Mergers, Partnerships, and Asset Transfers with Michelle Shumate
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Have you ever thought about merging your nonprofit with another organization? Or maybe transferring a program to another nonprofit? If you're like me, you might be thinking, "That sounds complicated and risky!" But what if strategic collaboration could be the key to unlocking your nonprofit's full potential?
In this episode, I chat with Michelle Shumate, a professor at Northwestern University and a consultant at Social Impact Network Consulting, . Michelle shares her fascinating research on what sets successful collaborations apart. We dive into real-life examples of small nonprofits achieving incredible results through mergers, asset transfers, and innovative partnerships. Michelle also breaks down the steps you can take to explore collaboration opportunities for your own organization. If you're ready to discover how strategic collaboration can lead to growth, innovation, and greater impact, this episode is a must-listen!
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Key Episode Highlights:
Strategic Mindset: Approach collaborations with a strategic mindset, carefully considering the value add, risks, and integration plans to ensure long-term success.
Culture Matters: Pay close attention to organizational culture, especially in mergers and asset transfers. Foster a culture of collaboration and inclusivity to ensure a smooth transition and lasting success.
Asset Transfers for Growth: Explore asset transfers as a strategic tool for growth and innovation. Acquiring programs or assets from other organizations can revitalize your nonprofit and expand your impact.
Seek Expert Guidance: Don't hesitate to seek expert guidance when navigating collaborations, mergers, or asset transfers. Consultants and legal professionals can provide valuable support and ensure a successful process.
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Watch this episode on Youtube: https://youtu.be/2Qqv_oDwSqA
Links and Resources:
Research reports commissioned by the Sustained Collaboration Network and available at: https://sustainedcollab.org/events-and-publications/
Website: https://michelleshumate.com/
Connect with Michelle on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelleshumate/
Connect with Maria on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mariario/
Support the show: https://www.buzzsprout.com/208666/supporters/new
Transcript:
00:00:00 Michelle: I think the first thing is the mindset shift that you're getting to, which is thinking about the programs you create is not my programs, but I'm creating assets for the community. And I want to see those assets flourish. So where are they going to flourish best? And that mindset shift is probably the first step. I see a lot of times when folks are thinking about sunsetting a program, they're thinking, well, we're just going to have to shut it down. They don't think about what are the assets that are in that program that could flourish if they're given to another organization or they partnered with another organization to do it.
00:00:39 Maria: Hi friends. Ever wondered how you could turn your big ideas into results? I'm Maria Rio, your go-to guide for helping small nonprofits have real world impacts. Together, let's reimagine a better sector, tackle systemic issues, and yes, raise some serious cash. Welcome back to The Small Nonprofit, the podcast where your passion meets action.
00:01:10 Maria: Hi everyone, welcome back or welcome if you're new here to The Small Nonprofit Podcast where we post weekly episodes about all things nonprofit. Today, I have a really cool guest for you who's working on some things that I think are very different from what we're used to. So Michelle is going to break it all down and give us all the details. Hi, Michelle.
00:01:32 Michelle: Hi, Maria.
00:01:34 Maria: Michelle, can you introduce yourself to our audience, please?
00:01:36 Michelle: Sure. So I wear a couple of different hats. I am a professor at Northwestern University, and so I'm going to try very hard not to sound like a professor today. And in my other hat, I am a consultant and own a small consulting firm called Social Impact Network Consulting.
00:01:54 Maria: And how long have you been in nonprofit and what is your consultancy consult on?
00:01:58 Michelle: I've been doing work with nonprofits for about 20 plus years now. I started out as a volunteer and somebody who cared a lot about nonprofits, particularly small nonprofits growing up, and found that I could dedicate my research to nonprofits first. And then over time, more people started asking, well, can you help us apply that research to what we're dealing with? And so that led to a consultancy. And so I've been doing that for about 10 years now.
