Marcia Beckner
Welcome to the show. I’m Marcia Beckner, and this is Nonprofit CEO SPARK, the podcast for leaders who want to navigate growth and change with energy and confidence.
The problem we’re solving today is this, how do you successfully lead during the growth phase of your organization’s life cycle without burning out your people or losing the heart of your mission?
Your organization is growing. But here’s what most leaders get wrong. They focus on scaling the work, not the culture holding it together, and that’s where things start to break.
Today’s guest is Lorii Rabinowitz, CEO of the Denver Scholarship Foundation. She’s been named one of the top 25 most powerful women in business, a Denver most admired CEO and a Colorado Titan honoree.
What stood out to me in this conversation is this, she hasn’t just scaled community impact. She’s grown her team with a focus on staff, health, happiness and well being, and the results speak for themselves.
Under her leadership, her team has tripled in size from 32 to more than 90 team members, while maintaining—and get this—a 94 to 95% retention rate and building a team that doesn’t just survive, they thrive.
And you will hear the joy in Lori’s voice as she talks about her team’s successes, their mission to partner with students and educators, and the way the entire community shows up for each other.
We talk about what it means to co-create an internal culture of philanthropy so everyone on the team feels ownership in the mission and why turning your mission inward is one of the most powerful leadership moves you can make.
You’ll also walk away with multiple tactics you can apply right away, like how recognizing values in real time through peer nominated moments can reinforce culture every day.
And how shifting your focus from recruitment to retention can dramatically increase team stability and performance.
If you’re leading through growth and want a culture that can sustain it, this conversation will give you both the mindset and the tools to do it well. Lorri, welcome to the show.
Lorii Rabinowitz
Thank you so much for having me. Marcia, it is an honor to be with you today.
Marcia Beckner
Yes, well, I have been told by several people that you and I should meet, and we finally got to meet recently, and had such a great conversation about how you’ve tripled the size of your staff and organization in the last few years.
And I just want to get into like, how did you do it? How did you do this?
Foundations of a Co-Created Culture
Lorii Rabinowitz
Thank you so much for the question. I would start by saying, we all do it together, and that really is foundational, both to our culture and to our leadership style.
All of our colleagues lead from where they each stand, and that is foundational and fundamental to the co-creation of our culture.
So when we think about tripling the size of the organization, as well as the revenue, because we realize no money, no mission.
So we have also built an internal culture of philanthropy, and that we’re all involved in that approach, so that we ensure that we are sustainable for the size and scope of our organization.
And ensure that folks’ jobs are safe, and things along those lines; that also contributes to the co-creation of culture.
So I would say that we built it together, and we’ve really built it, not only from the ground up, but really from the inside out, and then back again.
We’re very responsible to team member feedback and focus and what our community needs, and bringing all of those together in concert, most importantly, with what students, scholars, alumni and families in our community need.
So that we make sure that we are co-creating both with internal stakeholders and external stakeholders alike.
Marcia Beckner
Incredible. So I want to get into in a little bit like the practical, tactical things that you do, that people can apply right away.
But if I’m an executive director listening to you right now, I’m thinking, Wait a minute, everybody has some shared ownership in the philanthropy and the giving and the sustaining of their own roles, like financially or through a fundraising capacity.
How do you do this in your culture? How do you make that a cultural norm that everybody’s contributing in a philanthropy perspective?
Lorii Rabinowitz
Yeah. So great question. Thank you for that. We know that as a nonprofit organization operating in community, as a part of the nonprofit sector, private sector, public sector, sustainability is something that is foundational to what we do and how we establish our culture.
We know that sometimes these organizations in any sector are operating from a place of scarcity, and it’s really difficult for someone to perform at their highest level and continue to grow and thrive when they’re fearful for their job.
And so we made a pledge early on in our leadership to say to our team and in concert with our team, that if we lose a grant, no one loses their job.
And so as a part of that, everyone has shared buy-in into what that means and what that looks like.
