Building stronger nonprofits from the inside out: A conversation with Darcy Schatz

Tasha: [00:00:00] Good morning.

Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your nonprofit origin story?

Darcy: Hi, I am Darcy Schatz. I’m the founder and CEO of Nonprofit Ops Pro, which is a nonprofit management company based in lovely Minnesota. I have been part of nonprofits, ever since I joined my first four H club at H eight and has continued all the way through, both in a professional and in a volunteer capacity.

So that’s. It’s just been a part of who I am. My whole life. The business has sprung from that desire, for service and to help, people who really need that back office help, either from a consulting capacity or for the ongoing piece of it. So that’s kind of it in a nutshell. This is definitely, like the third iteration of this.

Business that I’ve had, the first was and not was, in-home office organizing and go to people’s homes, help them organize their papers and files and, [00:01:00] help ’em throw out stuff and organize clutter. Lovely job, lovely work. But as my kids got older, it was more difficult to find people who wanted to work at 5:00 AM when I time organizing business and. I had nonprofit clients. I had, entrepreneur clients, small businesses, things like that. But right as the pandemic hit, it is actually just coincidental. It had nothing to do with the pandemic. Since I’ve been working from home since before, it was cool that I decided that really my heart was with nonprofits, and I really wanted to bring my organizational skills and my desire for service to really just serve the nonprofit community.

Tasha: That’s fantastic. And I do think in nonprofit, organization being organized is so important, but it’s also sometimes the last thing at a crazy list of like, Hey, we have to implement this. No, we have to get [00:02:00] this other project started. Into completion, whatever. And so I think that wrap up of what I like to look at as being organized is almost like a wrapping things up, right.

And like going, okay, now we can put it over here. That’s so hard to find the time for

Darcy: It absolutely is. And for many organizations, even having a dedicated admin person is a more of a luxury than it is. That is a necessity. So you have someone who’s was hired on as a marketing person, or you have a working board that everybody does some piece of the admin work, or you have a working board plus, one staff person who serves, as the ed.

And that person also has to, figure out how to do the admin piece of it. So many organizations, especially smaller ones, you don’t have a dedicated person. So for. For those to admin tasks to take a lower priority when in fact the reverse should be true. Where you are starting from that admin piece, you’re starting from that [00:03:00] foundational piece.

So what we do is we provide for organizations who need admin support, who wanna just outsource it, are happy to have somebody just take care of it. We do that piece of it, but a lot of what we do is education. It is here, if you need to figure out how to set up. Financial system that works with remote, employees and remote contractors, remote board.

Here’s how you can set up a financial tracking system so everybody knows where all the money is going, so you don’t need us, but here’s how you can do it. So a lot of what we do is education just to help people set up a really strong foundation for the organization. That helps them do all the other fun stuff, like raise money and do programs, things like that.

Tasha: Huge, huge. Yeah, exactly. I love that. It is very foundational and not like a last minute thing. What would you say has been your favorite part of working in the nonprofit sector?

Darcy: Oh, definitely. Okay. Couple of things. First of all certainly is working with people who are part of [00:04:00] nonprofits because from everyone from the board to staff, to volunteers, everything. People who are part of nonprofits are just super cool and sweet, and really just have that such a wonderful heart of service they’re giving their time and their effort and their choosing positions that. Are lower, probably lower paying than what they could get with their skills other places, in the private sector.

And they’re choosing, to make the world a better place and that just makes them awesome, cool people in the first place. So certainly meeting, interacting with people who are part of nonprofits is my favorite part of it. The second favorite just because I’m the operations nerd that I am, is really creating that order out of chaos.

I love taking like a really messy organization that has just, everyone’s frustrated and they don’t know what’s going on and they don’t know where any of the files are, anything like that, and like slowly untangling all those little bits to make it a [00:05:00] really smooth, well-functioning, well-run organization.

Tasha: That’s awesome. I actually love. Like my husband kind of makes fun of me ’cause he is like, your favorite thing to do is go through cupboards and clean, just reorganize things. I have children so it’s not great right now. But yeah, I like to do it and puzzles and I’m just like, oh, the pieces.

And I do think everyone needs at least one person on their team who, that is something that they enjoy doing, but also really hard to find, I think , the space on a nonprofit team to prioritize having. Someone with that core skillset.

Darcy: It’s definitely not, some people are born with the ability to think that way.

