Rethinking Nonprofit Leadership: Creativity, Connection, and Courage

Tasha: Good morning. Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your nonprofit origin story?

Michelle: Absolutely. So thank you for having me. First of all, I’m always happy to be in conversation with you, Tasha. My name is Michelle Flores Vryn pronouns.

She, her, and I have been a nonprofit fundraiser for 15 plus years. And in terms of. Origin story. I always like to point out because I think it’s interesting and unique that I started out in marketing and communications and then moved to fundraising. So why does that matter? I think it matters because my approach to fundraising, whether it be special events.

Or major gifts. It always has this deeply embedded mark comms focus and care folded into it. One thing I always say about fundraising is I really consider it like a subfield of communications, like we, we have created this whole designated field, as something unique, which it is, but it’s really, we’re in the business of storytelling, creating persuasive messaging.

Interpersonal communication, so I always think of myself as a communications professional at heart.

Tasha: I love that. I totally agree. The synergies, particularly as I started to move into the field and similarly marketing background communications, handling those things, you’re but these are so intimately tied.

They clearly have to be tied together, right? And it, but those, there’s often a lot of siloing between those departments in nonprofit.

Michelle: Yes. And one of my favorite things is to be the bridge builder between the development and marketing teams within nonprofits, even if those are just one people, team, the piece, like I love bringing them together and having them really see each other as partners because it makes both sides work so much easier.

So anytime I can do that, I’m always down to do it. Love that.

Tasha: And what’s your favorite part of working in the sector?

Michelle: I think my favorite part is. I feel most like myself working in nonprofits. So what does that mean for me? It means I’ve always wanted to do really important things that make people’s lives better. And this sector is the place for me to be able to do that. However, there’s always a caveat.

I do think we have a lot of areas to improve and you can see that. My attempt to make those improvements through various things I’m involved in, whether it’s the social impact staff retention survey or other projects.

Tasha: Yeah, you’ve been doing, incredible work. And I know we initially connected on LinkedIn.

And it just has evolved from there, which I absolutely love, but you’re highlighting so often through the social impact reports. I know you have work that you’ve done with, AFP global and all of those sectors, the different spaces within the sector. There’s a lot of. Challenges to this work, regardless of how much you love the work itself.

Michelle: Yeah. And of course, I’ve, this won’t come as a surprise to anyone, but I’ve given a lot of thought to the origin of those challenges or how did we get here questioning? Because I do think that reflection is going to lead you to the real pathways to solution. And. In I think a lot of what happens in the nonprofit world is a mirror of what happens in the for profit world or out in the world at large and, in the for profit world, the way we would say.

This is we’ve really had this shareholder primacy of let’s just make sure shareholders are happy stance for what the past, 50 plus years and in the nonprofit sector. I think we took on a similar stance at that time, but it manifested in different ways. We really were concerned with, Growing our organizational budget and just making sure all the charts went up and to the right.

If we were doing that, we felt successful. Yeah. But in our effort to do that, we lost a lot of the things that made this sector who we want to be. And maybe who we were like for a little bit, I don’t think we’ve ever really fully lived into our potential as a sector. And that’s okay. I don’t think, even as human beings or individuals, we could probably say the same thing about ourselves.

But I do feel like we’re at a turning point now to where people want to move into that potentiality. They want to make sure it happens. And I know you get this because that’s what, The nonprofit hive is about to, so it’s, if shareholder primacy isn’t the right path for us, the question becomes what is, how do we make our next steps?

How do we make sure we don’t take steps backwards? And how do we move forward in a way that maybe we really haven’t ever done a good job at doing before?

Tasha: Yeah I think there’s something to be said to that all of these ideas, which are some big kind of existential workplace ideas and some of it’s about how we look at social impact for sure, but also some of it is it requires time and care and consideration that most nonprofits I know, at least.

Don’t have, right? There’s not, that’s not part of, we don’t build that in. The number of nonprofits that I know who kind of scoff at strategic planning, which is actually really important, but they got into this mindset of going yeah, we paid for a strategic plan three years ago that we never followed through on because there was higher priorities immediately than the strategic plan.