So while we have a dedicated professional development team that works primarily with our philanthropic partners, our program team leads and our student-facing colleagues also are meeting with donors to bring in students as an example.
Or scholars honor their journeys and invite their voices, and scholars and students themselves to share their stories.
So we aren’t relaying those or carrying those forward, but instead pairing and partnering—as an example, a donor with a student or scholar—to not only build that social capital moving forward and potentially that professional network.
But also engage in a dialog that co-creates that culture of philanthropy.
In that example, our student-facing team member is a part of that philanthropic process. The student or scholar is a part of that philanthropic process, but it’s in a way that honors each of those constituents’ journeys along the way.
And brings to the forefront the importance of our work and the focus on our mission, which is working in partnership with students, scholars, alumni and families on their journeys to and through college completion and into career.
Marcia Beckner
Awesome. Yeah, I kind of forgot to ask you, like, what is your mission? And who do you help? So I want to just to give context into that.
Lorii Rabinowitz
Sure, of course. So Denver Scholarship Foundation, we work in partnership with Denver Public Schools students specifically on their journeys to and through college completion and into career.
It’s really a partnership that we start with students beginning around the age of 14, then all the way through about the age of 24.
So oftentimes, a 10-year partnership with students who become scholars, who become alumni, with family engagement along the way.
We work with about 16,000 young people every year, close to 3000 scholars, and then about 13,000 or thereabouts, ninth through 12th graders through our college and career access program.
Which is on site, through our Future Centers inside Denver Public Schools high schools. We provide a promise-based scholarship to our scholars, and all of our scholarships include wraparound supports into early career and alumni status.
All the way to and through then that college completion, in partnership with 30 college partners across the state.
So partnership is also really core to what we do. We partner with each other as colleagues. We partner with Denver Public Schools and our college partners.
We partner with philanthropy, we partner with community, we partner with our board, and we partner with the students, scholars, alumni and families we serve.
Marcia Beckner
And I’m guessing that you incorporate, like some teachings around philanthropy with your students directly, since you’re partnering them with a donor and they’re kind of learning how the whole system works to serve them.
Lorii Rabinowitz
Well, really what we want to make sure a student is engaging with and a scholar is engaging with when connecting with a donor partner is sharing their own authentic journey and sharing their own authentic voice.
That’s really important to us at Denver Scholarship Foundation is to uplift students, scholars, alumni, families, their voices, and really lean into what it is they need.
What they are pursuing as their career pathways, their college pathways, those journeys along the way, we are partners with them, and so prioritizing their voice, their goals, their hopes and dreams is what we invite in those interactions.
So then it really is authentic and a partner—a philanthropic partner, community partner, Denver Public Schools partner, etc.—is hearing directly from the young person as to what’s important to them.
And we feel really strongly about doing that with our staff, which is also why it leads to that co-created culture.
Everyone who is a part of our culture, internally and externally, really focuses in that way. Relationships is one of our core values at DSF, and those authentic relationships are really what we are prioritizing.
And so we strive to encourage less coaching of what to say or how to act or what to do, and really inspiring and ideally uplifting and empowering, be it a colleague or a philanthropic partner, a board member, a student, to really share their voice.
And share what’s important to them, and then see where there’s common ground with them.
Turning the Mission Inward
Marcia Beckner
I can see why you’re so successful now because you just you have it figured out.
This is when you know what someone’s mission is—which is to lift up the hopes and dreams of your community—you’ve got to do that internally for your staff.
You just turn your mission inside out. It’s a mirror.
And though you’re already doing this, this is how you’re tripling the size of your impact is you are focusing where you need to be, which is your mission on the inside and out.
Because I’ve seen so many organizations where—and we see this in healthcare all the time—their mission, supposedly, is to cure people and have them be healthy.
But when you look at the internal health and well-being of the people creating the medical miracles, like the doctors and the nurses, the medical assistants, they’re not turning their healthcare mission inward.