00:02:31 Michelle: Focus particularly on two pillars. One is that I do a lot of work on strategy. And then the other piece is I work a lot on collaboration, which is what I'm going to be talking about today. So not only collaborations between two organizations coming together, but sometimes many, many more. So the largest networks I've worked with had up to 300 organizations participate.
00:02:52 Maria: Oh, 300 is a lot. That is not a small feat.
00:02:56 Michelle: It was a lot. Yeah, that was a lot.
00:02:58 Maria: It's hard to get a handful of nonprofits organized. So 300, good for you. Okay. So every time we talk to someone on the podcast about research, sometimes they do it a little bit different. So they'll pull it from the payment processor or from the database. So how do you usually do the research?
00:03:15 Michelle: So this was my favorite research to do. Increasingly, I love being involved in case studies. And so what we did was we screened about 45 actually sustained collaborations that we had nominated from a group of funders called the Sustained Collaboration Network. And so these are collaborations they had funded. And then we from that selected 20 of those collaborations to be really the deep dive focus of the study. And so some of these were very successful collaborations, 14 we selected because they were among the most successful in the group.
00:03:50 Michelle: And then we chose an additional six that we're not showing the same kinds of results so that we could make a real comparison. And I love case study research because it gives me a chance not only to interview lots of people about the same collaboration. So I talked to board members, I talked to folks from at least two sides or more, depending on how big the collaboration was, but I also got a chance to talk to the funders who supported them. And so I got a deep dive into their documents and that really created a robust story from multiple perspectives where I can kind of gut check what people were telling me.
00:04:24 Maria: And what were you looking to find? Were you looking to find anything or did the findings just surprise you?
00:04:30 Michelle: Well, some of the findings did surprise me. The folks at the Sustained Collaboration Network, the reason why they wanted me to do this research is they wanted a chance to figure out what separated out the successful collaborations, their best stories from the rest of what they were funding. What was the magic formula, and they fund a lot of different types of collaborations, some of which I was more familiar with when I started and some of which I knew a couple of stories, but I hadn't done a deep dive into before. So there were plenty of surprises along the way.
00:05:02 Michelle: But overall, the thing that I really appreciated coming across all of these collaborations was the way that these leaders thought about strategic collaboration as one of the tools in their tool belt in order to innovate, to grow, to scale. They had really thought about it as one of the ways that they could lean on this tool that they had developed over time in order to achieve some of the biggest strategic gains that they could as an organization.
00:05:32 Maria: I really want to hear more about that, but I will save that for a little bit later because we like to structure as a problem solution result. So what were the problems that you were seeing with the less successful collaborators?
00:05:41 Michelle: I think some of the less successful collaborators came at this in a couple of different ways. One of them is they didn't have that strategic mindset. So for example, one of the collaborations I was working with, lovely organization in Phoenix, focused on physical wellbeing. Really they founded their collaborations. One was a merger, one was a physical sponsorship because well, the organizations approached us and we really thought that they were good organizations. We liked them, we were friendly with them and we thought
00:06:14 Michelle: Well, sure, we'll just do a collaboration. It'll benefit everybody. But they hadn't really gone through the process of strategically thinking it through and figuring out what's the value add here? Could we do this better on our own? What were the really risks associated with going through this? And was there a plan for real integration? And then in this case, there really wasn't that kind of forethought. And so they were less successful over time.
00:06:41 Michelle: The second thing I heard is a lot of people assumed, well, if we just collaborate, especially in the mergers or the integrated organizations, thanks, the resources will come with the other organizations or they'll just appear. And so they hadn't really built up the working capital or the reserves in order to do the type of integration they wanted to.
00:07:01 Michelle: So I talked to several mergers in particular who had kind of buyer's remorse because they thought, well, when we merge, it'll be like all the resources are coming with them but they hadn't really done enough due diligence to figure out, oh no, they've got about six months of runway and then we're going to have to do some serious investment in order to keep this going. That was the other pitfall that I saw.