And, and the expectations from potentially stakeholders, which sometimes in this case are donors or board members or whatever. Yeah. Was that no, this was the other priority over here. And so strategic planning feels like almost useless or what does it even matter? Cause we have a hard time thinking about 10 years from now or five years from now, sometimes even a year from now, because we’re so reactive in the sector all the time.

Michelle: Yeah. Yeah. What’s coming up for me when you say that is there’s this phrase that Seth Godin says a lot now, cause it’s part of his newest book, this is strategy. And he says, You’re not sitting in the traffic. You are the traffic

Tasha: and

Michelle: like what he means by that is recognize your own role in the system that you’re in because like systems are just people.

And I agree with you on the mindset towards strategic planning, or maybe other things that take time and resources and care, but also we have the agency to change that. I think the question becomes like, how do you influence people or encourage people to make that change? But I think it’s all in our minds, right?

At the end of the day, like, all of this ends up being inner work, which is fascinating that we have to think about why aren’t we giving ourselves times to do this? And a lot of it is, I think, false urgency.

Tasha: Yeah,

Michelle: and we have to ask ourselves and really understand why are we doing that so we can shift it, and I think we’re doing it because we want to be quote unquote successful.

And I think that goes back to how we define success. And we think if we’re not growing, if we’re not moving fast and breaking things, one of my least favorite phrases. Then we’re not doing the work, when in reality, the work is to take care of each other, to recognize our interconnectedness and to imagine like new ways.

And even like imagination takes time to do. It doesn’t just happen like that’s something I think we don’t really see or really take the time to think about think about even in physics, people take Albert Einstein, for example, he famously always talked about how important imagination was.

And we always look up to people like him, trailblazers, the best idea is so creative, but we don’t give ourselves the same time to do that kind of exercise of really understanding what are we trying to achieve and how do we get there? And that does require slowing down. It’s not a speeding up task.

Tasha: Could not agree more. And I, Leah Kroll, one of the things that I did, a LinkedIn live with her talking about her book. And. Innovation in the social impact space and one of the things she said and really resonates as a marketer for sure, but I’m sure to many of the things you said just now persuasion is something we need for innovation.

Like we have to be able to. Get other people to buy into the dream and it takes time. And, and great marketing takes time and space for creativity. And even for myself, hilariously, what usually ends up happening is I take a weekend off, I do family time stuff with my kids and I’m out in the world.

And that’s when I notice similarities. That’s when I notice like marketing messaging that I’m like, Oh, That’s it. And you put the dots together, but you can’t be connecting dots when you’re like head down. You don’t have that. It doesn’t work quite that way. And it actually takes space away from the rush and the madness for great marketing to happen.

And we forget that it’s no, that actually applies to a lot of things, right? Like not just marketing, but like a lot of different areas of our work. If we’re looking for that moment of brilliance or a breakthrough, you have to like, just. Take a step back and take a deep breath and probably enjoy your coffee and not reheat it for the third time.

That’s The thing that you probably need to do.

Michelle: Yeah I think you’re speaking to one of my most favorite things in life to think about which is creativity in general and my favorite book on this is Rick Rubin’s book The Creative Act and it’s A beautiful book. So if you’re interested in creativity and thinking about the creative process, I highly recommend the creative act by Rick Rubin and, I think a key theme within that book is what you’re saying is like creativity and ideas imagination.

They don’t happen on our timeline as much as we would love for it to happen that way. That’s not the way it works, but you do as the vessel for creativity, you do have to be prepared when it does show up, and you can do things like to do that. You can keep your mind clear and set space aside for deep thinking time.

And these are like, A lot of business gurus will tell you this. Like people have told us this from different angles, but I think that is directly in opposition to what we do today, which is very mechanistic, right? Like we think of things as like input output. And one of the phrases that kind of always gives me a little bit of an adverse reaction.

People say it in fundraising is they say, you’re like, we need this to be a fundraising machine, and language matters in these conversations, right? Language is so indicative of what we’re really trying to say or how we feel about something. And what people are saying is, with fundraising machine let’s create a fundraising machine, is I want to put in an input and get a certain output, because that’s what a machine is.

