Building Community and Collaboration with Roz Zavras
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
In this episode of The Small Nonprofit, Maria sits down with Roz Zavras, founder of the Center for Community Collaboration (C3) and CEO of Aropa Consulting. Roz shares her unique approach to supporting community-based nonprofits, particularly those led by people of colour or individuals with lived experience.
Through C3, Roz is finding innovative ways to foster collaboration, provide essential services, and break down the silos that often hinder nonprofits from achieving their full potential. She talks about collaborative fundraising events and sharing HR or bookkeeping services.
Key Episode Highlights:
The Vision Behind C3
Collaborative Fundraising Events
Building Trust Among Nonprofits
Shared Services Model
Quotable Moments:
“The feedback that I get from small nonprofits is often, how do I build a donor list? How do I find donors that are interested in my work? If we have six organizations together, pooling their lists and pooling their networks, you're going to naturally grow your donor list.”
"Let's work together, have fun together, and share our donors, share the revenue, and share the work."
"Trust-building starts with one step. It’s all about taking that first step towards collaboration and partnership."
Actionable Tips:
Leverage Collaboration for Greater Impact: Consider partnering with other nonprofits on fundraising events or shared services to maximize resources and reduce costs. Start small with a joint project to build trust and rapport.
Focus on Donor Education: Educate your donors about the benefits of supporting a collaborative, community-based approach. Highlight how their contributions can drive systemic change by supporting multiple organizations with aligned missions.
Embrace an Abundance Mindset: Shift from a scarcity mindset to one of abundance. Trust that collaborating with others can lead to greater impact and stronger communities, rather than diminishing your own resources.
Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Us:
Connect with Roz: LinkedIn
Subscribe and Review:
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to The Small Nonprofit on YouTube, and leave us a review. Your feedback helps us create better content and reach more listeners like you.
Support the Podcast:
Consider supporting the podcast by subscribing here.
Don’t forget to become a supporter of our show!
Watch this episode on Youtube.
Next Episode Teaser:
Join us next week as we dive into the world of trust-based philanthropy with Juliana Sprott, another member of The Sprott Foundation. Don’t miss it!
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Maria: Hello, welcome back to the Small Nonprofit Podcast. I'm sitting here with Roz who I met through Community-Centric Fundraising in the chat. So I'm really excited that she's here to speak with all of us today because I think she's working on something pretty innovative. Hi, Roz.
[00:00:18] Roz: Hello
[00:00:19] Maria: Roz, can you quickly introduce yourself to the audience?
[00:00:22] Maria: Who are you? What do you do?
[00:00:25] Roz: Yeah, definitely. Hello, everyone. I'm Roz Zavras. , I, have a bunch of different hats, but I am the founder of a nonprofit called the Center for Community Collaboration. We are a nonprofit that serves other organizations, specifically those that are community-based, emerging, and led by individuals of color or with lived experience.
[00:00:48] Roz: We support these organizations through consulting, collaborative events, collaborative fundraising, and just creating a space for nonprofits to come together [00:01:00] because our idea is that if community-based nonprofits are really given a network, they can do anything that they need, and so we are that network for you all.
[00:01:10] Roz: I'm also the founder and CEO of a consulting firm called Aropa Consulting, which is a human-based, human-centered, and equity-focused consulting practice for nonprofits.
[00:01:21] Maria: So how long have you been in the sector? Now that you're founding things and they're going really well, I just want to hear a little bit more about your, origin story.
[00:01:28] Roz: Yeah, definitely. I've been in the nonprofit sector, depending on how you count, for over 20 years. I started in the early 2000s working with a research team as their research assistant and grant writer. And really just fell in love with the idea that I could be of service to my community, to the world-at-large, through working at a nonprofit.
[00:01:49] Roz: So from there, that was what I did. I went from local community development organizations. I did a small stint in the U.S. Foreign Service, and realized that [00:02:00] I was much more interested in grassroots organizing, grassroots efforts, than on a larger federal level. And so after I left the service, I came back to New York City.