00:07:25 Maria: Through the collaborations that you studied, are they mostly mergers or any more surface level? We partner on this on advocacy, for example, or is it very degraded?
00:07:35 Michelle: We looked at three different types of sustained collaboration. So one of them is that integrated organization and that's the mergers and asset transfers. We looked at also what we call shared project and service collaborations and that's where two or more organizations put in joint resources in order to get a joint outcome. Sometimes that's a project for the community. So those are really familiar to a lot of nonprofit leaders.
00:08:00 Michelle: Some of them are more back office collaboratives where we're talking about pooling resources to do HR or insurance or purchasing of some kind. And then the third group is what we call alliances and networks. And that's where you have three or more organizations coming together in order to achieve something they couldn't alone. And so we see certainly advocacy showing up there in alliances because our voices are amplified when more of us can speak together, but we're also seeing some things like systems alignment, where we have organizations coming together to really figure out how to work as a group of organizations together on a shared problem and to provide more services to the community as a result.
00:08:42 Maria: So interesting. Maybe it's the nonprofits that I've worked at, but I don't know if any of the nonprofits I've worked at would be able to get it together enough to do a really integrated collaboration like the one that you're talking about. Can you tell me a little bit about who the participants were? Were they smaller? Were they large organizations? And how do they actually go about doing this? Did they consult with a lawyer? How does that even happen?
00:09:07 Michelle: I was really purposeful in the research to make sure that we had some smaller, under $250,000 a year nonprofits, and I had some larger nonprofits. And so we certainly do have the more than $10 million a year category in there. Among the small nonprofits, I sell them in each category. And they're actually some of my favorite stories because they figured out what they needed to do. So I'll start with integrated organizations.
00:09:34 Michelle: So one of my favorites is called the Outreach House, which is located in a town here in Illinois called Lombard House. Two nonprofits, one was a clothes closet and had some infant supply kind of stuff. The other was a food pantry and was doing some paying for folks' bills. Before they merged, total assets, $85,000. Not a big nonprofit, no full time staff, mostly run by volunteers.
00:10:00 Michelle: But they looked at each other, they were almost across the street from one another. And they didn't have coordinated hours. So people were coming one day to the food pantry and then they'd have to figure out what the hours were in another day, go to the clothes closet or to get infant supplies. Neither of them were accessible locations. They both had stairs and didn't have elevators in order to be able to get there. Was there a problem for clients? Was a problem for volunteers who needed more accessibility? So they decided that they would merge.
00:10:29 Michelle: They applied for a super small grant from a partner here called the Mission Sustainability Initiative. We're talking $10,000, $15,000. That allowed them to hire a consultant to come in and help facilitate conversations. It was during COVID, so they met in the backyard of one of the volunteer board members who was doing this. So the consultant on the laptop, them all spread out in the backyard talking this through.
00:10:54 Michelle: And then they found pro bono legal consultants to help them do the official paperwork. They merged and within a year, they went from $85,000 a year to $225,000 a year. And they had enough money to get a shared location. That shared location meant they were serving over 40% more clients. They were distributing lots more food. They were seeing lots more use of their infant supplies. And there are things that were a little bit slower, like their winter coat drive were able to be really expanded. They gave over 150% more coats the first year. And because of this, they found they were really being able to serve their clients more readily. And they were more recognized through the community. So all of a sudden these companies wanted to come and volunteer at their shared location, sorting clothes or doing food. It became this kind of win-win.
00:11:49 Michelle: And within a couple of years, they had won awards in across Chicago for being a really innovative solution to some problems. Now, they're still not a huge organization. They're still under $500,000 a year. But they have a full-time staff, they have new community partnerships, and what they say is the most significant when is they're able to serve their clients more holistically. So even super small nonprofits, if they're open to this, can make this happen.
00:12:18 Maria: I love that. Ah. It's so good to hear how much of a success that was for them because I feel like a nonprofit, sometimes, first of all, we get stuck with the innovation piece. We don't always feel comfortable doing that for a variety of reasons. But also, there's a lot of really big egos. So sometimes people don't think to even come together and innovate in that way where it's like, we are doing this together. It's not just about my brand, your brand, and growing it separately. It's about the community, which I really love.
