1099 Part time employees are forced to live from paycheck to paycheck, no health benefits or opportunities for growth despite their dedication and loyalty to your organization. To keep them tethered to a spotty future is not rewarding their sacrifices to your organization and the community. Learn what every Executive Director should be doing to honor the hard work and commitment of their staff.

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🔦 NONPROFIT SPOTLIGHT 🙌🏿

Kiasi Tech Solutions Pt. 1

👉🏿https://www.kiasitechsolutions.com/

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🚀 RESOURCES TO HELP YOU RUN A SUCCESSFUL NONPROFIT

How to Price Event Tickets For Profit

https://fusion.amberwynn.net/product/how-to-price-programs-for-profit/

How To Demonstrate Impact

https://fusion.amberwynn.net/product/how-to-demonstrate-measurable-impact/

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Learn more about my success with helping nonprofits

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Podcast Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Welcome to On Air with Amber Wynn, where nonprofit leaders learn to fuse passion and commitment with proven business strategies to create long-term funding impact and sustainability. And now here's your host and resident, Philanthrepreneur, Amber Wynn. Good morning,

Speaker 2 (00:21):

Fam. It's your girl, bright and early. So excited to be in the house with you today because today I want to talk to my executive directors about something that's really important in the nonprofit sector. How are you rewarding loyalty? I have these conversations with executive directors all the time when we're building out budgets, when we're talking about grants. And one of the questions that I say to them is like, okay, so you've got this staff. When are you going to move them from part-time to full-time? When are you going to give them a cost of living increase? When are you going to give them a salary increase? When are you going to add in benefits? And the resounding response I get is I can't afford it. Here's the thing about the nonprofit sector, the expectation for the people who deliver the services to make this personal sacrifice.

(01:16):

It ain't flying in this new day and age. And when we get back, we're going to dive in deeper, but it's something that as the nonprofit sector, we really have to take seriously. So when we get back, we're going to talk about how are you rewarding loyalty? If you're thinking about hosting a golf tournament or any other kind of event, make sure at the end of the event you generate a profit and not come out with a loss. There's a formula for guaranteeing that your event will generate a profit. You'll find it in my Hotter price event. Tickets for Profit Toolkit, learn the insider secrets for how to ensure your event will always make a profit every time. Order your copy today. Welcome back to On Air with Amber Wynn, Philanthrepreneur, your girl is in the house. I'm so excited to be here and I'm excited to talk about today's topic because as a founder in particular, and as an executive director, you're juggling so many things.

(02:09):

And so sometimes it's difficult to really stop and think about the people who are on your team delivering services, but without those people, you would have no programs. And the questions that I ask are real questions because people are making sacrifices to support your mission and your vision and delivering the services. And so when an executive director responds to how are you rewarding your loyalty with, I can't afford it, then we have some deeper questions that we need to ask. We have, yeah, have some deeper questions that we need to ask. Number one, what do you need to do so that you can't afford it? Because inflation is up and people are struggling to make ends meet, and you have the expectation that your staff is going to make this financial sacrifice to meet the needs of your community. And it's unreal. And we get caught in this nonprofit poverty cycle whereby the expectation is for the people who are delivering the services to suffer so that they can make the community a better place.

(03:25):

And that's just not realistic, and we need to move away from that. One of the things that keeps nonprofits in this poverty cycle and really damages your loyalty from your employees is this thing called 1099. 1099 is the status that you give to a contractor, right? So basically, if you are a 1099 employee, you are a contractor, you are a consultant, meaning you can work for any other organization if you want to as a consultant, I would be a 1099 contractor because I can work for multiple people. If you have part-time people and you are 1099 in them, as we call it, you are creating this cycle of poverty because at the end of the day, yes, the contractor's responsible for paying taxes, but what it means is that this individual can never make ends meet, especially if they only work for you. If they are part-time and they're only working for you and they're 1099, they're getting absolutely no benefits.

(04:29):

So my question for you with how are you rewarding them? Why should they stay with you? The nonprofit sector has the highest turnover rate, and this is the reason why there are no benefits unless they're really, really committed. And that shouldn't be it. You shouldn't be punishing somebody because they're committed to your mission and committed to the community. You should be rewarding them. So all of this is going to come back to the question of, well, if I can't get the grants, then I can't pay my people. It's not like I don't want to pay them, it's just I can't afford it because I'm not getting the grants. Here is my statement that I say over and over and over. If you go through all of the 130 something episodes that I've recorded, you will hear me say the same thing over and over. A nonprofit is a business.