[00:02:11] Roz: I did a lot of work with community organizing, with supporting, like I said, community-led initiatives. And then eventually became a nonprofit consultant at another consulting firm. Realized that I loved it. I loved being able to support more organizations with my skills and eventually started my own firm two years ago.
[00:02:32] Maria: That's amazing. I also really love that part of like you get to help nonprofits, many of them at the same time. I really love that. But for a C3 specifically, I think that is such an interesting project. I don't know of many nonprofits that serve other nonprofits. I think maybe one other comes to mind Reboot Canada.
[00:02:54] Maria: And what they do is they support the IT and the systems and all that stuff [00:03:00] of smaller nonprofits and they do like refurbishing and that kind of stuff. But I think it's such a needed service. I don't know that there's that many organizations that do this. So I'd love to really dive into how the Center for Community Collaboration, also known as C3, just for everyone listening, how they, how you support nonprofits.
[00:03:21] Roz: Yeah. So one of our biggest first programs we launched last year, so we're also small and growing, but the idea was we wanted to be a network of support for organizations. This is something I've seen a lot with I've worked with fiscally sponsored organizations, community orgs, they typically just don't have access to an accountant to pick their brain or a fundraiser or, to pick up the phone and say, hey, I have a question. I need someone to gut check me. So that was our first project. So we have eight community consultants that are free of charge. [00:04:00] Any nonprofit can go onto our website, book a 30-minute call, with someone to review budgets to review your fundraising plan or your marketing plan to talk about donor stewardship.
[00:04:11] Roz: Maybe you have a grant that's coming up and you want just a pair of eyes real quickly on that great application before you submit it. That's it. You can do that directly on our website. There's no form. You have a link to the consultant's calendars and it's, like I said, free-of-charge. And these are all consultants also that have diverse backgrounds, diverse experience.
[00:04:33] Roz: They are in consulting right now. So that, that was our biggest, most important project to undertake. The other thing that we truly believe, it's called the Center for Community Collaboration because we love collaborating. The consultants themselves, we all collaborate with each other. We also want to create a culture of collaboration, because oftentimes in the nonprofit sector, I think we are forced into silos, and we're forced to compete with each [00:05:00] other.
[00:05:00] Roz: So one thing that we do is collaborative fundraisers, meaning we bring together multiple nonprofits to host an event. Because the idea is, if you have six small nonprofits, do we need six small community events or can we do one big event that we bring everyone together, fundraise together, have fun together, share our donors, share the revenue, and share the work.
[00:05:25] Roz: So that's our other big project that we are doing this year.
[00:05:31] Maria: And tell me a little bit about how that would work, because it sounds really interesting. So how did those six nonprofits come together? Are they all connected to you? Are they connected to each other? And then how do you decide who gets the revenue and how much is it based on the donors that you bring?
[00:05:46] Maria: Or what does that look like?
[00:05:48] Roz: Yeah. So right now the nonprofits are connected to me. We did an open application so anybody could apply. We're based in the greater New Haven area of Connecticut. You had to be local. And [00:06:00] so you apply, pretty much the questions are, what are your programming?
[00:06:04] Roz: We support anti-racist programming organizations that are focused on social justice or community support, there are a couple of, questions about that, but other than that, anyone that applied got an interview, got a chance to talk to us about the event, and, honestly, self selected, said either, that date works for me or it doesn't.
[00:06:26] Roz: And so we have six organizations. What they do is we share all of the revenue so any money that's raised during the event from an auction or a paddle raise or a raffle, that gets split evenly among all organizations. The only difference is organizations get a prorated amount of their ticket revenue.
[00:06:46] Roz: So the way we set up ticketing is, when you buy a ticket to the event, you can say, are you supporting a particular nonprofit? Then a portion of your ticket goes directly to that nonprofit so that we split the ticket revenue, but if if [00:07:00] you got all of your supporters to come out and you got 50 tickets sold, you're going to get more than if somebody only had 10.