00:12:48 Michelle: And I think that was one of the things that I saw over and over across these collaborations is that when you centered the community, all of a sudden new ideas happened about how you could end up innovating. A little bit of a bigger collaboration is this alliance of domestic violence organizations across Texas. And the lead organization is a bigger organization, but they included many, many small domestic violence organizations in this network.
00:13:17 Michelle: And one of the first thing they did and their processes they figured out the client journey, right, so they sat down and they were working with a consultant and they said okay. If somebody is experiencing domestic violence and they have to find shelter what do they do what they call the first place and they go and they tell everything that's and then at the end of that. There not may not be bed space for them so they're given a list of other places that they can call and then they have to go and find a safe space to call and call and tell their story again and again.
00:13:46 Michelle: And they realize this is not what we want for our clients. This is not what we want to happen. Let's form a system where everybody enters their bed availability into the system daily. And so the first call is the right call. And we can look up on the system where there's an available bed if we don't have the right configuration for the family or the dog or an older kid. We can call and make a warm handoff and they only need to make one phone call. And just by centering that client experience, all of a sudden, we have a really innovative solution to a problem that everybody was experiencing.
00:14:23 Michelle: And that alliance has grown and grown and grown, and now it includes over 50 organizations as a part of it. But it started out with just a few in one particular city recognizing that there was a common problem they could solve.
00:14:37 Maria: Very, very simple. It's such a simple thing that makes such a huge difference for the client. I'm wondering if you have seen any issues when it comes to culture shifts or culture issues, because maybe one organization is more lax than the other or something like that, but they're equally very resilient and adaptable and excellent. Do those come into play at all?
00:15:01 Michelle: Yeah, I mean, culture particularly comes into play when you have organizations who are trying to merge or integrate because you could have two cultures and work together on a joint project and you just separate it out. But in the integrated organization space where you're doing mergers and asset transfers, it's huge. And in the places where we saw it not succeed, we had an integration where there was still two cultures that were warring against each other and causing trouble. In the places where I've seen culture thought about mindfully, there's at least two different things that I've seen happen.
00:15:34 Michelle: One of them was a story around this organization or grant that collected used products, construction materials. And they did reuse of those materials, so an environmental organization. They also did a workforce development program. And they integrated two different warehouses and workforce development programs into one larger organization. And the leader there, [Ana Gutierrez], who's the executive director there, was just so thoughtful about how to do that right. She involved everybody early, early on. It didn't matter if you were the forklift driver or if you were the board chair.
00:16:11 Michelle: You were sitting at tables, giving input, giving feedback, working through the issues, even before the decision was made that we're going to merge super early in that process. And then she made sure that everyone was vested in the new organization. And she said, you know, some people think, you know, we have two organizations who are going to knit them together in one. That's not the way to think about it. She talked about it as unbirthing a new organization. And we're gonna all be in a part of this new entity together. Let's co-create it."
00:16:43 Michelle: And so that reframing, I think, really helped folks. Their brand became new. They had a new logo. They made sure staff all got to weigh in on what that is. They had voting across the staff on what we're gonna do. They prioritized community events where they brought all the staff together just to have fun. They played games. They went out to eat. They figured out ways to build more community.
00:17:07 Michelle: And I think that was really smart and a really good way to build something new out of two at that time, actually pretty distinct cultures. But sometimes it's even more fun. And so I've got one more story I have to share with you, which is this organization called the Asian Youth Center, which is originally a juvenile justice organization located out in California.
00:17:27 Michelle: And they knew they needed culture change because they couldn't be a juvenile justice organization anymore. They recognized landscape is changing, youth empowerment is the way that we're going to move this. But they hadn't historically done that. They had a lot of previous law enforcement folks on the board and in the staff. And so it was going to be a tough move. So they actually did an asset transfer where they acquired a program called the Parent Youth Leadership Program for the purpose of culture change.