That’s certainly true, but it’s also a skill you can learn. That’s why again, we do all the education that we do because you can learn to think in a systematic process oriented way. What’s next? What’s the best way to do this? Are we doing this the most efficient way?

So, we can teach people how to think that way [00:06:00] so they don’t have to be bored with that gift. It is a skill that you can learn for sure.

Tasha: Absolutely. And what would you say you’ve seen to be, and can relate obviously directly to your work, but maybe just your experience in nonprofit.

What’s the biggest challenge that you see nonprofits facing?

Darcy: Let’s see. Panic feels like, a big issue because when we take on the administrative side of the work, it also involves a leadership position. And so I serve as the executive director type role for four or five of our clients, as well.

So there is, a piece of that. That organizations don’t know where the money , is going to come from, and so then they tend to cut back or change where they’re going or otherwise panic about what’s going to happen rather than taking a step back and building a plan about where we’re gonna get, where we’re gonna go, what we need to do, and starting small continuing [00:07:00] forward. So, I’m not at all disrespecting, that mindset or that feeling, ’cause I totally get it. But it is, an easy way for an organization to. Forget what their core mission is, to forget what you know, who we are and what we do, and not distracted by a shiny object, you know, piece of it.

And that challenge not only, applies to things like programming, but it also applies to a lot of the back office pieces. Like we should cancel. This subscription to save some money, but actually that subscription is saving your organization significant time. Because otherwise you have to do this thing manually and then where are you gonna find the people to do that and pay them?

And volunteers aren’t always the answer for things like that. And so that is a big challenge. Certainly pervasive throughout all sizes of organizations. But again, I totally get it because money feels hard to come by, in a lot of circumstances from an organiz ally, like back office [00:08:00] organization,

Turnover is probably the biggest piece of it. Where you have volunteers doing pieces of it. The volunteers leave. Nobody wrote down what that volunteer was doing or how they were doing it. And so the next person comes in and says, okay, great. Here’s how I’m gonna do that. And then they do it for a while and the board chair says, oh, actually, I want you to do it this way.

And the board chair has them do it this way. Then the board chair leaves. And they didn’t write down what they were doing or how they were directing the work. So turnover , especially in smaller organizations, if you haven’t documented the processes and the systems that you’re using, huge problem.

That’s how you get into a big mess.

Tasha: The things you’re describing, I think. The cost piece. And there was a point in time where I was working with an agency that offered Google ad support, Google Ad Grant. And like getting those things set up, you can spend so much time doing [00:09:00] that as an individual.

I think one of the saddest pieces often is. What other opportunity costs, and , we hear this a little bit in nonprofit, like, we need to say no to this in order to have time to do this. And at least that seems to be starting to happen. Like, no, you can’t do everything. You have to choose, pick and choose.

But the devaluing of the time on staff is something that seems to really still just not have gotten into the conversation as much. Here’s this valuable individual who knows your mission. Can get out there and talk about X, Y, and Z. And meanwhile you have potentially a tool that could do this for you.

Or sometimes, there’s such a hesitation to use consultants for certain things when you’re going, yeah. But your staff is uniquely in this position to do this type of fundraising, this type of community outreach. Certain things are really hard to get others to do or to find a tool that does it.

And they’re very uniquely soft skill human tasks. But you know that $35 [00:10:00] subscription that you’re paying for, chat GPT feels like too much when really you’re like, but is it too much? Couldn’t do some of these things. It’s such a battle, right?

Darcy: It is. The core of that is most of the time for many small organizations, and that’s where we are, is like looking at a micro to , medium sized organizations.

It’s run by people who have a lovely, wonderful passion for the organization. Like they are unicycle riders, they’re bluegrass musicians. Whatever it is they have this wonderful passion and commitment, but that’s not their job.

They don’t know how to run a nonprofit , in general. And so they get into that kind of panic mode. They get into that. We don’t know what, how any if this is done or how it should be done. And so they do the absolute best they can. That’s wonderful. You can have someone come in and say.

You don’t need to hire me full time, you don’t have to hire me as your admin. You can do that all yourself, but I can set this up for you so, it’s a rinse and repeat process. You [00:11:00] just have to, follow the process and run it. So then it doesn’t matter. Turnover then becomes less of an issue because you have a set operations manual, you know how things work.

