Centering People Over Structure: JB Favour on Building PASS and Belonging

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

JB Favour: My name is JB Favor and pretty much everyone calls me jb. I am the current executive director at Padoc Area Scholars Society, also known as PASS USA, and we are a Minnesota based nonprofit organization, that serves the youth of South Sudan, which happens to be one of the most underserved communities in the world according to the United States.
There are South Sudans ranked the number one poorest country in the world. And what we do with Pass is we are locking opportunities and potential in that very underserved community that has one of the greatest amounts of talents that I have ever seen on Earth. So what we do is we provide them with pathways to education because education, we believe that education is one way for Yids to escape extreme poverty.
So we provide yids of South Sudan [00:01:00] with scholarship opportunities. We pay for the tuition, but we do so much more than just that. We pay for the tuition. We also present them with leaving allowances. We provide mentorship support. But that’s only one half of our programs. The other programs that we do involves, some agriculture skill building programs and a housing program all exclusively for South Sudanese students.
And we serve South Sudan, south Sudanese students in Uganda, Ethiopia, and Kenya. Regarding my origin, I think I’ve always been on the sidelines for a very long time. I started out my career as a writer. I’ve always been a writer. I frankly think I was gonna always be a writer. So I started out writing and then I delved into ghost writing, and I had a beautiful ghost writing career for the past five years.
I’ve written literally almost any kind of genre that you can think of, almost any kind of genre, and gotten some really amazing clients, turned friends, and even family too along the way. [00:02:00] And then I had that career up until I decided to go Agency market. And that was my very first introduction into nonprofits.
So I had worked with an agency as the creative director and we had some projects that brought us into contact with nonprofits. And that was when I got to learn about the work that nonprofits were doing from a much more closer perspective. I saw what they did, we helped them with some marketing campaigns, and I remember thinking to myself, well, if I ever have the opportunity someday, I wanna have a nonprofit.
Because I thought it was so cool. I thought it was absolutely mental to just vote. Yourself to give him back. It was something that really resonated with me. ’cause I’ve always wanted an opportunity to give back. I had no idea that I was actually gonna do anything in the sector up until a few years later when I had an opportunity to become a grant writer for a grant consultant firm in Tennessee, Carissa, she was the friend who pulled me into grant writing.
She was in Nashville, Tennessee. And I had already been [00:03:00] doing some writing. But then she said, Hey, jb, we’ve worked on some projects together in the past. I think you’ll be a great addition to my team. And so I joined her team and it went so great from there. That was my really one-on-one, perspective into the non-profit sector.
And I got to working with so many organizations in Tennessee. Different people just doing really great and amazing classes. And then life took me to Sheridan, which happened to be Rover, where I began to lead fundraising with them. So I think it’s because I started out as a writer and then I got a marketing in branding experience within an agency.
So it sort of was easy for me to be able to say I could help organizations. Present themselves much better. ’cause I was , in the corporate world, I was helping, companies brand themselves, get clients. So it was very easy for me to just transition into doing that for nonprofits.
But in the sense [00:04:00] of fundraising , and of course writing like I mentioned, what I’ve always loved to do, and I’ve been with Rover and then I’ve done that between careers, my grant writing, it’s been, I think three plus years now. So I haven’t been that long in the sector, but then while I’ve been consulted on my own, that was how I met, the co-founder of Pass.
And he was actually a client, so I consulted for them. I helped them revamp completely. Like we did a whole switch. We worked on the website together. We worked on getting their mission statements right, series of change. Like I literally came in and turned the whole place, 360 as he likes to say.
And I think that’s kind of why he decided not to let me go. ’cause when it was time to go at the end of my retail, I was like, oh, Fran, I’m gonna go. Like I have, some clients I have promises to clients to, retain them at the beginning of the new quarter and he’s like, JB, I’m sorry, but I can’t let you go.
And then [00:05:00] that’s how I got off. He says, I wanna step away from my role. I’ve been retired over 40 years of being an educator, and I’ve been retired for the past four years, but I’ve been handling this role as the ed. And I need someone like you to come in, someone who loves what we do. Someone who has a passion to help other people and someone
who’s gonna come in here, and I know I can trust that. And he gave me an offer that was too hard for me to resist. One, because I had already gotten very personal with the organization. I started l Loving what they did. I was getting more personal with the mission. I had been a part of the person for the last four, five months, and I had been working several roles.
I was doing grant writing, I was leading fundraising, and I’m sort of the person who if I know that I can do a good job, I can do A and B and c, I will tell you that I can do it. I like to, it may be a weakness sometimes, but I tend to go over , if I see somewhere that I can help, it’s so hard to turn [00:06:00] away.
It’s like, I know I could help you. I know you’re not doing it right. I struggle with just, you know, but yeah, so perhaps for one time that quality actually got noticed by the right person. ’cause sometimes you can be used if you tend to overcompensate, you know? But this time, the co-founder really appreciated that I was willing to go above and beyond severally for the organization and said, that’s the quality of the ED that I want.
And he says, I was about to write to the board that we need to hire new ed, but I’m gonna put your name forward. And they put my name forward. And along with some other candidates, I think, and the board picked on me. The board proved mine and said, Hey, we won jb, and then I got a unanimous vote and I became the ED of the organization.
So that’s why joining in a nutshell.