(05:16):

And so if you're trying to run your nonprofit as if these grants are supposed to miraculously come to you, then you're not running your business properly. And guess what? Your business is not going to run. There's not this miraculous pot of money that's waiting to be dumped into your organization. You have to have the type of infrastructure that a funder would want to fund. So if you're not able to pay your people because you can't get any grants, you can't get any grants because your infrastructure is raggedy. I don't even have to look at your organization to know that. If you haven't been able to get any grants, if you've been around for two years or more and you haven't been able to secure consistent outside funding, I'm just going to tell you from a place of love. It's because your infrastructure is raggedy. Funders want to fund winning organizations.

(06:12):

That means they need to look the part, they need to look bonafide. And that starts from a solid infrastructure. Do you have a mission that inspires? Do your program descriptions articulate what the measurable goals and objectives are? Does your budget reflect viable priorities? Because that's what a budget does is a budget is not how much you fundraise. The budget is how much it costs to run your organization. So if the outward facing things that you submit to a funder is raggedy, they are not going to fund you. It's not a numbers game. It's not a numbers game. So when we talk about how are you rewarding loyalty, how are you doing that? Is it continuously making your staff suffer financially because they can't get health benefits? When you work with me, you build out a strong infrastructure so that number one, you get paid so you stop self-funding your organization.

(07:11):

Number two, you bring in enough money so that you can pay your staff, you can make them W2 employees. You can cover the workers' comp that comes with that. You can cover the payroll taxes that come with that. It is important to understand that if we are going to strengthen our communities, it has to start with strengthening our nonprofit organizations. You cannot be scrimping and scrambling and struggling because the impact that you make in your community starts with the impact that you make inside your organization. So how do you reward loyalty? You do the work that it needs, that you need to do in order to strengthen your organization so that you can bring in the money that you need to pay your people, their value and their worth so that you can give them living wages so that they can have benefits so that they feel inspired to go out and work in the community for you.

(08:06):

That's how you reward loyalty. And until that happens, you need to do other things. Maybe you can't give them an increase, but can you give them a $500 bonus at the end of the year? And if you can't give them a $500 bonus, can you shut down that week of Christmas and pay them because nothing's happening during that week anyway. Can you bring in lunch once a week? Because the money that you're giving them is not helping them in their household, so they can't bring lunch. And so you're going to bring, what are you doing to reward the loyalty of your staff? It's really important because the world needs nonprofits. And if you look at this generation, this generation is quiet resigning companies that are offering benefits. This generation is like, deuces, I'm out. I don't want to work that hard. I don't want to come in and I want work-life balance. That's for the corporations that are providing benefits, that are paying living wages. What is the nonprofit sector going to experience? Because we can't even do that. So it's just important as executive directors that we understand if we don't start putting in place those things, that's going to allow you to pay your individuals a living wage. Our sector, our leadership is going to dry out. So that's why I'm talking about how are you going to reward your loyalty.

(09:40):

So as you move forward, I want you to really take this seriously because the last thing that's going to happen is all your people going to quit and then it's just going to be you, and then you're going to get burnt out, and then you're going to stop, and then there's not going to be services in the community and who does that serve? So I want you just to take a deep dive and just sit back and say, this year is the year that I'm going to commit to building out my infrastructure so that I can get paid a living wage and I can reward the loyalty of my staff. When we come back, we are going to dive into questions and ask Amber. So let's pause and when we come back, ask Amber if your grants aren't getting funded, it could be because the funder can't see how your programs are making an impact in your community.

(10:31):

Get the how to demonstrate Impact Workbook to quantify the work you're doing in your community in a way that a funder can see a potential return on your investment. Funders need proof that your organization will use their grant dollars to improve your community. That proof is called impact, and impact is quantified through measurable outcomes. Leverage my 30 years of program development experience to help increase your chance of securing funding. Order your copy today. Welcome back. You're on air with Amber Wynn, and today we're talking about how you're rewarding loyalty. Now is the time of the episode where you get to ask me your questions and you can hit me up on any of my socials and ask me your questions, and I'll read them here on air. This question is from Robin. Robin hit me up on Instagram, and her question is, how many board members should I have on my board?