00:17:56 Michelle: And their idea was not to make a brand new culture. Their idea was to take the values of that new program that they were acquiring and infuse it and use it to change the entire organization. Totally different way of thinking about culture and using differences in culture. They had to be super thoughtful about bringing it in and then doing trainings and thinking about integrating and matrixing the organization in order to really make those values new. And to move away from more of the juvenile justice piece to the more youth empowerment and transformational justice piece that they wanted to do, but also using collaboration strategically to get that change to happen.
00:18:38 Maria: I love the first example where you mentioned it's kind of like the creation of a new identity. So that culture, the original culture dissipates, it becomes something new, which is so smart from, and Ana Gutierrez, as I think you said, right?
00:18:52 Michelle: Yeah.
00:18:55 Maria: For your second example, so they got the program from a different organization?
00:18:58 Michelle: Yes, they did. That's what's called an asset transfer. And that was something I didn't know a ton about before I started this project. I knew it was possible. I kind of knew the legal workings of it, but I hadn't had a ton of experience with it. And I looked at several asset transfers in this project and they blew me away.
00:97:15 Maria: Were they mostly around programs? Cause that sounds so innovative and so different to acquire a program to change the culture that is such a different thinking from what I would think you would want that program for. So maybe it aligns better with your mission or then their mission, or maybe that's no longer an issue in their community or anything like that. But to use it to change your culture is just so, woof, beyond me. So I love to hear more about what you've seen there.
00:19:40 Michelle: I thought that that was really innovative, too. She was telling me about why she made the choice to bring them on and this idea of moving the organization to youth empowerment. I just couldn't get enough. I kept asking her more and more and more questions about this. Like, what do you mean this was your idea from the beginning? And how did you make that choice? And to be fair, the leader there, Michelle Fredrich, is the leader at Asian Youth Center, or AYC. She had done some mergers and asset transfers before, so she had a little bit of experience with this.
00:20:15 Michelle: So this wasn't her first time out. I think that made a big difference. And she was really paying attention to the landscape. She saw some of the grants that they had were shifting away from what they did. And she could see the contracting landscape changing. So she knew they had to make the change. So she did a couple of preparatory steps and a couple of after steps to make it work. She made sure that everybody knew this was happening before they brought the program on. It's not like bring a program on surprise or changing the culture.
00:20:44 Michelle: She had done the work where they had looked at the evidence together around youth empowerment versus juvenile justice outcomes. They had become really an evidence-driven program ahead of time. Folks knew they needed to make a change, but they didn't really know how. And so there was appetite for this change before they even brought this program in. And then once they brought this program in, well, first COVID hit. But after they stabilized around COVID, they invested really in cross-training and making sure that those values became part of what they were doing.
00:21:18 Michelle: And they've grown. They've doubled their budget in five years. They went from a $2.5 million a year organization to a $6 million organization at the end of this. So it paid off in dividends by making this investment and realigning their priorities more towards youth empowerment.
00:21:35 Maria: Thank you so much for mentioning the dollar amount because that's like that. People get hold up on it's like we can't innovate because it's risky because funders won't like it X, Y, and Z. But like you're saying, look at these examples where people innovate and they exponentially grow their budget and like their staff wellness and all these other things, their culture and investment in the mission is so reaffirmed. So I love that you're saying that.
00:21:59 Michelle: I think it's important to be fair about the money too. To your point, not every nonprofit starts out as a $2.5 million a year nonprofit. Some of them are very small. And so, hearing examples at different, I think, budget points is also helpful because you have to be able to see your organization and the examples. That's what I love about case studies is that if you have enough of them, you can find, oh, that organization is kind of like me.
00:22:26 Maria: And for organizations that are acquiring programs or assets, which we're going to use both of those words interchangeably. Are they purchasing them? Is it free? What does that look like?