So then leadership turnover, volunteer turnover , staff turnover becomes so much less of an issue. You then don’t have to, spend so much time figuring that out all the time. You can figure out what you wanna do next, what your passion is, what next program or festival or whatever it is that you wanna do,, for your organization.

So it is a lot of skill issue. Just a skill issue because you are a banker or a CPA, but you love this bluegrass organization and so you’re part of it, but that doesn’t mean you know how to run the nonprofit properly. Absolutely. Yeah.

Tasha: That’s great. Peer support is always a question I ask people about in this sector because I feel like. It’s one of the spaces that is lacking or intentionality behind it is lacking. Not that it’s necessarily the peer support lacking, but the intentionality behind seeking it out.

[00:12:00] How has peer support been part of your journey in nonprofit and how does it factor into your success?

Darcy: This is uniquely difficult work. I know people who aren’t a part of nonprofits. Perhaps don’t appreciate what that is, but this is uniquely difficult work, because you are probably earning less than you might if you work in the space.

You’re earning probably less than you would in the private sector, taking your skills somewhere else. You’re here because you choose to be here. You here because you are trying to make a difference and help organizations and help the world, help society, whatever it might be. But then to have that piece of it devalued the work that you’re highly skilled at, devalued by the , job markets, devalued by the people that you work for, if they really don’t understand how much value you’re bringing to the table in whatever skillset that it is , and feel it because it’s just a nonprofit.

It can be a, really challenging, [00:13:00] space to be in, for an individual. Same is true if you’re a volunteer. You have to be treated well. If you’re a board member, you have to be treated well by your peers and things like that. So peer support in general for the nonprofit sector is incredibly important and you’ve done a great job, really creating that hive,

So a lot of levels. I’ve met some lovely people. They’re just lovely. You spend 30 minutes just meeting with somebody who just understands the work that you do. And even if they’re, do something totally different, even if it’s somebody who, you don’t need to partner with or that doesn’t have any sort of like.

Business, possibility there. They’re just lovely people and it’s nice to spend 30 minutes chatting about what we do and things like that. So the peer support piece is critical for this sector. Because of that, those unique challenges that we have before anybody goes crazy. Yes, of course, working in for-profits.

Companies has its own challenges for sure. Yes. You can have some of the same challenges of devaluing the work and bad managers and [00:14:00] bosses and things like that. Sure. But it feels like in this nonprofit sector, because we’re all here, because we choose to be here, then that feels like challenges that we encounter kind of cut that much more deeply when we encounter them.

Tasha: There’s always exceptions to the rule, but. It’s a pretty emotional workspace. Everybody who I’ve met almost across the board that works in nonprofit, they’re coming at it with a level of passion. Even if maybe the particular job they’re in right now, they don’t feel particularly passionate about it.

They didn’t come into this thinking it was just another job, right? They weren’t choosing this sector because , they just needed a job because it’s not. That easy work to just have as a, just a job kind of work, right? It just requires a lot more, you’re going to encounter a lot more challenges.

I see a lot of similarities between now being part of this startup ecosystem and nonprofit because they’re doing things, a lot of passionate [00:15:00] people, big ideas, big dreams, and really with goals to a big impact, right? Whatever that impact is, they wanna be part of that. So, when. You put two people in a room who both have some similarities, I think in what they want out of the future, and values are aligned.

Goals maybe are the same or in the same direction. It changes the entire conversation so quickly then to just go like, yeah, I don’t know if I’d wanna just sit in a room and. Talk with somebody else who was maybe in insurance, I’m not sure. Usually what happens is I then end up talking about, are you also a parent?

Do you have children? What are your hobbies? And it immediately goes into that because I can’t find the similarity in our work , in the same way. But, with people in nonprofit, man, I can hear people tell their stories about what they’re doing and watch them light up about the work is so cool.

Darcy: Absolutely. Even when I’ve come into conversations where the first few minutes, I don’t really know, where this is going because starts out a little [00:16:00] bit slower, a little awkward, you know, sort of thing. Like all you have to do is ask them, why did they choose, the job that they have?

Or why did they choose to work for the organization that they’re in? And then , the rest of the time just goes like that because everyone is so passionate about the organization that they work for, if they’re part, if they’re in a nonprofit itself and or if they are in a company like me that services nonprofits, they’re like, you’re in it for a reason.

You’re in it because you choose this work and choose this. Crazy sector in life. And so, it’s really that, you definitely see that light go on and then the conversation just flows because you’re on that same wavelength of we’re choosing this insane work that we do.