[00:07:06] Roz: But everybody walks away with a good portion of shared revenue
[00:07:11] Maria: and what was the problem that you were trying to solve here? Is it like, it's a lot of work or what is what was the problem that C3 aims to work on
[00:07:22] Roz: multifaceted, which is why all of our C3 programming is aiming hopefully to tackle multiple challenges at once.
[00:07:29] Roz: The first one is it's so difficult to plan a fundraising event. It is a lot of work. It is a lot of time. There are tons of organizations that throw so much money into it and then don't get that money back, right? There's a certain economy of scale with events. And so that was one challenge, is that for your small organizations, their barrier to throwing a fundraising event is really high.
[00:07:53] Roz: The other challenge that we're trying to solve is just creating connections. Especially the feedback that I get from [00:08:00] small nonprofits is often, how do I build a donor list? How do I find donors that are interested in my work? If we have six organizations together, pooling their lists and pooling their networks, you're going to naturally grow your donor list.
[00:08:13] Roz: I used to do these events through an organization called Prime Produce in New York City, and when we would do them, many donors would come in and say, oh, this is so exciting. I didn't know this organization existed or this organization existed. So they left the event now with three organizations are excited to support as opposed to one.
[00:08:34] Roz: And the other one is to build connections, really just to have fun, get to know other organizations in your community because again, we're in this together. And so the more we can build spaces to work together, the more excited we'll be to think about doing a project or program together.
[00:08:54] Maria: I think so many of the things that you're doing remove barriers to nonprofits.
[00:08:59] Maria: So like first, [00:09:00] like having the like calendar for the consultant, like you don't have to fill out a form. You just get on there and immediately get some support. But also just like making those connections early on means that if there's an opportunity for a grant or an opportunity for another collaboration, which I feel like a grant is a smaller scale of what we're talking about, but just for the larger scale projects, like they already know that they work well together.
[00:09:23] Maria: For example, their donors are interested in the same stuff that your donors are. So I think that's such an interesting concept and idea for fundraising event outside of fundraising. Are there other ways that you're looking at applying these values?
[00:09:37] Roz: Yeah, so our big goal is to do shared services.
[00:09:41] Roz: So that's the other pain point that a lot of organizations talk to me about, we don't need a full time bookkeeper. We don't need a full time marketing person. We don't need a full time name that position And so one thing that my company does is we do fractional fundraising you know a member of my team [00:10:00] can be a part of your team for a fraction of the cost. But you're getting high quality professional services and oftentimes what I see nonprofits do, especially the ones around here, they will use interns for everything that they can because that is a low cost way to add quick labor.
[00:10:18] Roz: So C3, what we'd really love to do is to create a shared back office services so that nonprofits could pay again a nominal fee to us while still getting the kind of services they're looking for. And so that's our plan or our goal is to add that for 2025 to begin thinking of. All right. Can we devise one service that everybody really needs. Bookkeeping is one that comes up a lot, but it might not be bookkeeping that we can get multiple organizations to pay in a pool that then offsets the cost for us. But then the organizations get access to that person regularly.
[00:10:57] Maria: I've definitely seen like fractional bookkeeping for a [00:11:00] while, like a number of years, fractional fundraising.
[00:11:02] Maria: I feel is newer in the space, but I'm also starting to see a fractional HR, which I really like because yeah, a lot of organizations are really small. They don't have the capacity or the fines or any kind of support and actually doing that. So I think that this ends up being really helpful to them.
[00:11:20] Maria: What do the organizations that you've worked with say to you after? Do they have extra time to go spend somewhere else? How do they spend that time? Do they feel less burned out? Or what is the result?
[00:11:34] Roz: You mean for the fractional services?
[00:11:36] Maria: Yeah.
[00:11:38] Roz: So yeah, our organizations that, and again, this is on the consulting side of the business right now, but they have been super positive.