And I think this is why we’re so sick in the healthcare world. It is because people are not being taken care of that are providing the healthcare. I think that’s a fundamental break in the system.
So you’re like—that’s why I was nodding my head when you were talking so much—it’s like, yes, everyone in education should be turning—and you’re helping the hopes and dreams and in the education of students, right?
If you’re in the world of education, you have to turn that in and help your own employees learn and reach their own hopes and dreams.
And so I’m just like, it’s music to my ears. I just want everyone to hear this, that if you’re stuck, what kind of culture should I build and co-create?
Look at your mission, turn it inside, and see how you can create triple the impact, like Lori and her team are doing. So that wasn’t a question.
Lorii Rabinowitz
Thank you for that validation. That’s so generous. Thank you.
Marcia Beckner
It’s just true. It’s just how the world works. In building relationships as a priority is key to all of us in the nonprofit sector.
Where, if we have no relationships, we have no community and no mission. And so that’s why I wanted you to, like, kind of share your thought process and philosophy with everyone listening right now who may be just struggling.
How do I even, like, turn my culture around? So I think that’s a great starting point. Is turn your mission inside out.
And now I would love to learn about, like, the tactical things you’re doing to lift up your staff so they can achieve the impact that they’re making.
Lorii Rabinowitz
Absolutely and I appreciate that springboard, because we really are all here for the same reason.
We are focused on realizing our mission and working in partnership with young people with whom we work in partnership to achieve their goals.
And so beautifully said, we can’t do that without our team and working in collaboration with one another, and so that’s really a key part of what we focus on.
Our values as an example are on the walls within the building, but we know that that’s not enough.
Equity, innovation, integrity, learning, leadership and relationships are six core values, and we highlight those regularly in the way in which we speak and recognize one another.
We have a values valedictorian internally as an example that is recognized at each of our staff meetings, and that is a peer-nominated, peer-selected individual.
For someone who is exemplifying values within the organization and what that looks like, and how that is and how we walk the talk.
And so in the ability to uplift each other in that regard, that is one of the tactical things that we have found to work really well, is really acknowledging one another’s performance.
We have fired up Fridays. We have a wall of fame. We really like to uplift one another.
And in co-creating the culture, co-create an opportunity for as flat of an organization as possible.
Certainly, decisions are made in a variety of different ways with a variety of different folks, but I think that encouraging everyone—as I mentioned, leadership is one of our core values.
And really encouraging everyone to know that their own leadership is so vital and critical to the success of the organization and every one of our 93 colleagues.
And we use that terminology, colleagues—occasionally staff, employees, that verbiage comes into play—but colleagues is something else that we have really found to be providing an opportunity to honor that co-creation of culture.
Right after COVID, we started a new strategy. We implemented the Denver Scholarship Foundation employee experience program.
And it’s a four-quadrant program that focuses on compensation, career development, health and wellness and recognition and reward.
Because we heard from our team members that those were four areas of key focus that we all should be focused at, looking to together.
And changed our language to talk about retention and recruitment, as opposed to recruitment and retention.
So that also has made a big difference in terms of tactical deployment of what we see and the milestones that we want to hit along the way.
Back to talking the talk and walking the walk, when we can change our verbiage to really prioritize retention and acknowledge each of our incredible professional team members as such.
That has taken our retention rate to 94 and 95% over the course of the last several years, and we were at 76% when we initiated that directive coming out of COVID.
So I think that that’s something tactical that can be useful and pretty easy to do is just change the approach to what oftentimes is recruitment and retention, and highlight it as retention and recruitment.
Marcia Beckner
Really do the math on the money you’re saving by reducing that turnover.
Lorii Rabinowitz
Yes.
Marcia Beckner
Like turnover costs, you know, lots of different research out there, but between about 50% to 200% of a person’s annual salary, it will cost the organization to lose one person.
And that’s, you know, lost institutional knowledge, lost donor relationships. That donor may move on with that fundraiser to the next organization training.
You’re going to have people wearing multiple hats and burning out in the meantime until a new person is recruited, and all the time it takes to interview and post the job and all of that.
