Earth Consultants

Applying Lean Six Sigma to the Environment

E086: Helping Nonprofits with Process Improvement through Consulting and Volunteering with Lauren Neder

29 min read

In this podcast, I talk with Lauren Neder, Industrial Engineer and lean consultant working with nonprofit organizations as a consultant and volunteer. She shares her experience working with a nonprofit in Haiti (in person and virtually), and how she is learning how to approach nonprofit organizations with process improvement.

We discuss:

  • how she transitioned from manufacturing to nonprofit work
  • how she supported a nonprofit in Haiti called Imagine Missions
  • what struggles and challenges she has encountered with volunteering
  • why you shouldn’t overpromise on what you can help them with
  • some of the improvements she’s been involved with
  • and tips for how to approach a nonprofit to offer your help

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You can watch the full video of the interview here…

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Promotions

Have you ordered the new book, “Lean Six Sigma for Good: Lessons from the Gemba (Volume 1)?” The book is made up of 8 chapters written about experiences from Lean and Six Sigma practitioners, to give you tips and tricks to help you work with nonprofits in your area. All proceeds donated to charity. We are also close to releasing Volume 2, so check back for the latest news.

Transcript

Brion (B): Welcome, Lauren. Thanks for being a guest on the podcast here. We wanted to learn a little bit more about your background and how you got into nonprofit work and volunteering, and also your ISE background.

Lauren (L): Thank you, Brion. Well, I’m not the normal guest because I don’t have 20 years of experience.

B: That’s perfect.

L: But I’m excited to talk about how I got to this point and how I’m trying to get started in Lean for nonprofits.

B: I think there’s a lot of people in that situation. They’re maybe new to it or they have a little experience, but they’re hesitant to want to get started. I think your story will be really good to help them figure out what are some next steps I could take, so this will be great.

L: I graduated from Purdue University in 2014 with a degree in industrial engineering. I actually also have a minor in psychology because I liked that piece of it as well. When I wrote my essay to get into Purdue, I wrote about how I wanted to use engineering to help people, but then when I graduated, the job offers that I was getting was mostly in manufacturing, which was very different from what I originally thought I wanted to do. But they were great opportunities, so I went ahead and took a job in manufacturing where I was able to implement Lean, but really a lot of it was managing people, which is a skill that you need and every type of work that you’re going to do.

So that was a ton of really good experience, but it just wasn’t what I was passionate about. I couldn’t get behind the numbers or the different pushes for productivity, just it wasn’t what drives me. And so when I was in college I went to Haiti on a short-term mission trip just for a week during spring break and I stayed involved in that organization. I was able to be on the Board of Directors for a little bit and just saw the organization grow. There was an opportunity to go down and help them set up their professional school, which was going to be for students who maybe weren’t succeeding in classic school but still wanted to get a profession so that they’d be able to support themselves and stuff like that. And so I went and I lived in Haiti for a year and two months and that was back in 2018. That was the most crazy experience, as you can imagine, trying to move things forward but not understanding the culture, the language, anything. And so while we did make some progress, a lot of it didn’t really stick but it was a learning experience for sure.

And so through that, I actually got to be on the cover of the Institute of Industrial Engineer’s magazine about that work. That’s how we got in contact because you asked me to write a chapter in your Lean for Good book and I was like, “Oh, no.” I felt that I’m not qualified for that although I was very honored. A lot of the work that I did, like I said, it was good; it just didn’t stick and so I didn’t feel like I was ready to tell people how to do it. But, like I said, I learned a lot from that and I was kind of more put on that track of, hey, nonprofits need a lot of help and a lot of what I did in manufacturing can be applied to nonprofits.

And so when I came back from Haiti, I got another job in manufacturing, but just the same feeling of it wasn’t what I wanted. And so, this past July, I quit and I’ve been on this journey of volunteering and figuring out what the next step is for me, if I can figure out this Lean consulting for nonprofits.

B: That’s great. I think back to some of my work and there’s a lot of stuff that didn’t stick and I think that’s very common. You’re trying to drive change and you’re not there, you’re not the manager, you’re not supervising, you’re having to influence and so it’s still left up to individuals to decide how much they want to embrace and it’s difficult. It’s not easy work and I think that’s something that you have to get comfortable with is that there’s going to be a lot of losses along the way. Or wouldn’t say losses, but just not making the progress or getting the results that you think is there, and you have to get used to that.

L: In Haiti, it was a lot of lack of lease sources. Just didn’t have what was needed to keep the stuff in place.