[00:11:45] Roz: They have more time to do other work. Usually that's what happens or because of our work, they're able to do so much more. They were able to apply for twice as many grants as they could before. They were able to have donor meetings that [00:12:00] they didn't have time for before. They just felt like their entire fundraising process was smoothed out that there were no, nothing was falling through the cracks anymore because there was somebody actually able to sit and focus on it.
[00:12:13] Roz: Yeah the feedback that we get is really positive of, oh, wow, now I have all this time, and now we're actually able to fundraise.
[00:12:25] Maria: And how do you feel like you'd be able to scale C3? Are you looking for donations? Are you, is it like a fee-for-service, more of a social enterprise kind of thing?
[00:12:33] Maria: Or, like, how do you fund the fractional professionals? All of the above.
[00:12:41] Roz: So the hope is grant funding or donations to create base level funding. So one of the goals is that what the nonprofits pay is going to be nominal. So it would not, it wouldn't actually cover the full cost of the position.
[00:12:58] Roz: So yes, we are [00:13:00] looking for fundraising support either through the form of grants or individual donations. To ensure that we can pay the individual who's going to be the fractional consultant or the fractional employee a thriving wage. Because that's also something that's very important to us is that it's not just about paying someone minimum wage.
[00:13:21] Roz: It's about making sure that they're getting a really great competitive wage with benefits. So because of that, yes, we'll need additional funding. Which is why our goal is to launch this service in 2025.
[00:13:35] Maria: Something that I see a lot too maybe this is, I don't think it's unique to the Toronto space, but there's like a lot of competition between people in the same kind of systems and nonprofits.
[00:13:46] Maria: So let's say Supporting people experiencing homelessness, like all these might be competing with each other and I don't know if they would 100 percent want to share resources. Maybe they would want to share with other organizations that are not specifically in that [00:14:00] niche. But also, I do think that it would be a huge advantage to share resources with people who are in your niche.
[00:14:07] Maria: I don't know if you've seen that like egos clashing or, Or if people are no, this is mine and I only want to share a little bit. I don't know.
[00:14:15] Roz: Yeah, definitely. I get that comment a lot, actually, especially, oh, I don't want to share my donors, what if they donate to that organization and not mine anymore?
[00:14:26] Roz: And what I say to that is, let's really, let's sit down and let's talk about what is it that you do, what's your special niche, and what's your special niche? Because most of the time it's a continuum of care within these services. There's something that's special and unique about your organization and your organization.
[00:14:45] Roz: Let's figure it out. And I'm sure if a donor really wants to have a change to the system of care homeless support, then they're probably going to want to donate both, right? That says, okay, you solve this part of the [00:15:00] puzzle and you solve this part of the puzzle. So that's what we love to do is how can we facilitate conversations about that and bring people to the table and say, it's really, you don't have to compete.
[00:15:09] Roz: You just have to figure out how you differentiate yourselves.
[00:15:13] Maria: I feel like a conversation like that would really ease the scarcity mindset that someone might be facing. Cause it's Oh, okay. Roz has done it before, she knows what she's talking about. I just had to go with the flow a little bit more instead of fearing that your donors are just going to abandon you at the first sign of a different nonprofit, because that's probably unlikely, especially if you have a relationship with them.
[00:15:34] Maria: But I definitely see that as a big fear in the Toronto space. But
[00:15:40] Roz: remember, most people that donate to more than one organization.
[00:15:43] Maria: You're not the only organization they've heard of ever. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and if you build a good relationship with your donors and you're actually making them feel connected to the community, why would they leave?
[00:15:57] Maria: They're gonna just also [00:16:00] donate to another good cause. But again if you're centering community, that's not really a bad thing.
[00:16:05] Roz: Exactly. And really, donors are interested, especially donors nowadays, are much more interested in impact. What is the impact of their donation? And if we can paint a picture that says by donating to all of these organizations, what you're doing is dismantling the system.
[00:16:22] Roz: And ensuring that not only are we impacting the individuals whose service we're giving in the moment, but we're actually thinking about it from an ecosystem point of view, that is such a strong statement than just saying, help this organization with this little piece, but rather let's think about, systems level change.