So that’s where that percentage of cost comes in. So if you’re at 94-95% retention.
And I don’t think anyone needs to have 100% like—normal attrition is good to get fresh blood in there and people just normally move on or retire or something.
But I’ve never heard 94-95% retention in an almost 100-person organization; it is very rare.
So you’re doing great. You’re just such a success with your team.
I really want to point out your value of leadership. I think that’s really cool. I don’t see that very often, but to encourage people to be self-leaders.
So that they’re not constantly relying on you and coming to you and they start thinking like a leader, which is healthy for them and for the organization.
How do you do that? Do you make that an expectation, and do you have a performance metric around that? How do you implement that everyone is a leader when they’re coming in?
Career Development and the DEEP Program
Lorii Rabinowitz
Great point, great question. So we have had a variety of different ways to leverage that leadership, development and growth.
Part of which has come through this DEEP program. That’s the acronym for the Denver Scholarship Foundation employee experience program is DEEP.
So because one of our areas of focus is career development, we have a number of colleagues, the majority of our staff are program team members.
And so student-facing or student-engaging team members in high school, in college, with our alumni.
And oftentimes the team members that we are so fortunate to have in these roles are folks who have been with us for many, many years and are most interested in continuing in that student-facing role as an example.
And so when we think about career development, sometimes heads automatically go to, “Oh, that means I have to take this position or receive this promotion or advance,” quote-unquote, in this way.
And we really work hard to encourage colleagues to pursue what it is about their own roles that they’re most excited.
Certainly, there are promotion and reclassification opportunities within the organization, but when we have as many student-facing team members as we do and engage with as many students as we do.
It’s really important that all of our folks in all the roles are excited about the roles that they have and how to grow in those specific roles.
So our Career Development section—as an example of our four-quadrant DEEP program—includes an internal mentorship program, an external mentorship program, a leadership development program and a job shadow program.
All of which are designed to help each of our colleagues, ourselves included, because our leadership team participates as well in these programs.
Everybody is always growing and everybody is always learning. And so to be able to pinpoint what that is and name that in terms of a self-directed interest in specifically a leadership program or a shadowing opportunity as an example.
But then we also have an ongoing list of professional development opportunities in community.
There are a lot of free programs in the community that the city of Denver provides, other organizations provide, everything from learning how to present publicly to Excel workshops, difficult conversations, these kinds of things.
So we provide those resources ongoing to our team as well, so that learning can also be self-directed.
And then we have a people management workshop that we host once a quarter internally for our colleagues who are working directly in supervisory roles to help learn from one another.
Different circumstances come up along the way; difficult conversations in any of our roles, again, in any sector, are common and so coming together to think together and talk together about how might we address this particular circumstance.
Or what if someone is coming forward with this kind of a question? So that way we are all learning and leading—those two things, those two values go together directly all the time.
Marcia Beckner
Yeah, I could see that. So that’s another example of your turning your mission inside out. It’s just all about learning.
It sounds like you’ve got a growth mindset, and that you hire people with a growth mindset.
Do you use these values as like filters when you’re hiring new people and on performance evaluations? And how do you incorporate that?
Lorii Rabinowitz
Yeah, so we have an annual performance review. Well, I should back up and share that we set SMART goals.
And again, this is everyone in the organization. So we ensure that we aren’t having a hierarchical approach in that way.
So we are not finding ourselves in a situation where this group of folks are doing them, but this group of folks isn’t.
We ensure that everything we do everyone attends across the board.
So I, as the CEO, attend every performance management workshop, as do our colleagues who oversee one team member; as an example, we are all in the same meeting.
We’re all talking about the same things. And so that’s really, really, really important to us as well, that we honor a SMART goals process.
So I have SMART goals in addition to our colleagues who have a direct report or maybe don’t.
And so we are all a part of that same process at the same time, in that August, September timeframe, as we kick off our new fiscal year.