B: Was there anybody particular things that, even if it didn’t stick, you can share just as an example for people or the things you’re working on?

L: When I was in Haiti, a lot of the stuff I got to do was just meeting with the students. And so I got to meet with a few of the students that I had already gotten to know because I had been involved in the organization for six years, and so I had gotten to know the students. So I got to sit down with them and do short-term and long-term goal setting, which was super cool to see what their dreams were, but then what are some realistic steps that they could put in place to reach those dreams. Everybody wants to be a professional soccer player, but what realistic steps can you put in place to get there or what’s maybe something else that is related to that that’s more achievable. Once you start putting the steps in place, you’re like, okay, is this realistic? and so how can we make this into something that is going to be more realistic? That was a really cool take away from that time.

Currently, what I’m doing is a lot of volunteer work with different local nonprofits, so just using some different connections that I have to go into nonprofits and say, “Hey, this is what my degree is in. I’m working on my Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. This is what I have to offer. How can I help your organization?” People have been super receptive to that. I was a little nervous at first, but we had a conversation and you said to me, “Yeah, you might not know everything, but you know more than the people that you’re going to help,” which was a huge encouragement like you don’t have to have it all figured out, but you can go and give your time.

B: I think that the skills you bring there is not something most people have. I would say that there’s some basics there that people have. There’s, I’m sure, a lot of people have volunteered that have leadership skills and that they have organization skills, “This seems disorganized. We could make it a little more structured.” I think there are some natural improvements that people put in place and trying to bring in the voice of the customer into the discussion and say, “It seems like they’re struggling or frustrated with this. We can fix that.”

But I think when you start looking a little deeper into the next level of improvements with flow and batching and triggers and pull systems and engaging people, that’s where it gets a little bit beyond most people’s skill set. I think that’s where the additional skills we can bring to the table there is that connectivity across the processes and say, “There’s handoffs here that are very inefficient, and so even if this looks like it’s running good, it’s not helping the overall system run very well,” and, “Why are we doing this? in the first place, let’s not try to improve something that we shouldn’t even be doing in the first place.” I think some of those things is what the typical volunteer would not necessarily have for a skill set.

I’m glad to hear that you’re getting a lot of positive feedback and interest, and I’ve had that same experience. It’s usually been pretty interested to say, “Yes, we want to think about our processes differently. It’s great to have a set of hands, but also someone who could step back and look at the work we’re doing a little differently.”

L: I think getting started in that, the first new few places that I went to, I would walk in and be like, “Hey, how can I help you?” and we would just get started. I learned that while that’s good and while that’s going to make them happy, you need to take that time to step back and be like, okay, how can we measure what your current state is. Because I’m the type of person that’s just like, “All right. Nice to meet you. Let’s get started,” but taking that step back and being like how many volunteers are you using? total hours, is that your struggle? how can we cut that? and making sure that you’re really going in and quantifying what the current state is so that when you do implement something new, you’re able to say, “Hey, this is what we were able to accomplish.”

Because I volunteered for an organization and I helped them implement an app that they’re using to track their furniture donations. The big need was some of their volunteers were not going to have the time and so they needed to come up with a solution that was going to make it so that they were able to keep offering that to people with fewer volunteers. But I didn’t do the work up front to track. I can always go back and do it, but I didn’t track how many volunteer hours they were using for this or any other metrics. And so at the end of the day, they have this app that works great, but when I go and tell people about that, I can only say, “Oh, they love it. This is good for them,” but there’s no, “I was able to help save 10 volunteer hours a week,” which is really the meat of what we do.

B: Being able to quantify the improvements, and not just for us to say, “This stuff works and this can be used anywhere across your organization,” but even for the team members to say they see that positive reinforcement of, “Wow, 10 hours. I knew it was better, but that’s huge. I never imagined there was 10 hours to save there and we got that, so what else can we do?” But you’re right, if you don’t have that to compare to, it’s just not as impactful and it doesn’t get the excitement built up for other improvements that are out there.

L: This is something that I’d love to do long-term, and if I don’t take the steps now to set up those measures, I’m not going to be able to sell it in the future. So just taking that pause and being like, okay, that’s standard practice, but when you’re actually in it, sometimes it’s harder to do.