[00:16:39] Roz: Across these 5,
[00:16:41] Maria: which a lot of donors are already thinking about, like, when you visit a grant application, they were like, oh, we want you to list all your partners, or we want to partner with someone for this project. Funders are thinking about it a little bit more holistically, so when we're hoarding our donors, our resources, even our contacts some people might be like, [00:17:00] no, I don't want to tell you who my bookkeeper is, ridiculous stuff.
[00:17:03] Maria: It just makes for a better sector. It leads to less fragmented work, a better pooling of resources, as you were saying earlier. And I love the idea of joint fundraising events, because running a fundraising event at a small nonprofit can be a hellscape. So having someone to do it with you and similar goals, similar mindset, just seems like so much relieved pressure off of you.
[00:17:30] Roz: Exactly. And it's fun. That, that's the thing that, that we miss a lot in this sector and in our work, because we are working on some of the most intransigent problems. And we take our work so seriously that we forget that fun and levity are also incredibly important and working with other organizations, laughing with other and colleagues is super important for our souls.[00:18:00]
[00:18:01] Maria: I think it's so powerful. I heard this quote when I was like, maybe like 16, 17 on the radio, the laughter is the brush that sweeps away the cobwebs of the heart. And it just always stuck with me because sometimes our jobs can be so hard. And especially if you're an ED or, a leadership position at an organization that serves people very directly, like it can be very difficult to
[00:18:26] Maria: know that you're trying your best, but it's not, solving capitalism. But it's just, I think it's really important to come together and have fun being community to have that pure support and pure networks of okay, what are you doing? What's working for you? What's not working for you.
[00:18:44] Maria: We did something similar at the last in house job that I had where we were a group of fundraisers who are working in food security. And we reached out to a competitor who was also working on food security and we were both trying to apply [00:19:00] the Community-Centric Fundraising values, those 10 principles, and we met each month to go over each principle and see how we were applying it well, or not so well, like, how are you on, acknowledging time as you do money.
[00:19:17] Maria: It's really interesting and not having to figure out everything by yourself just made it so much easier.
[00:19:23] Roz: And especially those 10 principles. That's such a great point. They are not a destination. They are a journey. And it's difficult sometimes to say, okay we've made it because we applied this principle, but as we know with fundraising, things come up constantly throughout the year.
[00:19:41] Roz: And so talking through how you can apply it when you're working towards it, because it's still really important, right? You don't have to say I've achieved it because now it's applied else everywhere. And learning from others, right? The principles are just that, principles how we apply them in our [00:20:00] particular context is really important because that's what makes it community-centric, right?
[00:20:04] Roz: It's not just about now we're applying these things down on you, but rather we're thinking about our community holistically and we're able to then show up in a way that is supportive for them.
[00:20:19] Maria: Yeah, and I think that's true. What it's all about, sometimes we forget that it's not about your brand, it's not about, your ED's opinion or your board chair who keeps harassing you to do X, Y, and Z, it's about the community and the work.
[00:20:32] Maria: So whatever makes it easiest for you and your partner organizations to do the work, that's the path.
[00:20:41] Roz: And I will say some of this does also lead to donor education, right? So some donors are used to a siloed model where they say, okay, this organization is the one that I support and they will have a competitive mindset. But similarly to [00:21:00] this conversation now, I love talking to folks. I love saying, okay, why do you have that mindset?
[00:21:05] Roz: Let's think about it. Especially with high net worth donors, they are looking for large impact. And so how do we flip the conversation to, okay, this is the organization that you're used to, or this is the model that you're used to. How do we ensure that same impact, but maybe with a different model?
[00:21:24] Roz: I
[00:21:28] Maria: have another podcast episode coming out of this person who works in asset acquisition. So like this program would be a better match in your nonprofit because our nonprofit has grown in a different way. There's just so many interesting ways to collaborate that we're not as aware as we should be, and we're not implementing so I wonder if you have heard like the reasons why people haven't done this because you just mentioned maybe it's a donor scarcity kind of fear, but are there any others?