And then we have check-ins along the way with our direct reports and colleagues.
And then in this April-May window, actually, specifically, we are going through annual performance reviews.
And those include reviewing the SMART goals and how someone has performed against their SMART goals, reviewing their overall performance.
But the very beginning of the review itself actually highlights the values and where someone doesn’t have a quantitative metric against alignment with the values.
It is something that we write a narrative around in everyone’s performance review, so that we can specifically uplift how someone has demonstrated a particular value, or perhaps all six of the values, over the course of their last year.
And equate those to, oftentimes, some of those SMART goals, oftentimes that overall achievement and performance.
But we want to make sure that that is centered in everything that we do, so we do write it down as a part of the review.
Marcia Beckner
Yeah. And then, how do you handle people who—I’m sure you have an amazing, you know, almost 100 people now—but there’s always somebody who’s not measuring up, or multiple people.
Like, how do you handle challenging colleagues that are not living the values, or specifically not living the values?
Because sometimes there’s high performers in their job, but they’re really undercutting the values and causing some lower morale around their current colleagues.
How do you handle those challenging situations?
Clarity as Kindness in Leadership
Lorii Rabinowitz
Yeah, and that leads back to your other question about how we recruit as well, and how we’re hopefully setting folks up for success at the beginning of the interview process.
So if we have folks in the queue that we are considering adding to the team, and who are considering joining the DSF team.
We have a lot of value-centered questions in the application process and the interview process, so that we do see—to your earlier point as well—that alignment early on.
And we really highlight that that is critical to the success of any of our colleagues, to our mission, to our work, to everything that we are about at Denver Scholarship Foundation.
So if we find ourselves in a situation down the road—and certainly sometimes we do where for any number of reasons, someone may be misaligned—it’s really important that we have those conversations early on.
A part of our review process includes—as do our SMART goals—a one-over-one review so that a supervisor or manager’s team members will not only have their SMART goals discussed and their review discussed with their direct supervisor.
But also the supervisor of that supervisor will take a look and colleagues within that core functional group will also take a look.
So that we have consistency across the organization, certainly, but also to help in partnering on some of those difficult conversations.
Because we do look to promote from within. So sometimes we’ll have a team lead that perhaps was a team peer at one point, and sometimes those can be especially difficult conversations.
And so we always want our team members to know that we’re all in it together.
Someone who can either join as a part of that conversation, or who can maybe practice or role-play what that conversation might look like, helping folks write things down.
We find that that’s really helpful in difficult conversations, because when we’re in relationship with one another, we may come into that conversation and it gets diverted in a different way.
And so it’s important that we structure those conversations around what we know we need to say and what we need to be clear around.
We talk a lot about clarity is kindness, and we aren’t doing anyone any favors if we’re just sort of stringing them along, not giving them the opportunity to maximize their potential.
And so we really want to make sure that that’s what someone feels when they come into the environment every day, is that they are maximizing their potential, and they’re in the place that they want to be, doing the work that they want to do.
And if at any time that changes along the way—either from the colleague standpoint or from the manager’s standpoint—how very important that conversation is, and ideally, that it’s never a surprise.
So that our one-on-one conversations with team members are also structured in such a way that we’re providing candid, clear feedback.
So that if someone isn’t meeting expectations along the way, they know that they’re provided the opportunity and the encouragement and the support to learn and grow in the ways that are valuable for that part of their journey.
But also, if they aren’t meeting those expectations, then they’re letting the organization down, and they’re letting the students, scholars, alumni and families we serve down.
Because every one of our 93 colleagues is critically important to the success of the organization, and therefore the folks in community we serve and with whom we partner.
Marcia Beckner
Yeah, and I’m assuming that you have more of, like, a hire-slow, fire-fast if you need to kind of mentality.
I’m just making an assumption—I don’t know if that—but, like, kind of address the problem quickly, and then kind of slow down hiring a little bit, just to make sure that they align with the culture and the values.