Tasha: I love it. I love it. And I think you highlight something really important because communications in the nonprofit world is so important, right? Like it, it touches so many parts of [00:07:00] the marketing brand awareness experience, but also your fundraising and appeals, and also your grant writing and your internal team and, having strong communications.
It might be one of the most like critical cornerstones behind all of the operational pieces of nonprofit.

JB Favour: True that, and I think it’s just overall important to work with people who value people more than just structure. Absolutely. Because structures are great.
We need them, right? We do need the structures, but then above all things, we need people who value people above that. So I think that was one of the things that made it really easy for me to. Take up the offer because I was constantly sinned, not just as a consultant, but as a person. So my hours were respected, my advice was respected.
I hear consultants say, Hey, I told an organization that they should do this and that, but they weren’t willing to listen to me. They were stuck in their old ways. They said, Hey, we just hired you. You’re [00:08:00] not part of the team and whatnot, . But it wasn’t like that for me. I was welcome.
From day one, I was listened, I was valued. It was like they always said, you know best, you’re the professional. Whatever you say, I think we are gonna go with it. So for the very first time, I felt like, whoa. I’m at peace here where I can literally get on a Zoom call with the organization at any time and not feel some type of way, like, what is gonna happen?
I wasn’t scared. And when you operate from a place of confidence, you are not scared when you operate from a place of value, I think the output will be so much better in the sector. So I totally

Tasha: agree. That’s beautiful. And what’s your favorite part of working in the nonprofit sector since you’ve really, started to join in and you know, first as a consultant, but deeper and deeper over time?

JB Favour: I think it’s the people, Tasha. It’s, the people that I’ve met. I don’t know if I’m maybe biased to say this, but we have some of the most amazing people that we have met, and this is someone [00:09:00] who’s had a career in the, for-profit sector over the past seven years. I have met amazing people on both sides, but I have met more amazing people here.
And maybe it’s just part of being the non-profit sector, but the people are amazing. And then now I get to see real impact. The work that you do really affects. People like real lives. So it’s not just writing a grant, it’s a grant that can effectively change the life of, you know, Angela, it can change Moses, it could change Elijah, like it’s real people’s lives.
And you even get to know the people who are being affected by, so it’s like, really? It’s so rewarding. All those hours you’re spending, you get rewarded knowing that this is actually going to do good. It’s like, i’m helping to make the world a better place. So definitely

Tasha: You’re highlighting something that’s really unique as well to smaller to medium sized nonprofits because I think you really [00:10:00] tangibly can grab onto that impact in a way that could be hard if you
are just in part of the fundraising department at Red Cross, let’s say an enormous organization. You may know the names, you may have those stories gathered in, and you’re telling the stories, but you probably haven’t talked to that person or sent an email back and forth. Or you don’t have that same feeling that I think is so special when you’re a smaller organization
’cause you know directly, right. You see the impact happening in real time.

JB Favour: True. True. I love it. True. I agree with that. Absolutely. I agree.

Tasha: Now, I’d love to hear some of the challenges you see in this sector. What are some of the hardest parts, either now as an executive director or, before that when you were more in a support role?