00:22:39 Michelle: Well, that's a reason why I don't call them acquisitions in the nonprofit space because they're not being purchased, right? What's happening here is that one organization is granting an asset to another organization. So it's a grant, technically, from a legal standpoint. But there's a lot of negotiation to make that happen. So I'll give you another example.
00:23:00 Michelle: So there's an organization called Uplift Solutions and it had started out putting grocery stores in disadvantaged communities. That's what it's kind of founding was. The founding member of that organization was a grocer. So this made sense. And they really thought that was the way that they were gonna do kind of neighborhood revitalization. But over time, they had developed a really innovative program called Philly Food Rescue. It's in Philadelphia, so that's why Philly, Philly Food Rescue. And they were gathering food from restaurants, from small providers, and they were redistributing that food using volunteers to get folks boxes delivered to their door.
00:23:41 Michelle: That was the idea behind it. Really innovative program and extension of that. But they started to realize that this is not where the organization was going to go that ultimately they thought that they could actually make more of a difference in reentry work for incarcerated individuals. And so they ended up closing a lot of the grocery stores and that program, and they still had Philly food rescue. They knew it was a great program, great asset. It needed to go to someplace. And so they shopped around looking for a place to put it.
00:24:11 Michelle: And at the other side of this. Share Food Program that would help them solve the problem of what they call the last mile food distribution, which is getting things from the food pantry or from warehouse to the doors of individuals who need food. So they knew that that's the problem that they wanted to solve. So they were looking around for innovative programs that had solved that problem. The two leaders knew each other had a great conversation, thought this might be it, but it was not a sure deal from the beginning.
00:24:43 Michelle: They had to go through about six months of negotiations to talk about making sure that this program would stay true to its mission. What was most important for Uplift Solutions is the staff would be able to maintain their jobs so that there wouldn't be layoffs, that they would be able to stay consistent. Share Foods needed to make sure that the technology and the innovation that came along with this for the distribution was coming with the program, and so there needed to be a transfer of intellectual capital, their proprietary information, and contracts that went along with that.
00:25:17 Michelle: They had contracts with hundreds of little restaurants to do their food rescues, so those had to come with the program. Wasn't an easy deal. It certainly required a lawyer in the middle of that to negotiate. Took about six months in order to make the transfer. And that process, Uplift Solutions had to roll out job offers to the employees of Philly Food Rescue because you can't just transfer people. That doesn't work. You have to make offers to people and then some of them accepted and some of they didn't.
00:25:51 Michelle: The idea is that the day that you ended your employment with Uplift, the next day you'd start your employment with Uplift Solutions. And so that worked for a few of the employees, some of them wanted to stay with uplift and turn down the job offers. So there's a lot of technical pieces to doing this. But at the end of the day, it's been really great for both organizations, both Uplift Solutions and Share Food program benefited from being able to do this in terms of the innovation of their programs in terms of their alignment with what funders' expectations were. And it's a better fit for the program. Ultimately, they're doing a lot more food redistribution than they were when they were with Uplift Solutions.
00:26:33 Maria: I'm so happy for them. I feel like anyone watching the YouTube video is just going to see my reactions. I'm like, oh my God, that's amazing. Help me [inaudible]. I'm purposely muted so I'm not interrupting because oh man, that's so exciting and that's so refreshing and I'm so excited that you're here sharing your insights with our audience because I'm sure many of them have thought about okay. Maybe this program doesn't fit anymore. Like what do I do with that? Or maybe they found it a nonprofit and realized it's just a program. What do I do? So we give our audience first steps of when you're thinking about something like this: What should you do? What should you consider who should you talk to you? Any actionable things that they can consider.
00:27:12 Michelle: I think the first thing is the mindset shift Maria that you're getting to, which is thinking about the programs you create is not my programs, but I'm creating assets for the community. And I wanna see those assets flourish. So where are they gonna flourish best? And that mindset shift is probably the first step. I see a lot of times when folks are thinking about sunsetting a program, they're thinking, well, we're just gonna have to shut it down.