Lorii Rabinowitz
That’s right, that’s right. And we also hope that folks feel comfortable failing. Quite honestly, as part of our value of innovation.
We want folks to try things even when that might not mean that they’re successful.
We learn so often from what are sometimes considered failures, but we go forward, and sometimes we fail fast.
Sometimes it might take a little bit longer, but we really do see those opportunities as learning opportunities.
And the chance that if a team member does move on, or for one reason or another, we invite a team member to move on, that’s an opportunity also to re-evaluate the position.
And see if it’s structured the way that it should be, if it’s having the impact that it should be.
We all evolve as professionals over time, and students’ needs evolve over the course of time, as do donors’ needs and administrative needs.
So we always take that as an opportunity to just ensure that the position is what it needs to be, and as we’re seeking a new colleague, that that fit is the right fit as well.
Which, to your point, is part of that hiring slower and thoughtfully and mindfully and purposefully as well.
Marcia Beckner
Yeah, it’s really important to get that right, if possible. And we all make mistakes.
That’s totally normal; someone will present themselves in a certain way in an interview—like, yes, yes, yes—and then you get there and they’re like a completely different person.
I think we’ve all experienced that painful situation, right? Definitely.
Lorii Rabinowitz
Definitely, and learned from what happens if we don’t gracefully exit the person soon enough, or whatever that exit looks like.
If it’s someone who isn’t performing, then they do have an unfortunate impact and effect on their direct team, as well as the organization as a whole.
So and they’re not thriving typically, and we want them to thrive, even when that means outside of our organization.
Marcia Beckner
Yeah, I did another episode about Disney because I used to work for Disneyland, and so I’ve kind of read what they do, and they like to help people outside, like, leave Disney and take their magic somewhere else.
Lorii Rabinowitz
I love that too, so much.
Marcia Beckner
Yeah, yeah. To help them take—just so, because a lot of executive directors like, “Oh my gosh, this is going to ruin their life, and this is going to be terrible for them.”
But if you really reframe it, because if they’re not thriving within the organization, they’re just probably not right for that culture.
But that doesn’t make them a bad person, even though it feels like they’re derailing some things.
You just need to help them take their magic somewhere else, and it’s a win-win-win for all of us.
Lorii Rabinowitz
That’s right. And I love seeing it like that. I’m going to borrow that from you and Disney.
Because we do find that when we have those difficult conversations, probably 90% of the time, the colleague with whom we’re meeting—especially if we’ve been engaged in conversation—nothing is a surprise.
Sometimes, obviously a person may be on a performance improvement plan or what have you.
But a team member knows that they’re not maximizing their own potential.
And sometimes it’s sort of a relief to give them the opportunity to say, maybe this isn’t working the way we had envisioned.
Oftentimes, they too will say, “You know what? That’s right. I started in this role, and now it’s evolved into this place,” or “I have different interests,” or “my life circumstances have changed.”
Or whatever the case may be, sometimes it’s a sense of relief for them to have that conversation.
Because sometimes it’s harder for the team member to come forward and say, “maybe it’s time for me to move on” when performance is not where it should be by their own definition.
We work with a team of high achievers and tremendous professionals, and so they know when they’re not hitting the mark, oftentimes, before we even have the conversation.
Marcia Beckner
Yeah, of course they do. Well, I want to underscore that for everyone listening.
If you’re on the fence with somebody right now, you’re dragging your feet, you don’t want to have that conversation because you think it’ll be really challenging.
Lori just said, like, it could be 90% of the time, it might be a relief for them too, because we have to believe everyone wants to be successful and high achieving.
That we’re hiring, and if you’re not hiring those kinds of people who really are committed to growth and learning and getting better, then they may not have a great place on your team long term.
So really, really hire for those people who want to strive and do their best and then take great care of them.
And you’ll have—you’ll also have 94-95% retention, and everyone will win, because especially the community that you’re serving.
Now, before we wrap up, I wanted to ask a few more tactical things that you have in place for your team that you believe is really making a difference with a healthy culture.