Yeah, and it’s very predictable, but in reality, let’s take fundraising, fundraising doesn’t work like that, like you can put in all the inputs in the world and not get the output that you thought would happen and you didn’t do anything wrong and you can extrapolate this all the way To just business in general, right?

Like business doesn’t work like that. Like business isn’t a machine. Like you should have certain inputs and certain energy inputs and make things important and but you can’t guarantee an outcome, and I feel like that’s something as us as humans, we really want things to go in a way that.

Doesn’t surprise us, but that’s not like the way life down here on this

Tasha: planet works, right? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. And I think actually that is one thing I notice across the industry, across so many people in social impact that I talk to, there’s no flex for miss. There’s no feelings of like flexibility for mistakes flexibility in time, and.

For profit tends to build that in, right? Like they are like, no, you’ve got 10 hours to take X course. No, we’re prioritizing this. This is important, right. In professional development and all those spaces. And I think, it’s the one thing that we pay lip service to, and we say we’re all doing, and then we don’t do it at all, not truly.

And it’s, there’s. The margins are either so thin or non existent that the flexibility doesn’t exist for mistakes in the sector. And, even you saying the word machine, yeah, we use that quite a bit. We also use the word automation a lot, like automation, we’re like. And now we say AI is coming in to save us, and it’s these are just tools, but the peopling part of it, where we need flexibility, or we need space to care about things that are happening in the work, is just, we haven’t found our way to that yet.

Michelle: I agree, and I think that it’s really a leadership failure. That sounds harsh to say, but I do think it’s true. I wrote this in my recent post, but one of my favorite questions to ask myself is like, how am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want? And that’s a really important question for leaders to ask themselves today.

And I do feel like we need to take responsibility as leaders. In this space of how are we creating conditions to where people feel like they can’t access their creativity or original thought or have time to do things? Because when you subtract those things from people’s work, imagination, agency, creativity, nobody wants to do that kind of work.

And the crazy thing about that is, is nonprofit work inherently calls for radical new ways of doing things because these problems are so large and so hard to solve. You can’t just apply, everyday thinking to them it requires of you something new. And people sign up for this work because they want to do that.

They’re like, yes, I want to try new things. Let’s approach this problem in a different way. I’m down for that. And then when you get into roles and you’re not able to do that, it’s a real kind of disappointment that’s deeper than most, I think.

Tasha: I think the people who come to this sector come with a level of passion that doesn’t exist if you’re like.

I just like to market do marketing work at Nike or my, my local school board or, whatever it is they’re not moving into that role. It’s a, just a job, but I think for so many people in nonprofit, this is. This is serious for them, right? Like they come into this and accept a lot of conditions they know are going to exist because it’s nonprofit, like less pay potentially compared to contemporaries and for profit.

They know some of those things and you highlighted it so brilliantly in this recent Hive article you wrote about this incongruence in nonprofit work. There’s something that happens. That is, can be very damaging when if you come with this passion and this eye for creativity and this desire to truly change the world and you can’t see any possibility to ever get there in a role that you have that creates continued injury and because you want to contribute.

At a high level. And yeah, it just there’s expectations versus reality and nonprofit work should be its own meme. I’m sure.

Michelle: Yeah. And also, as someone who’s been in the sector for 15 years, I feel like this is our time. You like, this is like our game to lose, right? We. With the newer generations of Gen Z, like they’re so purpose driven and they want to contribute and do meaningful things like we should have been prepared for their enthusiasm for them wanting to come into this.

And I do feel like as someone who is a millennial, older than them, that we need to get our house in order. So it’s a healthy place and container for others to fulfill what they want to do. And I think that’s right. I see my own purpose as being, and I think you, you’ll probably see your purpose as being very similar, like it is on us people who are older generations than the incoming generations to this work to take care of the organizational structure to where it can be fun, exciting, and challenging too, but it’s not an unhealthy space for someone to work in.