[00:21:59] Roz: [00:22:00] Trust, that's been one of the largest pieces of feedback that I've gotten. That we don't necessarily trust each other. Are they showing up for their community the way that I show up for my community? Are they applying the principles? Or, what are their principles and their values? And are we values aligned?
[00:22:20] Roz: And then the other one is time, because in order to build trust, that takes time. And these organizations are running around doing a million things, everybody's wearing 50 hats, they don't have the time always to sit down and say, I'm going to grab coffee with you and slowly build up rapport. So that's one of the reasons why another thing that we do is called a Community Connections event.
[00:22:43] Roz: We pay for pay for a venue, for snacks, a little bit of wine, a little bit of non alcoholic drinks it's an un networking event. The point is not to network. The point is actually just to get to know the individuals in your community and [00:23:00] to gather because that is one of the first things that we need to do to build trust.
[00:23:05] Roz: And so instead of saying, okay, you're going to get coffee with these 15 people, let's all just 15 people show up at the end of a work day, have some fun together. And so trying to solve, The trust and the time component, but those are the two biggest ones. And then we have, the nonprofit philanthropic sector needs to also support collaboration.
[00:23:26] Roz: So I know that there are some donors and some networks of donors out there that have started to in, as you mentioned earlier, in their applications, in their calls for funding say, we actually want a coalition, we don't want one organization, or we want to know that you have partners in this work, as opposed to we're donating only to you.
[00:23:46] Roz: So the more that we see coalition calls, the more that we see partnerships emphasized and lauded, we try to call those out as well.
[00:23:57] Maria: Ah, the trust part is huge. I [00:24:00] definitely see it like, oh, I don't know if they treat their community the way that I would want them to be treated, right? I don't know if they engage in like advocacy in the way that I want our organization to do or, because you are bringing together your brands publicly or something.
[00:24:13] Maria: So the trust part is huge. And the time would be a huge barrier. So how would nonprofits go about building that trust with limited time? That sounds like a huge challenge.
[00:24:25] Roz: I love to do mini projects together. I think that's such a great way. So say there's a small community grant.
[00:24:32] Roz: That you know is pretty low barrier to entry in terms of application. It's not a ton of money. But maybe it's something that you're like, okay, I can collaborate with that other organization, and work together, a community garden, so there's an organization here locally that runs a community garden, but also brings in artists.
[00:24:52] Roz: So it's this really cool collaboration where arts organizations get to come in, there's a community garden, and then there's an organization serving [00:25:00] seniors. So partner together on a small project. See if you work, it's low low barrier to entry, low stakes, but that's a great way to ensure both of your organizations are funded for this, collaboration time while also seeing how you work together.
[00:25:21] Maria: What if these nonprofits are not lucky enough to be close to C3? What can you do to get that conversation going and start seeing how they can collaborate with others?
[00:25:32] Roz: Our services as I mentioned online, that's for any nonprofit anywhere in the world. You can make an appointment with any of us and you can be based in Fiji and it's all good.
[00:25:46] Roz: If you're based in Fiji, though, we might want to come visit you. Throwing that out there. But, so if you are interested in collaborating, or maybe some of these questions are coming up, you can come make an appointment with one of us and say, How do I do this? How [00:26:00] do I approach this conversation? Or, here's a really cool funding call that actually asks for partnerships.
[00:26:05] Roz: How would you go about it? We're all, like I said, collaboration is key. deeply part of our all of our values. So if you're curious and you want to know more, you can just make an appointment with one of us.
[00:26:19] Maria: And what about if they want to try to do it in their community right now, what actions can they take?
[00:26:26] Roz: Yeah, so like I mentioned identifying other organizations that are doing similar work to you and Not being afraid to reach out to them and talk to them. You probably already do because if you're working in the same communities and with similar populations, but from the guise of, hey, let's design a project together and then maybe let's get that funded.