JB Favour: So right now one of the challenges that I can think right off the top [00:11:00] of my head is, we speak a lot about community, but I worry about, and this is something that I think I’ve raised before in the past, how accessible that is to everyone. Yeah. So it’s great. Of course if you could bury it again to the other sector, which is the for-profit sector, we are doing so much way better.
We’re doing so much better here, but, still, I think the issue of accessibility is something that we can always get better at. So whatever it is the, you know, whether it is the philanthropy, how accessible it is, whether it is the community, how accessible and inclusive is it? And something that I did tend to notice in the past, and that was before I joined the nonprofit hive, which in my opinion is very inclusive.
Is that sometimes, African philanthropy and African non-profits here tend to be excluded sometimes, and I sort of do understand what may have been, the foundational reason for that. But I’ve, since other spaces still make a good job out of it, regardless, and I’m speaking about people like [00:12:00] you.
The, we are for good community and, I’ve seen these individuals include everyone and they make it work. So I feel like others too. I mean, that’s nothing you guys are doing, right? Maybe be a masterclass or something. So it’s okay. I definitely think some more inclusiveness and in the sector would be great.
And just making community more accessible to everyone. Definitely.

Tasha: I honestly feel like one of the strengths of the nonprofit Hive community has been the inclusion of african founders and entrepreneurs and I have learned so much from our community members outside of North America. I mean, you, I am not playing favorites, but I just, I learn more.
I feel like I gain a deeper perspective, and I understand even better how to serve all of our members by having their different points of view that honestly, we wouldn’t have been the [00:13:00] same community if they hadn’t been included. We wouldn’t have this depth of knowledge and this deep perspective on how to do things differently because
it is all philanthropy, but there are obviously different barriers in place across, across both Africa, but even other countries too. I just gain so much from listening to others and how they are tackling some of the world’s biggest challenges in their own country.

JB Favour: Yeah, I agree with that and
I sit in how, like there’s a lot of changes. It’s like the hive is so adaptable and I’m sorry, this is quickly becoming a hive. Shoutout. But, it’s for good reason. You know, I can speak all day about it. It’s like this thing where humans are set to be one of the most adaptable,
people to exist and we have that feature, and I think that’s a great survival feature. And that means that what you guys are doing at the Hive will clearly survive for a long time because you are adaptable, you’re constantly evolving, constantly tweaking things, constantly changing. Nobody gets anywhere by [00:14:00] staying at a place.
If you’re not willing to move, you’re not gonna make change. No one has done anything great by, being fixated at a particular point. And that’s something that the hive, I think you guys have mastered. You are always evolving. This is something new. And you listen to your people again, people over structure, people over what you think works.
It’s great if your structure is working, but is it working for your people? And I think that’s what you guys are doing. You listen to us, you take our advice, you take the things we say, and then you come in and then you remodel it, and then you just keep adjusting. It’s absolutely brilliant.
Each time I think of it, I’m like, I don’t know who’s gonna be able to replicate Tasha and her team and a team. , It’s not great.

Tasha: You’re so sweet. I think that you touch on something really important there though, because flexibility in this sector has never been more important.
Right. And that doesn’t mean that you throw out your marketing plan from last year immediately, but it means that you have to have enough just inherent flexibility, ability to adapt, ability to change [00:15:00] your mind. Because things are changing in this sector so fast, and they were already always a little fast.
But now it’s, I look at what we started two years ago in the nonprofit hive and where I thought we would be and we’re, that’s not what’s happening at all. And if I had just been building for a future that made sense in two years, based on what I knew in 2023, I don’t know where we would be right now because we would’ve had to restart over or think it all through, all over again.
What about for your organization? I always like to ask this question, but, what are some of the hopes and dreams for the year ahead and for 2026 in your organization and as a leader?