Tactical Engagement and Support Systems
Lorii Rabinowitz
Yeah. So I’m going to come back to the DEEP program for just a minute, because it was driven by employee feedback.
So one of the most important tactical things that can be done—and that we’ve really benefited from—is having twice-annual employee engagement surveys provided by a third party when that’s possible.
That may not be always possible, but Marcia is raising her hand—I think maybe Marcia can help with that.
But it’s really helpful to get that direct feedback from team members and then be able to structure and strategize based on that feedback; that really is how the DEEP program was created.
So compensation as an example—oftentimes a challenge in our nonprofit community, for good reason, and we acknowledge that oftentimes our level of pay, while we work to be very competitive in the marketplace.
May not compare with a private sector role that requires similar assets and attributes, but we work really hard to create a full compensation package that provides some benefits that may not be solely salary-based.
We have a whole strategy around salary and how we increase salaries, and we increase those every year, and that’s probably for a whole ‘nother conversation.
But that is something that we focus on alongside—I think, from a tactical standpoint, because sometimes for nonprofits or private sector or public sector, it’s not possible to increase salaries on an ongoing basis.
But having the opportunity to provide mental health resources, which is something that we prioritize.
We have an unlimited vacation policy, which we intentionally call trusted time off.
So that we are trusting our colleagues and one another to know when it’s time to take some time, even when we say it’s time to take some time, or maybe the staff member says that’s the case.
But we, in essence, require colleagues to take at least three weeks off—not necessarily all together, though it can be, but pieces and parts along the way.
And if they’re not on track with that three weeks over the course of the year, then we will pull them aside and say, “Hey, we need you to do this.”
And we see folks taking far more than that. That was actually one of the reasons that we felt it was important to increase the size of the team with intentionality.
It’s important to offer a resource that we can follow through on.
And so in saying we have unlimited vacation, that means we need to make sure that there’s redundancy in the role and someone can cover while that person is out.
As an example, as another tactical measure, our health insurance benefits, our 401(k) benefits, et cetera.
All of those are market-competitive, so we pay very close attention to overarching compensation packages.
I’ll call it—as well as health and wellness. So we have a small stipend that we provide for team members to self-identify what helps them to feel better in their day-to-day activities.
That might be joining a gym, that might be getting their nails done, that might be taking a break of some other sort, but we have a stipend—a small stipend—as well.
So just as a few examples of how to engage there, I think the other thing that I would share when it comes to co-creating the culture and fostering that retention is that availability is really key.
And so our executive leadership team meets within the first 30 days with all new team members.
So that when we say we have an open door policy, “we want to hear from you; your ideas are hugely important and critically valuable to driving our culture,” that we actually have a face-to-face meeting so that, person-to-person, we can talk about that.
And then we have ongoing office hours for our full team so that we are always accessible.
Our IT team has office hours, our MarCom team has office hours, our people and culture team, our finance team—so all of our teams also have office hours so that we can be accessible and available to each other.
And then in full staff meetings, we also have buddy groups; those are cross-departmental opportunities to work with folks that maybe team members aren’t engaging with every day.
I have this amazing opportunity to work cross-functionally every day, but oftentimes team members on the program side aren’t working day-to-day with our administrative professionals as an example.
And we want those two growth groups—our program-facing, student-facing professionals and our administrative professionals as an example—and our development professionals, our marketing professionals, are all in buddy groups together so that folks can build relationships cross-departmentally and cross-organizationally as well.
Marcia Beckner
That really solves a huge problem with silos, which a lot of organizations are struggling with, even on much smaller teams.
You know, where they might just have one person per department and they’re all in staff meetings, but they still sometimes don’t know really what the other is doing with their time.
I like that you’ve set it with intentionality. Is there a timeframe, like once a month, and is there an agenda? How do you make sure that it’s serving the need of cross-functional learning and relationships?
Lorii Rabinowitz
Yeah, one of our other DEEP opportunities is the chance to be a part of different committees within the organization.