Tasha: Absolutely. You know what, before we started our chat, I was like, I wonder how many calls Darcy has done.

Do you wanna, how many?

Darcy: It has been almost two years.

Tasha: It has been almost two years. It’ll be two years in October, but you’ve done [00:17:00] 53 conversations.

Darcy: Wow.

Tasha: Which is crazy. And you are one of the OG people who are on call number one. So I love that. I love that you’ve been, just such a support. I really, truly appreciate it because I think there was so many people who were like, no idea what I’m signing up for, but I’m gonna sign up.

So they just said Sure. It was great. I know you’ve already mentioned a few things, but I always like to ask the question, what have you gotten out of being a member of the nonprofit five?

Darcy: It’s not always something that I have time for in the week, but it’s something I try to really make time for, in my week because, everyone needs that.

Touchpoint for the work that they do. And so I’m a solo entrepreneur. I have, a team of people that I work with, certainly that I’m in contact with, but they, but it’s really important to have that touchstone of somebody who understands the [00:18:00] work that you’re doing and, or at least like why you’re in, why you’re in this sector.

Yeah. So, that’s certainly been , a big piece of it. I’ve met some really lovely people. Some I’m in contact now, years later. Some I’ve , sent referrals to, refer me, for business, things like that. But it’s really just, a 30 minute block of my week that helps me

I kind reground myself, like, this is why I’m doing this, especially when it’s a really frustrating week. I can’t take any more of this nonsense of this work. Yeah., I’m not paid enough to do this., Whatever it might be, like things are just too awful.

It’s 30 minutes , where somebody else, says, here’s why we’re in this. Okay, fine. And I come out of that, really with that touchstone again saying, yes, this is why. This is why we’re in this

Tasha: Yeah. And sometimes I think we do need. Cheerleading from people in the sector who get how hard it is.

Like they’re not trying to undermine and they get that, it’s like, yeah, this is crazy challenging work, but oh right, this is a great reminder. This is why we do it. I think you [00:19:00] need. That community of others to really , keep you, like you said, it’s a ground, almost like a grounding technique , but it’s not without the complications of talking to your coworkers, which then comes with a whole bunch of other stuff.

When you talk to your co colleagues about things like this

Darcy: Yep, absolutely. And other people who aren’t to nonprofits, like your family and friends, sort of get it, because you talk about it all the time because so much of your heart is in it. It’s not just a job, it’s a calling, you know much more than it’s that kind of work. So The Hive does provide a great opportunity, for that. And the nice thing about the Hive too is that it’s really across, I dunno, like activities within, the, hive.

So I never know from any week if I’m gonna get someone who’s, a consultant, or someone who’s an insurance, agent, someone who’s a work in ed, someone who’s. Brand new to the nonprofit sector. This is their first job and it’s their first, three weeks on the job. It’s really [00:20:00] nice,

And I certainly have had more, like first timer, newer people, in the last few months, than I’ve had, before that, , which is great because then I can say, they say, oh, you’re my first, my very first hive call. And I say, great. Just so you know, this is gonna cut us off at the hour.

This is not like a Zoom meeting, like it’s gonna go away.

Tasha: I love that. Well, and I do have some people like you that I rely on where I’m like, oh, brand newbie. Guess. Put them with someone who knows how this goes. And they always end up getting such lovely feedback from people when they have some of our people who have been around right from the beginning.

But thank you so much for doing this with me. I love to wrap up with a, can you remind us all how people can get in touch with you quick, reminder of your services? Because I would like to end that way.

Darcy: Absolutely. Yep. So the Nonprofit Ops Pro, I can find my websites, nonprofit ops pro.com. I’m also on LinkedIn, a couple of socials, random things like that.

If you Google nonprofit Ops [00:21:00] Pro, you’re gonna come up with me. We’re nonprofit management companies. We do. Day-to-day admin services, as well as consulting work for organizations. We have tons of free resources on the website, so check that out. You can also find some great referrals on there for people like Tasha when you need some marketing help and things like that.

So check that out. It’s a totally free resource, on the website as well.

Tasha: That’s awesome. Thanks so much for doing this with me, Darcy, and thanks for being a longtime member and supporter. Appreciate it deeply.

Darcy: Absolutely. I thank you for putting that together. It means a lot to people, even if you don’t hear that.

Tasha: Thank you.