Yeah, I

Tasha: totally agree. Cause yeah, the work can be really hard, but if you’re frigging jazzed to go to that work every morning and you’re like, no, I get to go and do this today. And I think that even for myself, we were talking about jobs previously, you and the work is hard. I love the nonprofit hive.

This has been the hardest I’ve ever worked in my entire life doing anything, but I’m excited to do it every day. And it’s amazing how that can shift your entire perspective to go. I never planned on working this hard, but man, is it amazing, right? Like those are two it and that’s what we need. I think to give it not only this generation of people within the sector, but the ones who are coming in as well.

Like we, I think I love that healing, healing from the inside out idea for this sector and change needs to happen.

Michelle: And the good news is, one thing I love about the nonprofit Hive is it gives visibility to people who believe the same thing and who are doing like the work, right? There are people doing the work and I always try to remind everyone in my circles of this is yeah, it sucks.

Like we have a lot of room to grow. However, there are people you can pair up with, give your energy to. Who really are moving us in the right direction, so I think that’s always like a silver lining and we can’t forget that. Cause Hey, I’m like all one for complaining and making funny nonprofit memes, which is like one of my favorite pastimes.

If you don’t follow me on LinkedIn for the nonprofit memes, you should start. But yeah, like there are people who are moving us in the right direction. And I love that.

Tasha: Yeah, no, it’s super exciting. Okay. So peer support in your work today, cause we went off on a whole tangent here, which I am loving.

Peer support in your work. What, how has that factored into your success and your roles to date?

Michelle: Peer support for me, I think is. Maybe sometimes people seeing me more clearly than I see myself, like sometimes I think that’s what great friends do in general, right?

Like they reflect back to you, maybe a clearer version of you than you see of yourself, which is like a really ironic thing about life, isn’t it? That, Sometimes people see us more clearly than we see ourselves. So for me, peer support looks like that. People saying this idea is good enough to be an article.

You should do this presentation at AFP icon. You should apply to this board. And, I think we all need that from time to time. So it’s not so much like skills based peer support. I think it’s just reminding us of who we really are. And we all need people. In our life who do that. And truly, this sounds cheesy, but I’m serious.

If you don’t feel like you have that groups, like the nonprofit Hive are great place to start because there are tons of people who, they have beautiful hearts and beautiful minds. And if you’re looking for more peer support, here’s a resource for you. That’s free. Tasha makes sure it’s free.

It’s free. So yeah, that’s, I think that’s a way for you to elevate yourself in 2025 if you haven’t done it yet.

Tasha: Yeah I think I have been reminded in the last year how many incredible humans. There are a on this planet because I get to talk to them all the time. So anytime I have friends or family be like, oh, the world is coming.

It’s all going to shit. There’s lots of problems. I’m not trying to minimize that, but there are lots of people out there who are truly looking for solutions and truly spearheading it. I’ve never felt more confident. There are challenges. We can face a lot of these challenges, which is great because, it’s wonderful to be like 41 being like, no, the world’s a beautiful place.

I don’t know that I will say that 5 years ago, I would have had a different point of view at the start of COVID for sure. Being like, I don’t know about this, but I feel very reassured and. That zone of genius that you’re talking about, which is one of my favorite phrases to talk about for people.

Sometimes we don’t know what our zone of genius is until we talk to a lot of people, particularly peers who are currently strangers. And then, like you said, they go, I didn’t know any of this. This is, and and you get thinking, as a person who’s a marketer everybody knows X, Y, and Z, and then you were like.

Wait, they didn’t know this stuff. I, it’s nice to sometimes have that moment where you feel like you can give back some of what you know about.

Michelle: Totally. Yeah. I’m just thinking back on, one thing someone said to me, which I didn’t realize I was good at is facilitation.

And I remember when I started facilitating more. And this was DEI related conversations, actually, but regardless of the topic, people would come up to me and say, that was the best facilitated presentation I have ever seen. And I remember looking at them directly in the eyes what? Me? That? Oh, okay.

And of course, I accepted the compliment. But then when it happened a couple of times, I realize like something is happening here and to your point, I never would have labeled that as something uniquely gifted that I had for myself, but other people saying it made me take more notice. And then I realized like, Oh, actually I am pretty good at this.

