Joe Mata: Building Smarter Nonprofits with Heart, Data, and Community

Tasha : [00:00:00] Good morning. Can you please tell me a little bit about your nonprofit origin story and introduce yourself?

Joe Mata: Thank you, Tasha, for having me. My name is Joe Mata, of Mata Consulting. We are a nonprofit CRM and operations firm, consulting firm, and I started my nonprofit journey.

In 2019 at KIPP SoCal Public Schools, I originally was working in government. I wanted to pursue policy. That was how I was gonna change the world. And when I got, I worked for a county supervisor up in the Bay Area, and when I got to work for a congressman, I realized that the regional offices have very little say or.

Aren’t, heard or paid attention to, I guess, as much as the Washington DC, team is. And so I realized that just wasn’t a great environment for me to be in, just being fresh outta college and really wanted, to make an impact on the world right away. [00:01:00] And so when I moved back home to Los Angeles, working at a public charter school system, which is a nonprofit

really gave me that opportunity to do a lot of hands-on work. And examples were, helping, corporate volunteers set up a book fair for students and giving away books and, just little things that we, I was actually able to engage with folks. One that really stands out to me is,

we had a Star Wars like Reading Day and like C3 po, R 2D two came out and read books to the kids. And I’m a huge Star Wars fan, so I was being, a kid, at the event. And just those moments I think are what make what kept me in the nonprofit world and made me stick with this journey.

Tasha : I love that. And I think you bring up something really cool because nonprofit is deeply personal. Even if it’s just a love of something like Star Wars, right? Or for some people it’s a love. We have an amazing, member of our nonprofit, who penguins. They like you.

She’s hellbent on saving African penguins, [00:02:00] and that’s like her rally. And so I think nonprofit ends up often being very personal. The reasons why we decide that this is where we want to serve or build a business or, work.

Joe Mata: A hundred percent. I agree. And what’s interesting is as I reflect, growing up, I went to a number of different schools.

All the way through 10th grade, I was switching schools, whether it was like a public school or being homeschooled or going to charter schools. And most of my time ended up being in charter schools. I was very grateful to have, my mom, who was very attentive to, how I was doing in my education and what the schools were giving me or not giving me.

And so I had that in the back of my head, going to college and then, graduating. So being that I worked at a charter school, it’s funny because now through our business we’re serving. We’ve worked with three other public charter school networks within the Los Angeles region, and it’s, just been really awesome [00:03:00] because those experiences and that kind of, core passion or experience that I’ve had as a charter school product, let’s say.

You’re saying, that deeply personal relationship has really been able to not only keep me in the work, but progress me and keep me wanting to come back and doing more.

Tasha : I love that. Favorite part of working in this sector, you know, as you slowly moved more into it.

What’s the part that just gets you outta bed every morning and has become your why for being in the work?

Joe Mata: I’m learning that I really enjoy the people aspect in terms of getting out to networking events or when you run into people at a conference or a breakfast or, sometimes we go to client events and you run into a donor that you used to work with in the past.

The longer that you’re in the space and in the same region, you just start to realize who the players are. Who, the consultants that are doing really well as well in terms of just market penetration. You start seeing them everywhere and you’re [00:04:00] like, okay, I know I’m in the right space now.

If these people are here, and I’m here, then we’re doing good. I very much enjoy community, aspect of even though people are all in their own worlds and, focused on their own. Problems in the current nonprofit environment. It’s always good to see each other because you can lift each other up and lean on each other’s experiences to talk about what whatever’s going on on that day.

Tasha : I love that too because there’s a bit of a misconception I think, that, your background and the work you’re doing currently being with CRMs and it’s very data and, data people. Need people too, right? That’s actually been a cool part of having been with Salesforce for nonprofit partner at one point.

My marketing background, obviously there’s some data involved in that work, but those people are actually, some of the people who’ve been the most attracted over time to what we’re building with the nonprofit high, because there’s not natural communities that exist for some of those. Data and technology [00:05:00] driven folks in the sector, there’s often a natural place for them to gather.