JB Favour: So first of all, I came in at a point where a lot of things were just, you know, I’m trying to find the word. I don’t wanna say chaotic, so I’m just gonna say there was just too much [00:16:00] happening and it was ’cause one person was literally trying to do everything.
And at first before I came on board, we had a completely, volunteer run team. We were run completely by volunteers. And I came in. I said, that’s great, but I don’t think that’s sustainable. And that’s because volunteers cannot give you what you need to scale an organization Absolute. And you’re not paying the volunteers.
I mean, you just say, Hey, thank you for your great work. And these folks will show up whenever they can and it’s great. But whenever they can, cannot do the job. So one of the things that I decided, ’cause I’ve always preached that overhead funding is essential. It’s so important.
We can’t skip it. You guys should be willing to fund it if you really want the acquisitions to grow. So one of the things that I started doing, first of all was setting up a team. We couldn’t hire, typical annually hires, but what we did was start up fractional roles. I put on a couple of ads that you may have seen on LinkedIn.
Yeah. And [00:17:00] so I drew up a private fund. I started reaching out to some private donors that we already have in the organization and started to raise money, and I called it overhead, the fund. I love that overhead. And I said, we have a specific target and I wanna reach that target. All of this money is not for the programs, it’s not for, anything else.
It’s just for the staff I’m gonna hire and the volunteers. So before then we did not pay volunteers, but something that I started doing once I came on board, which has been just like a few a month. And some days is I said, we will pay volunteers some stopping, no matter how little it is. We’ll give volunteers something to go home, something to buy coffee every month and say, Hey, well thank you for showing up.
And so I set up a fund dedicated just for that to cover us for one year at least. So moving forward, I think one of the biggest things that we wanna achieve is some more stability and being able to delegate stuff where I don’t have to check our social media to be sure that the social media manager has been putting out post, because [00:18:00] there is someone who’s gonna be doing that job.
I see so many executive directors while I’ve been consulting, they struggle because there isn’t enough manpower to delegate stuff to, and that’s the quickest recipe for disaster when you’re trying to be Superman, Batman. Wonder Woman, green Lanter all at once. You are just going to crash and burn.
So what you have to realize is you can only be Superman and someone else gotta be Batman. You gotta find that person. If not, it’s not gonna work. So moving forward, I think what I wanna do is find my superhero team, my Avenger team, whatever you call it, and just assemble them so that we can, you know, save the wood.
But not literally.

Tasha: You’re speaking to my soul here right now, JB because this is one of my biggest challenges too, is going, I can do a lot of things. I know you’re super capable, multi-talented woman. Oh yeah, I know how much you can do, but it’s one of those things, isn’t it so beautiful when you find the right team members [00:19:00] to go?
No, I’m not gonna go and take a look at the social media. Like, that’s not my job today. No. I’m just gonna leave this over here, not look at it, know that somebody else has it handled, because even though I can do that, my, skills are best served over somewhere. Yeah, exactly.
I feel like you were talking directly to me and I needed to hear this today.

JB Favour: Oh, thank you. And I know for people like you and me who are multi-talented and if you are also a bit like me, I’m the sort of person who hates to ask someone to do something and they do a bad job because I know I could have done it better.
So I always struggle with, oh God, they have better not mess that up, but I’m learning that you gotta give people opportunities. Absolutely. That’s how they learn in a way. And you will crash and burn. Oh my God. If you keep trying to get everything done, you will crash in.
It is great that you can fix the website, but if you can ask someone else to do it. Let them do it. Yes.

Tasha: Let them do it. I love this so much. [00:20:00] Oh my goodness. Fantastic. So I always like to finish up these interviews, by asking what is something that you’ve gotten out of being a member of the nonprofit hive?