B: You want to show that I’m helpful and this stuff works and you want to jump right into it, and that’s very natural. I think that’s a challenge for most people, even who do improvement work, that you want to jump right in and it’s hard to step back and slow down and say, “Hold on. Let’s figure out where we’re at first and make sure that we really understand the problems.” Even for our own benefit, coming in new and not knowing what exactly their processes are because we don’t want to assume that we know just because, “Oh, I’ve seen this before.” That that will not go over well. They’ll think that you don’t really know, and so you have to put in some time to show that you do understand and you’ve deep-dived into how they do things and it’s not just you’re taking someone else’s process and dumping it onto theirs. That will never go over well. So I think that’s a common thing too is just thinking, “We don’t have time. We’ve got this problem. We have to go solve that problem. They’re struggling and who cares if we solve this problem,” but it does help, in the long run, when you have that to say, “This was the benefits we got there.”

L: I think, too, one of the benefits of Lean is going in without the answer and questioning everything and taking that time to ask the right questions because if you go in and you’re like, “This is going to be,” like you were saying on copy and paste, “this is going to be your solution. I already know,” but that’s not going to get you the actual best result. I think one of the benefits of having not really a nonprofit background but a Lean background is being able to go in and be like, “Help me understand what it is you guys do and how I can be helpful,” instead of coming in and being like, “All right, here are my solutions. Pick one and let’s go.” I found that people are more receptive, in general, when you’re asking questions and trying to understand versus coming in and saying, “Hey, this is going to be a solution. Let’s go ahead. Listen to me. I’m the expert. Let’s go ahead and start implementing it.” I’ve just found that it’s just better all-around when you have more of that mindset of questioning as opposed to being an expert.

B: I think that’s to understand where their challenges are because we can all see lots of opportunities and it’s like we could go 100 different directions with this, and so it really does need to come from them to say, “Where are you most struggling right now so that when we work on something, it’s important to you?” It’s not just the 20th of 35 projects you’ve got going on. I want this to be the number one or number two project you have on your list in an area that’s most important so that you’re going to put the time into it and this effort’s going to be more worthwhile and it’s not just going to be lost or buried or forgotten about as soon as you walk away. That’s always a challenge.

L: I found the same thing is true when I’ve been trying to get advice on what I’m doing. Just going to people and saying, “Hey, you’ve done this before. What are your struggles? what’s worked for you, what hasn’t?” I’ve messaged so many people on LinkedIn. Some get back to me and some don’t, but the ones that do are super helpful. They want to give me advice and help me, which has been amazing.

B: We have a really great community of process improvement support people, especially on LinkedIn and things like that, that are just always– I think you get into this work and you realize there’s a lot to learn and everyone has expertise, but they also have a lot of things that they don’t get it. I have a whole list of things that I have gaps on that I’m trying to close, but I’ll never get there. It’s just so much stuff to learn and you realize it’s difficult. The tools are one thing, but then going in and dealing with specific situations. When you said you had a psychology minor, I thought that’s a very good complement to what we do because there’s a lot of things that, on paper, this is straightforward, but the reality is there’s a whole lot of dynamics at play here, with personalities and outside influences and personal life issues, that get in the way of making changes in people’s work. I think I had a class called work psychology or something and I found that very interesting too. It was non-technical stuff around how do you deal with people in a workplace setting and very important stuff.

L: Like what motivates them and stuff like that. I had a class like that too.

B: It goes back to going to, you said jumping right in, but also taking a step back to say, “What is driving a lot of these processes?” Sometimes it is the influence of the management and what they think is important versus how the process work. That can be the conflict is that there’s a misalignment between process goals and organizational goals and if you don’t know that, you’re always going to be battling this resistance there that’s like it doesn’t seem like why wouldn’t you go forward with these changes? And it’s like because there’s something in the way there at a higher level that you’re not aware of.

L: I definitely learned that, with volunteering, you have to make sure you know what level you’re getting in at and that the levels above or below support that. I volunteered for another organization and I was meeting. My contact was the director of these different outreach that they do, and their problem was they had different tier levels of volunteers. And so they had a bunch of bottom Tier 1 volunteers who are giving up resources and a little bit of time, but the need was for the top two and three level volunteers, which is a very intense, dedicated volunteer and they just weren’t able to get those people.

But the lady I was meeting with, she’s not in charge of recruiting the volunteers. She’s in charge of running the different programs that they have, and so we got to the point where she was like, “Honestly, I need the volunteers to run my programs.” And so I was like, “How are you getting these different level volunteers?” and she was like, “Honestly, I don’t know.” And so we were discussing a process flow of recruiting, so are people being recruited at those top tiers or are they being recruited at one and then transitioning? and so once we talked through that, she was able to go back to the director that is in charge of recruiting and just be like, “Can you explain this flow to me?” And she kind of had some different words that she didn’t normally have because we had talked so that she could understand how they were doing the recruiting.