And so that’s also cross-departmental; that includes hiring committees, that includes our Parent Family Engagement Committee, that also includes our Culture Engagement Committee.
And so our CEC group actually plans those buddy group activities.
And so before every staff meeting, which is every other month, we provide food and have the opportunity for buddy groups to come together and meet one another.
There are opportunities to do things outside, certainly, of the workplace as well, or during the work day, but with intentionality.
Because we know everyone in the organization will be in one place—which is the one time we’re all actually physically in one place—every other month, we do have a buddy group activity that the CEC structures.
And they actually also decide who’s on which buddy group and put those pairings together, and we launch those at our all-staff retreat.
So every August we have an all-staff retreat, and we sit by our new buddy groups at each table so that we can get to know one another at the very beginning of the fiscal year.
And then that provides opportunity for brand new team members who are starting with us—or we have one team member who’s been with us almost 20 years.
So we have everyone in the same environment, physically around the same table as a buddy group to even kick off the year.
Marcia Beckner
That’s so great. And you had mentioned earlier that you thought it was important that an external facilitator was doing the engagement surveys. Why do you say that?
Lorii Rabinowitz
Because we want everyone to be able to participate, and we really value that analysis as neutral analysis.
Sometimes—well, oftentimes—everyone has a bias of some sort, and maybe looking at data or information through a specific lens, intentionally or unintentionally.
But it’s important to us that we bring in someone who isn’t directly engaged with the organization—isn’t a staff member, isn’t a team member, isn’t a board member.
Because we think that all of the feedback from folks who are so close to our mission and close to our work is critically valuable.
And having an outside set of eyes and ears to help synthesize and analyze and relay back that data really helps us do even what we do well so much better and keep us in that cycle of continuous improvement.
Marcia Beckner
I love it. Thank you. Okay, before we wrap up, are there any—is there anything else when it comes to co-creating the culture, anything else you want to share, maybe with leaders of smaller teams?
You know, 10 to 20 or so. I mean, you started out as a smaller team. So, maybe one last tip on what works with a smaller team, too?
Lorii Rabinowitz
Yeah, I think really just getting to know each other and getting to know each other as people, and centering our work—of any size organization—around the mission and around the values of the organization.
And why we’re all here, regardless of the size, that brings us together.
And we have a common goal. We approach it from different vantage points, but we are all in it for the same reasons.
And so the more time within the workplace—even it’s important to prioritize that work gets done—I think that’s something that we’ve also learned along the way.
We have to balance ensuring that the work is getting done with deep-dive, get-to-know-you activities.
And so strategizing intentionally around specifically a retreat as an example—which is really valuable to kick off any fiscal year or whenever an organization is working with a calendar year, et cetera.
Any fiscal year, I guess I would say, with that opportunity to all be together and ideally work cross-departmentally.
Because retreats are a dedicated time to actually not be as knee-deep in the work, but focus on the work as a part of the retreat while getting to know each other.
So economies of scale in that regard are really valuable. Get to know each other while doing the work and centered on doing the work so that one isn’t being lessened by the other, but instead, the two are working in partnership.
Marcia Beckner
Right, right. It’s always a balance, right?
Lorii Rabinowitz
Yeah.
Marcia Beckner
Oh, well. Thank you so much, Lori. I could just talk to you all day, because I know you’re as passionate about healthy team cultures as I am.
And hopefully, you know, people listening took away at least one or two or many—probably many more—takeaways that they can bring back to their own organizations and try out.
Lots of things that don’t cost anything. You know, building relationships doesn’t cost anything, necessarily, but it’s really vital that if your team isn’t getting along, that you really get to the bottom of that quickly.
Otherwise you can just be spinning in internal drama and not really get any work done to move the mission forward.
So those are the organizations that I’m here to help if they want to stop spinning and really take their organization to double or triple their impact.
So thank you so much. And I’ll just end this episode by saying you are meant for great things, and you don’t have to burn out to prove it.
Thanks 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.