So I think they sometimes even crave community feel even more because the work can be isolated sometimes.

Joe Mata: For sure. What I’m learning is that I, as much as I can and enjoy. Getting into that data work, using that Logic Brain, I don’t think that’s really one where I wanna spend most of my time.

I’m very much an extrovert that can do those things, and luckily I’ve been able to grow the team and trying to bring on other consultants to support me in the work so that I can then go and do more of those, community facing, client facing engagements or prospect facing engagements to hear what is going on in, , for example, the nonprofit finance fund gave a presentation at, a community breakfast that the nonprofit partnership of Long Beach, they put on recently.

Where it was like talking about how much of, what are the size of [00:06:00] budgets in Los Angeles, how much percentage of those are going to operational costs versus, programming. And for the grants that they’re receiving, are they taking out an admin fee to perform the work? If so, is it 20%? Is it 1%?

Are they not taking admin fees out? And so like little things like that just putting yourself out there versus being behind the computer is where as , a business, you can start to grow and really gain the current event knowledge and like expertise, I guess you can say.

To then bring it back to the team and be like, all right, here’s what’s going on. Here’s how we need Toran transition. Adjust now. Let’s hit it.

Tasha : I love it. And challenges of this work, because we know there are many, and this can be your own personal challenges as someone who’s growing a business, but also can be like the challenges you see nonprofits that you’re serving, facing.

Joe Mata: Yeah. For the [00:07:00] nonprofits that I’m working with or have been talking to, budget is always a concern. Some organizations have gotten affected by the government grant situation. Others have been affected by the immigration issues that have been taking place. ‘Cause a lot of nonprofits, especially in Los Angeles and California, are focused on serving immigrant communities.

And so funders may get scared or some foundations that don’t want to, everyone has to play their role. If the federal government’s involved, there’s not too much you can do I mean, there’s workarounds right? To still do your work and serve your community.

But you have to be really smart and intentional about it. And sometimes that means you can’t go after certain grants or you can’t go and market yourself in certain ways. So those are some of the things that I’m hearing in terms of like, how do they adjust, how do they make sure that they’re still performing their mission?

Just don’t say DEI in an application or on your website, right? Take out those words and say a different word or, so it’s just been [00:08:00] really interesting how, and this is my first time as a business owner in a space where the political atmosphere is like directly affecting my work.

And so this is a total learning curve, and I try to be on as many, policy update convers like,, convenings. I’m a Giving Circle member for the Latino Community Foundation in Los Angeles. They do their best to bring on, different elected officials or different California policy makers to, discuss what’s going on, how does it affect nonprofits and what are they doing to make sure that as a foundation, that they’re directing dollars to the most needy, given, the current political landscape.

Tasha : It keeping yourself educated on all of these moving parts. And we have, a member who I was recently talking to, and , he’s so interesting because he’s got this goal to get a hundred thousand Americans involved in [00:09:00] civil action. Like how do we even learn? How do you start getting the knowledge you need to even apply for office, right?

And how can we make running for office accessible for anybody, not just for those who have. Money and potentially power that already exists, and what does that look like to reengage? And as he’s talking about all of it, my first reaction, as a parent, as a small business owner, as an entrepreneur, oh my goodness, I can’t imagine making time for this.

But at the same time, in many ways, we are the people who should be getting involved, right? Because we have a lot of, there’s a lot. That influences us directly. But taking the time to learn all of it, it’s big. It’s really big. So much to keep your head wrapped around.

Joe Mata: Yeah. And if you’re not, I don’t wanna say guarded or like hardened to it emotionally, but you do, there is some aspect where you like, you have to shut that piece off to really focus on the work.

I’m Christian, and so getting in the word, or [00:10:00] praying, is really helpful for me to find that, like recentering or to see , there’s been times in history where things have looked really bad and people have been, enslaved and all this other stuff, but having your faith and having your north star right, your source belief is what helps people to get through those times. And so I’m always encouraging folks to tap into, whether they’re Christians or what, whatever they believe in right.