[00:26:46] Roz: Like I said, sometimes it's a little easier when you have a goal in mind as opposed to saying, let's just grab coffee for the sake of grabbing coffee. No let's think about a co project that we could lead. I know some communities that have done that and have created these giant [00:27:00] coalitions to end, homelessness or to end childhood hunger.
[00:27:05] Roz: Another suggestion is if you have a local community foundation, I have found that community foundations have been great for convening working groups. This is also something you could speak to you, a local community foundation saying, Hey, are you interested in facilitating a working group of homelessness services, of senior services, of youth services because so that could be another great way.
[00:27:31] Roz: And then that builds rapport with you and a local community foundation, which is probably a pretty big funder.
[00:27:41] Maria: And do you think it's an easier sell when it's a program related project, or would it be the same lift when you're like, hey, why don't we share HR across three organizations?
[00:27:55] Roz: I've found that the let's share HR among three organizations [00:28:00] exists once there's already been trust. One of the reasons for that is because, and this is feedback that I get from leaders, I don't want them to see my dirty laundry. That's a phrase that I get So, my suggestions are if you don't already have that coalition, if you don't have organizations where you're not worried about your dirty laundry, start with programmatic collaboration to build that trust, to build that rapport.
[00:28:27] Roz: And then you can say, yeah, let's share a HR person. I advocate for going out and trying to collaborate on services anyway, but I do acknowledge that as often you need to build up a little bit of trust before you get there.
[00:28:47] Maria: That's fair. When you said that, I was like, yeah, that makes sense. Roz, is there any other thoughts that you want to leave our audience with today?
[00:28:54] Roz: One collaboration is really powerful. I think there's a lot of talk about how capitalism is [00:29:00] broken, how our systems of economy aren't working for us. All of us. Then let's try to collaborate instead of competition, which is the bedrock of capitalism. Maybe let's flip it on its head and let's think about let's work together.
[00:29:15] Roz: Let's have a growth mindset and abundance mindset, even if the system of our economy isn't in that same place. Maybe we can shift it. Really figure out who are the organizations that are working in your ecosystem. And also think outside of the box with that, by the way. It doesn't just have to be another youth serving organization.
[00:29:39] Roz: Maybe you partner with an arts organization, or maybe you partner with the local animal rescue, and do really cool things with them because maybe there's some fun co-programming that would benefit your community. So yeah, try to think outside of the box. Try to think outside of the grain against competition and towards collaboration and [00:30:00] trust building starts with one step.
[00:30:02] Roz: It's all you have to do. Don't think about it as a huge mountain to climb. It's just step by step. You need to take.
[00:30:12] Roz: And how can people find you if they want to continue the conversation? Definitely. So you can go to our website, which is center for dot community. So it's literally Center for Community, but with a dot. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Rosalind Zavras. Just look for me. You can also, we have a LinkTree, which will be in the comments, I believe, that has access to our newsletter.
[00:30:41] Roz: To our website. To our Instagram. So there's multiple ways to find us. We are center for the number four community on Instagram, Facebook, everywhere. So that's how you can find us.
[00:30:54] Maria: Great. Thank you so much for being on the Small Nonprofit. I love the way that you're [00:31:00] thinking and I can't wait to see what you do in two, three years with C3 because this is already such a good start and the value alignment and building those connections is so important right now.
[00:31:11] Roz: I agree. Thank you for having me.
[00:31:14] Maria: And thank you all for listening to this episode of the Small Nonprofit Podcast. You should definitely check out C3. That's going to be in the show notes below also Roz's LinkedIn. But for now, keep thinking about how you can partner with other nonprofits in your area and better serve your community, whether that's through sharing a bookkeeper or doing a joint fundraising event.
[00:31:35] Maria: I'm sure there's a lot of interesting ways that you can try it. And if you do, please share them with me because I'd love to hear them. So in case you forgot, you can always see our lovely faces on YouTube as well if you'd like to view the conversation as well as listen along. But that's it for today.
[00:31:52] Maria: We'll see you at the next episode of the Small Nonprofit. Bye for now.