00:27:38 Michelle: They don't think about what are the assets that are in that program that could flourish if they're given to another organization or they partnered with another organization to do it. So that's the first piece of it. I think the second piece is to learn more about the different types of collaboration. So one of the things that many community foundations will do, certainly any of the folks in the shared collaboration network in Canada, Tamarack does is these little mini grants where you can spend some time getting folks together and learning what's a merger.
00:28:13 Michelle: What's the difference between a merger and an asset transfer? What's the difference between an asset transfer and a shared project? What would make this an alliance? Learning about these different tools is a big step because you don't want to get six months into the negotiation and realize, oh, no, this is not what we thought we wanted, right? We just wanted to do this shared program together. And all of a sudden, we're talking about merging boards. Figure out what these different types are.
00:28:40 Michelle: And a place to start certainly to take a look at the reports and the Sustained Collaboration website, which talks about tools for all of these. And then once you learn a little bit more about this, surprisingly, there are folks who are doing these exploratory grants which is these early stage grants. They're not a lot of money but they're enough money to get a project coordinator to work on this order and hire a consultant to help you do some due diligence.
00:29:08 Michelle: I find that these projects go off a lot better when you have somebody who's dedicated to doing this who's been down this road many nonprofit leaders haven't done a merger in their entire career. And so this is not a do it yourself manual type of thing. This is a find a little bit of help. And that could be a mini grant for exploration. That could be finding a pro bono attorney who can help walk you through it. But getting some technical assistance early on makes a huge difference in putting these things together. So those would be my three first steps.
00:29:42 Maria: Based on one of your examples, it seems like once you do it one time, you have the skills and knowledge to more easily do it again. Did you... in your report bump into a lot of people who had done it already.
00:29:53 Michelle: Yeah, the first time through, they folks would say, I just lean so heavily on my consultant, I didn't know what I was doing. Yeah. All of those pieces. And then there are the folks who had done this a few times and they're like, yeah, I needed a consultant for these tiny little tasks, but I knew what I was doing. It's fine. And so they had developed that skillset. So the first time through there is a learning curve to it. But after that first time through leaders developed the muscle for it.
00:30:19 Maria: I'm going to link those reports in the show notes for everyone who's interested in looking at those because I know Michelle has given me a lot to think about and I was really excited to record this episode after we did our little pre-screening call. So thank you again, Michelle. This has been invaluable and I can't wait for people to start thinking more in this manner.
00:30:38 Michelle: This has been a wonderful conversation. Thanks so much, Maria, for having me on the podcast.
00:30:43 Maria: Michelle, where can people find you if they want to continue the conversation?
00:30:46 Michelle: I think if you want to find me, LinkedIn is your best bet. I'm on LinkedIn all of the time and posting things there. And it's just my name, Michelle Shumate. So it's pretty easy to find. There's not a lot of Shumates, S-H-U-M-A-T-E. So it's rare enough that I'm pretty easy to find there. But certainly feel free to reach out to me there or send me an email. I'm always happy to have a conversation with nonprofit leaders.
00:31:10 Maria: Thank you again, Michelle. And thank you all for listening to this episode of the Small Nonprofit Podcast. I will link Michelle's LinkedIn in the show notes as well. So if you wanna chat with her, that will be the best way to do it. But yeah, I hope that this has given you all a lot to think about and maybe something to bring back to your nonprofit, share with your boards, share with your colleague EDs or director of developments and just start the conversation because you never know where it can lead you. It seems the revenue side could be huge. The culture side could be huge. So why not just keep thinking about it, but that's it for today. Thank you all for listening and bye for now.
00:31:48 Maria: Thank you for listening to another episode of The Small Nonprofit. If you want to continue the conversation, feel free to connect with our guests directly or find me on LinkedIn. Let's keep moving money to mission and prioritizing our well-being. Bye for now.