(11:26):

So to start with, you should always have an odd number of board members. One of the things that I do as a funder when I'm looking to see if a nonprofit is viable is to see how many board members they have. If it's an even number, then I know that they don't know what they're doing. In terms of governance, you should always have an odd number to break a tie. So if you have six people listed or four people listed or eight people listed, then I know that something's off and people are like, why is that such a big deal when all things are considered? If I have to choose from your organization and another organization and they have an odd number of board members, it gives me a little bit more confidence that they know what they're doing. They know that a board members should always have odd numbers to break the tie.

(12:14):

It's just something small. But when we talk about looking the part, it becomes very important. So you should always have an odd number of board members. Now you need a president, a treasurer, and a secretary. So that's three. You need those things. That's your executive board. I would say to start with five. So you've got your executive board, which is three, and then you've got two people. As you get to create the culture on your board, increase it to seven, and then when you start requiring board dues, then you increase it to 11 and maybe 15 because the formula for board dues is 10% of your annual budget divided by the number of board members. So if you only have three board members and your budget is $250,000, then those three board members have to split $25,000 between them. It's just a formula. It's not etched in stone, but you can see how financially burdensome that can be for a board.

(13:18):

So if you have 15 and you divide that by 25,000, it's a lighter load. So I'm going to say start off with five or seven, but as you grow and you want to create committees, it's important to have people to fill those committees. If you've got three people, you can't have committees, right? So 5, 7, 11. Ideally I set the numbers 15. When you start getting into 25, it just becomes hard to manage and hard to maintain relationships. It's the executive director's responsibility to have relationships with their board. So I'm going to say 5, 7, 11, and 15. How about that? All right, so that was Ask Amber. Now we're going to move to my favorite part of the show. It's called Shine on Nonprofits, where I put the spotlight either on the nonprofit leaders or on a consultant or someone who supports a nonprofit. This episode, I'm focusing on support for my nonprofits, in particular the seniors in our community.

(14:30):

I'm a Gen X and I do what I need to do to get by with technology, but I can't lie. It's a challenge for me. And this next person who we're going to highlight on the nonprofit Spotlight, Kiasi Tech Solutions, she has a special heart for the seniors. And so we're talking to her about how she got started, what does she do, what does she focus on? And you'll see with Simone that she just has a heart for older people and she's just as patient as she can be. Now, even though a A RP sent me my card, I don't necessarily consider myself senior, senior, senior. I'm Gen X, I'm seasoned. But let's take a look at part one of Kisi Tech Solutions.

Speaker 3 (15:31):

Unofficially, I have been working in this space for over two decades. I always have people of a more mature age around me because how best do we learn and grow than to learn from people who have been there and done that? And so with them understanding that I'm formally trained in this area and they see me working with the technology, they're always pulling me in to say, Hey, my daughter or my son bought me this laptop, this iPad, I don't know the first thing about it. Or My grandson wants me to FaceTime and I don't know how to do it, so help me. And so I would always be willing to help them. And the feedback that I would get is, you're so good at this, you're very patient with me. I appreciate that. You should really start a business. And so finally during the pandemic is when I made the time to make it official and file for the structure and become an official business.

Speaker 2 (16:56):

Welcome back. You're on air with Amber Wynn, and that was our conversation, our first part with Dr. Simone Washington of Kiasi Tech Solutions. If you want to hear the full interview, go check her out on my YouTube channel. And we've got part two, three, and four coming up. That's how we do. It's just important for us to understand when we talk about technology, when we talk about the nonprofit sector, we can't get away from it. Like I said at the top of the show, I struggle with it, but it is a necessity. And if you have the right person to help you navigate it, it's something that can help to increase your capacity. So go check her out on my YouTube. And just to recap about how you're rewarding loyalty, I really want my executive directors to think long and hard about their strategy for the upcoming year and what they can do to really shift and start to reward their staff.

(18:08):

Yes, you've got to think about the people in your community, but in order for those people to receive those services from people who are excited, not burnt out, not worn out, you got to take care of your staff. So what they say, take care of home first, take care of your staff and reward all of the hard work that they're giving to you. The last thing I'd like to say about that is I also have executive directors who complain about their staff. They don't do this. They don't do. You're not paying them enough. You know what I mean? So that's one of the things I want you to consider. And if you need any support, that's what I'm here for. I can give you the roadmap that's going to lead you to generating diverse strings of revenue so that you can reward your faculty. So here we are. It's the end of the episode. I'm going to tell you, like I tell you every week, take care of yourself, like you take care of your community. We'll see you next week.

Speaker 1 (19:07):

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe and leave a review on iTunes. Head over to www.amberwynn.net/podcast for the links and resources mentioned in today's podcast. See you next time.