To tap into like their faith and really try , to stay focused on this too shall pass.

Tasha : Yeah, absolutely. Now, I like to always ask and maybe have some, I think we already started to touch on it a bit, but how is peer support factoring into your success working in the nonprofit space?

Joe Mata: Peer support more recently has really, , became a. How do I say this? Peer support is really starting to become [00:11:00] integral in, in terms of how we’re operating and doing our work. When I first started the business, I was very much like a solo entrepreneur, solo operator. Maybe I had, a contractor that helped me do some stuff at the beginning.

But now we are subcontracting with other. Consultants who have, five, 10 years worth of experience. Much more myself and have worked with more clients than I have. But we’ve made agreements so that they can come on and help support my work. A lot of times, , as we were talking about earlier, the CRM folks, the data folks that, that are in there cleaning up, configurations on Salesforce or.

Trying to migrate from one system to another, whatever it might be. They also may not even want to do like the sales and marketing pieces or have that kind of extroverted, lens in their work. So what I’m learning is to like really lean on my peers in this work to try to bring out each other’s strengths.

Because [00:12:00] again, I’m much more of an extrovert and I enjoy the sales and marketing side of work. And so if they love the data side of it, why not try to find places where they can really thrive in their space and I can thrive in my space, but we’re all working towards the same goal and same mission.

Tasha : That’s great. Love it. I would say similarly, finding those other people to find us collaborators because we can’t all know how to do everything right. Even I’m slowly realizing there are some very specific things in marketing I love doing and I’m very good at, it’s never gonna be Google ads. I need to make a bestie right in the Google ad space because it is not ever gonna be the thing that I’m going to pick up on.

I just. I can do it, but I’m not gonna do it very well, so, I should find that person in the sector who’s amazing at it. And that’s really important. Final question, I always like to pull back around, you’ve been a member of the nonprofit hive for quite some time now.

Love that. We connected, we had our own chat one day. What have you [00:13:00] gotten out of being a member of this community?

Joe Mata: I think for sure my mindset or my horizon on who is out there and what they’re doing has definitely grown. Whether that’s from meeting folks that are running like international nonprofits , they could be domestic based, running international, or they’re international.

Or consultants. Slash authors who are bringing their wealth of experience to these spaces just to be a mentor, right? Just to have 20, 30 minutes to share their learnings or what have you. And I think that for me, where I’ve seen the most benefit is when there is that like synergy or, there’s those opportunities to go deeper.

I think it’s really great that the hive provides the place to be introduced to that person, and then it’s up to you to make sure you’re continuing that relationship. I’ve found it really valuable and gotten some answers to questions that I had or , perspectives on [00:14:00] things that I wouldn’t have thought of previously.

It’s been a real eye-opener and. Horizon expander for me.

Tasha : That’s awesome. Always like to have people like, you know, say, how can people get in touch with you and give us a quick , overview of your services in case anybody is looking for exactly what you offer.

Joe Mata: Sure. My website is mata consulting llc.com.

We’re mostly active on LinkedIn. And my name is Joe a Mata the third. You can find me on there. What we do is we will either set up CRM systems. We mainly work with Salesforce, but we also work with platforms like Bloomerang or Neon, or. Whatever it might be. We are CRM agnostic.

The core of it is really to make sure that we set up both development teams and program teams with. As automated as possible processes, to make sure that any data collection that , you’re doing you’re able to [00:15:00] report out on it, get dashboards set up, use it for your strategic analysis for any of your year over year planning , your board presentations, and.

Once all of that’s done, we wanna make sure that your team is trained up on how to use it. We like to create like SOPs and internal documents to make sure that folks have some institutional knowledge. When we step away, and the team is really like running on their own, that they feel confident that what we’ve set up for them is working well and they know how to use it.

Tasha : That’s amazing. Love it. Thank you so much for doing this with me, Joe. Really appreciate it and thanks for being such an engaged member. I know you’ve got your hands full at home at the moment, so appreciate your time.

Joe Mata: Of course. Thank you so much, Tasha.