JB Favour: Oh, Tasha,
you know,
again. I could talk about this for hours. So I’m struggling to fit in what I wanna say ’cause I wanna say a lot. First of all, I’m thankful to you. I wanna say thank you to you and the team because I know it’s not just you for what you’ve done, what you’ve built. I don’t think you guys know how much we love you, so we definitely appreciate your efforts.
We see the work that you do to keep it buzzing and you have truly, like when I think of community you guys pop into my mind when I go out, when I speak to people, when I have, opportunities to speak and just talk to people. I always talk about the nonprofit hive. It’s like my case study.
Have you guys heard about The Nonprofit Hive? So my favorite thing about it is you are building a community of people who truly care. [00:21:00] So it’s not just people who claim to. But people will truly care. Every single Hive member that I have sent a message to and said, Hey, I’m a fellow Hive member. I wanna talk this and that.
That’s the magic word. Once you say you are a Hive member, you just get their ears like they, okay, how can I help? And, one of the recent people I spoke to, Courtney, I admire him so much, he just gave me his time. That was the week before I became ed, I was reaching out to him to talk about something in Minnesota.
’cause I noticed that he had lived in Minnesota before moving over to Vermont. And I was like, oh great, I gotta speak to him just in case he has something to tell me. And I had no idea I was gonna become ED the next week. So we got on a call. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Crazy. We go on a call and I was traveling then.
I think I had to maybe reschedule and Courtney was just so graceful by everything. But then. Oh, I don’t remember if it was Courtney, but anyways, the point is, we got on this call that I know that I should have [00:22:00] paid for the amount of wisdom that he gave to me for free. Like, I felt so bad. I kept telling him, Courtney, if you send me a bill, I will absolutely pay because he gave me a wealth of information
he wasn’t just giving me like generic stuff that I could have Googled. He was literally giving me points to talk to this person, you can send this, that, you can do this. And he says, J. If you ever need anything, I’m only a DM away and we haven’t spoken before. We are not friends, we are nothing. We’re just hive members and to see that there’s a community of people who are not holding.
Information. ’cause what we need is information, we need a lot of information in the sector and even when we say something is not accessible, it may simply be because some people are hoarding it, they don’t wanna share it. But that’s not the case. The Hive members that we have, there are very generous people.
There are generous people who wanna see you win. So if you pop into your inbox and say hi, you ask a question best believe that they will definitely give you an answer that you seek and at no cost. It’s so [00:23:00] great because I can pay for a consultant call, but I know some people may not be able to pay for it, so it’s actually.
So great to, I mean, I lost for words. You, feel me? I don’t know what to say. It’s just, it was so humbling that day I kept yapping to Courtney. You have no idea what that meant to me. I actually took something he said and got a contact that, turned out really great for me in my job.

Tasha: Yeah. And you know, it is a very generous community and I think that’s something that right now, nonprofit needs that level of generosity between each other, whether it’s knowledge sharing, whether it’s contacts, whether it’s, Hey, I heard. Even I get on calls with other marketers and they’ve heard of some new tool that I’ve never heard of that is saving them hours of time.
I need to know about those things because, I don’t have time to, right. None of us have time to research and so I very much feel the [00:24:00] same way. There’s just these wonderful humans that are joining this community with that spirit of generosity. Is just, seems to be part of what we’re attracting.
And for yourself too. People have said the same things about you, jb, and how lovely you are and how generous. So I think you’re in good company because you are one of those people as well.

JB Favour: Thank you. Thank you.

Tasha: I mean,

JB Favour: Tasha says that, yeah, I better listen,

Tasha: you are one of those people. I hope you know that.
I hope you know that. If people wanted to follow up with you after this follow along with your journey, and the organization, how is it best to reach you?

JB Favour: Okay, so right now, my LinkedIn is probably my most active social, so right there you could connect with me on LinkedIn, but even more so, I would love to direct a lot of that attention to past, which is the organization that I’m now supporting.
We are doing incredible work. It’s hard work, a lot of work, and we have like far written impact. But it is nothing compared to what we still have to do. The [00:25:00] work is hard and I was brought in a very critical time for the organization. They have been losing money and my job is to figure out how to stop that.
How to, get us away from operating in cassity to abundance. That’s why I’m here. So it would mean a great deal if you have, I’m always so happy to take tips and advice. I don’t consider myself a know it all. So if you see something you know and you feel like you could hit me up and tell me about it, I’m very happy to take such advice.
You wanna volunteer with us? We have so many opportunities for volunteering. Or you think that maybe there’s a role that, we need, that we don’t have right now, but you can still tell me I’m gonna look at it and we might create that role. ’cause one of the hiring that I’m making, I did not think that we needed that.
It was someone who said, don’t you guys need this? And I’m like, yeah, we do. We do. And so it became a role. So if you see something, you know, somewhere to support us, please reach out to me or directly [00:26:00] to pass. We’re very happy to take your suggestions or tips and most importantly, we’re very happy for you to follow us, stay updated with, organization social channels, just.
And if you can, if you feel moved to supporters, we’re happy to take some donations too. Am I allowed to say that to you?

Tasha: Absolutely allowed to say that. No, I love it. . Well, thank you so much. Thank you for, being one of our champions. Always lovely to hear what you’re doing out in the world, and this has just been delightful.
Thank you JB

JB Favour: Thank you, Tasha. It’s an honor to be here and this did not feel like some interview. Felt like just a really great coffee chat with two friends. So it’s good. More interviewers should come get tips from you. This was really nice. Thank you. Nice. Okay.