So it’s funny how sometimes if you’re feeling lost and what am I really good at? Listen to what other people say.

Tasha: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. And so last question, what have you gotten out of being a member of this nonprofit hive community?

Michelle: I would say I’ve always been connected to the nonprofit sector. So I’m involved in a lot of things, including the community centric fundraising movement and AFP global, but also in my local chapter, which is in Austin, Texas. But I think the nonprofit hive Gives a different angle to like connecting social impact people that it’s a space to where people can really show up and talk about issues, but also solutions to those issues.

And the important thing is not just that conversation, but how. Nimble is I think other connection spaces aren’t as nimble. What does that mean? It means that there’s almost like a real time dialogue back and forth. If you’re having a conversation with someone, like it feels very fluid and accepting of many different sides in a conversation or topic that I think is something really unique to the nonprofit hive.

And I love seeing how. We can do that online. I think we all know we can do it, but seeing someone do it and creating a space that really gives you that kind of real human conversation online, that’s a beautiful thing. I think it’s just been a good reminder of we can do this virtually and there’s so many of us all over the world.

It’s nice to be reminded that, you don’t, it’s not a membership based thing. Anyone can join in, but also we could talk about real stuff, right? As there’s some real conversations, hard conversations happening. It’s not just Hey, look at us. Kudos to all the great things we did.

But our nonprofit, it’s. Here’s where we drop the ball and here’s how we can be better. Here’s what hurts and why, so I really love like how there’s that humanity to the conversation.

Tasha: Yeah, and I think it’s, it you are right. And one of the big pieces of feedback I’ve gotten, right from the start was, yes, we all work at different nonprofit organizations.

And I’m very, Much a frontline witness to the turnover in the sector when people go, I need to change this email address. Oh, I’m signing up again, but it’s under my new email. Like I’ve watched it. I’ve had Hive members reach out going, Hey, I’m looking for a new role. Could you keep an eye out for me?

That’s absolutely been part of it, but this is for you. Like this community is for individuals. There are organizations represented by individuals that happen to participate. We have one nonprofit out of Ghana. I think you’ve connected with Raymond before. Who’s the founder. He has three staff who take conversations, and they all have different opportunities.

So this for folly organization is absolutely overrepresented in the hive compared to most, but at each point, it’s the individual who’s bringing their lived experience to the conversation, not their organization’s only experience to the conversation. And I think that is important because I think change often does truly start to happen at an individual level.

And then the organization will change. happens afterwards. And so many things in this sector are very top down. And I think it’s hard to create a movement that way sometimes, right? Like movements tend to happen at the bottom over time and, and flow upwards. And those voices do matter, but individual voices, I think in a sector can be really hard to be amplified.

Michelle: Yeah. And I would just say it’s, you’ve done a great job somehow of creating a community that, Amplifies such diversity in voices, and diversity in all aspects. That’s a unique thing.

Tasha: I love that. Thank you. Thank you. It’s been the best time. I love it. So how can people get a hold of you, Michelle?

Tell us a little bit about your journey and dreams for 2025.

Michelle: So the best place to get a hold of me is on LinkedIn. I have links to my personal website there And you can explore more of my writings, but I’m pretty active on LinkedIn almost on a daily basis. So that’s my go to communication spot 2025.

Oh gosh. So I have a couple of things that I’m looking forward to. One, we will be releasing the year two of the scissors survey. So social impact staff retention survey. Evan and I will be releasing year two, which is exciting. We were just going over some of the data yesterday together and we look forward to that.

Also, the AI equity survey that I have done in partnership with Mina Doss, the one and only, that will be taken to a new level in 2025. So that’s, that’ll be towards the end of the year, but it’s exciting nonetheless. So yeah, I think those are my big things. And if you’re at AFP icon, hit me up, I will be presenting there as well.

So happy to meet people in person. That’s awesome.

Tasha: Thank you so much, Michelle. It’s always super fun to talk to you. I never know exactly where the conversation is going to go, but it’s delightful every time. I loved it. Thank you, Tasha.