days, or not. I dread those hybrid days. Or do you look forward to them?
Because you’re working with a group of people all rowing in the same direction and working hard for the mission?
If you ever, as a CEO or Executive Director, walk in to the office and you know that something feels off.
That’s your signal that your culture may not be working for you, it may be working against you.
Kelly Dunkin
Thank you. I’m gonna steal that.
Marcia Beckner
Oh, good. Well, culture, I believe, is never static.
It’s either getting better or it’s being derailed.
Can you tell us how you kind of keep a pulse on the culture in your organization?
And how do you know it’s working?
Kelly Dunkin
We have a scorecard every year, and one of the areas that we want is to be a good, inclusive place to work.
And so we are constantly measuring ourselves on that, and the way we measure it is one, retention.
Are we retaining the people who get it, want it, and have the capacity.
So GWC: are we retaining those who Get it, Want it, Capacity to do it, people? And so we want to make sure we have a retention rate of above 85%.
We’re small. We can’t keep churning. So that’s one thing we look at.
The second thing we look at is a 12 month rolling average pulse engagement score of 80% or higher. So every month, we send out a pulse survey to everyone in the organization, except me.
I don’t get to take it, but everyone else takes the pulse survey, and then we look at it. And we look at trends.
And then we can start to say, “Oh, we’re going down in this area. What are we going to do about it? Or this looks really good. How do we keep maintaining that?”
We also do Gartner, it has an inclusivity survey. So we take all the scores, and we look at our net promoter score on inclusivity go up, and we want to see it go up or maintain every single year.
We also do a couple of other things.
We do quarterly check-ins around performance.
The other thing we do is we have a culture and inclusion committee.
And then finally, and this may be my favorite, is so we do once a month a staff meeting.
We do it on a Thursday when everyone’s in, and at the end of the meeting, we reserve a half hour.
We have these value buttons, and people submit forms to shout out their colleagues on living our values.
People expressing gratitude and acknowledging when their colleagues have lived our values.
Culture First in High Performing Teams
Marcia Beckner
Those are incredible. Was there ever, have you ever had someone who was just not on board like you thought that they were?
You hired them, on-boarded them. They were working, and they just weren’t achieving, you know, the values driven expectations.
Kelly Dunkin
I think I learned, what probably everyone else learns is that you know; sooner than you’re willing to do something. And I let it go on too long.
And so I think, in fact, there was one conversation I had with this person where they offered to leave, and I should have taken them up on it then.
Marcia Beckner
Well, sometimes I’ve helped my clients reframe letting people go to helping them find their magic somewhere else.
That is a Disney thing. I used to work at Disneyland. I did a podcast on Disney’s magic, and I worked there in high school.
But that is, I read a leadership book by some, like the COO of Disney, recently, and he said:
“Well that’s how you think of it, because if they’re not happy there. You’re really just letting them find their magic somewhere else and releasing them to do that.”
Because, as you know, empathetic leaders, we don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, right?
But truly, maybe you could just think about it differently. Oh, they’re going to their next job. It’s just going to be just the right fit for them, and we’ll find the right fit for us, and every, it’ll be win, win, win across the board.
Kelly Dunkin
Yeah, and I think that’s true.
Super high performing people aren’t high performing in every single culture.
Marcia Beckner
Do you also see the connection between healthy organizations functioning, well functioning, balanced leaders who aren’t overworking themselves with the results of their fundraising?
Meaning they can have more impact in the way they want to.
What do you see out there?
Kelly Dunkin
Yeah, I think it comes down to my firm belief that the team is always smarter than the individual.
And so a good culture, I think, is predicated on high performing teams.
And high performing teams mean that people are allowed to share their gifts, their talents, their unique perspectives, with others, so that the organization can perform better.
When you have a high performing culture. Or a culture that works for your organization. People know what’s expected of them. They can give their best.
They can contribute in the ways that they want to contribute. They’re not frustrated, and things just start to click, so that the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
Marcia Beckner
Well, I think you’re an example of that because as you said, when you started seven years ago. You went in there thinking about the culture and how are we going to define it together. And what are our expectations and agreements?
You did, probably did that before, calling on a donor.
You said, let’s get this team aligned and clicking and working together in a healthy way. Let’s get to know each other, and then we’re going to go out.
And last year, Colorado Gives Day raised over $56 million.
So I really want to highlight for any leader listening right now, that culture comes first, and then you get those fundraising, financial health goals met.
Kelly Dunkin
Yeah, it’s the whole idea of go slow. To go fast, you have to have the underpinnings in place.
And I think culture is the ultimate underpinning in order to start to go fast.
Culture Building Entrypoint
Marcia Beckner
Yeah. And I want to leave with one practical takeaway for a CEO who’s thinking, I’m not sure where to start.
I’m not measuring monthly. I’m not. I don’t have the entrepreneurial system in place.
If you had to give them advice on where to start, and give them a low cost, or no cost, culture building tool that you still rely on every day doesn’t cost you anything, but it makes a big impact.
What would you say?
Kelly Dunkin
So when I started, I met with every single individual, and I asked them the same three questions.
Doesn’t cost anything. People feel heard, they get to share.
And from that, you walk away with here’s what we’re going to keep building on, and here’s some areas we might want to improve.
And then you can put in culture and inclusion. We call it our culture and inclusion committee? You can call it a culture club, whatever it is, but just a staff led committee.
And say, here’s what I’ve heard. What are your ideas about what we can do to improve?
And just pick one area to improve in one area, because it’s like we all have to own the culture. I can’t be the only one who owns it. And we all have to feel some agency on making it better?
Marcia Beckner
Absolutely, I think that the CEO sets the tone for a healthy culture.
You establish, you communicate: I want a healthy, inclusive, empowering culture, and then you empower your staff to take it from there.
And you’re just like the cheerleader, and you know, allowing for recognition. You put in place these recognition events, and it’s just incredible what you’ve built.
Kelly, thank you so much for taking the time to share your story with us.
Kelly Dunkin
Oh, thank you. And I’ve got so much to learn.
So I love listening to others and picking up ideas and learning from them.
So appreciate the opportunity. Marcia, thanks so much.
Marcia Beckner
Thanks, Kelly.
And thank you for listening to today’s episode of Nonprofit CEO SPARK.
If you’re ready to turn burnout into boundaries and build a healthy, happy culture where everyone, including you, can thrive, visit culturecares.com to learn how I support nonprofit organizations like yours.
If this episode brought you value, share it with a fellow leader navigating stress and overwhelm and remember you are meant for great things, and you don’t have to burn out to prove it until next time, keep leading with courage and confidence.