They got to the point where they decided they needed to, as an organization, look at what their messaging was and make sure that it was clear and consistent throughout the organization. At that point, that’s something I have no expertise in with that. I don’t know how to create a good, clear recruiting message, and so I took a step back and said, “I don’t think I can really be helpful to you at this point, but I’d be happy to maybe tackle something else with you.”

But just understanding where you are in the organization. It’s the same as the key stakeholders, so who are your key stakeholders, what input did they have, and how do you get them involved with where you’re at?

B: I think that’s really important. It sounded like, to me, you were basically helping them find the bottleneck and find out what’s important and it’s not obvious, especially in some of these processes. If you go into a manufacturing and you see a pile of stuff, it’s very clear there’s something wrong there. In your workflows, you don’t see their inbox or how many volunteers are in their workflow at different stages of the flow, and where they’re at in their journey as a volunteer from Level 1 to 2 and 3. And it’s not visual, so you can’t just look at something very often and say, “There’s your bottleneck. You have 72 people stuck at Level 1 and then there’s only 10 at Level 2. There’s obviously something holding back people going for the Level 2.” It’s not that obvious until you work through and understand what they’re trying to accomplish and then be able to somehow figure out where those are at, but it’s not visual. I think that’s very powerful to help bring that scale to them and at least point them in the right direction and say, “Okay, that’s all I could do. Now you need an expert at this one area, but at least for now, focused in the right area,” which is huge.

If you are interested in getting started with a nonprofit and you have a little bit of process improvement background, what would be your recommendations or thoughts for someone to get started? how should they approach a nonprofit? should they look for one in particular? do you start as a volunteer? do you reach out to the directors? if you can give a little bit of your thoughts so far as you’ve been trying to do this approach, what’s been working for you or what hasn’t worked very well, maybe that would help people who are interested in something like this.

L: I think the biggest thing is find an organization that you agree with that is doing something that you’re passionate about that you want to help. Because sometimes it’s easy to walk in and have really good access to the director. Maybe they’re there all the time doing the hands-on stuff, but sometimes they’re the ones behind the desk making the big calls. And so it really depends on what the organization is that you’re trying to get involved with. If it’s something smaller, then I would say, yeah, you can definitely walk in or send an email. You can find contact information online super easy and just explain who you are and what you want to help them with.

What’s worked for me is just going in and being like, “Hey, what’s your pain point? what’s something that you struggle with on a daily basis that takes up way more time than you have?” instead of, like we talked about before, coming in and being like, “Hey, I have this premade solution for you. Let me talk to you about how to implement it.” just having that like, “Hey, I’m here. I have these skills and I want to help,” I think goes a really long way.

But for some organizations, you don’t have that access and so it might be starting with just volunteering, building relationships because sometimes it takes those really good relationships to build the trust to be able to let you implement something. Especially if it’s a bigger organization, they’re not going to just let anyone come in and change all their processes that have been working so well. So I think it just really depends, but starting small is going to be easier and you’re going to be able to see more of an impact sooner and you’ll probably have a little bit more rein over what you’re doing versus a bigger organization.

That’s what’s worked for me is starting with the smaller organizations and going in and just saying, “These are my skills. I’d like to use them to help you.” Other things that have really helped me is just using the network that I already had, so reaching out to you. I listened to your podcast and found a few other people that you’ve interviewed that I’ve reached out to, and I have friends from school that have contacts. Just using the network that I’ve already created to just ask anybody for advice. Consulting is you’re trying to sell something to an organization that they don’t know that they need, and so whether it’s Lean or something else, it’s very similar. So reaching out to people who are already in consulting like, “Hey, how did you sell your idea?” and asking those kind of questions and, “Where did you start? what setbacks did you have?” that’s just been very successful for me.

B: If someone’s starting new, you recommend go find an organization that you have some interest in, trying to connect to an executive director or someone who has a leadership role there, and trying to get in that way through trying to explain your skills and see if you can get a meeting or something set up with them to kick it off, and then try and figure out where you could be helpful. Do you give them a little bit of overview of your skills and try to explain, through past examples or your ISE background, what you bring to the table?

L: I usually start with past examples, which you know where those numbers and quantifying results, that point comes in handy because it’s a much easier sell if you have that as opposed to just like, “Hey, I did this and they really liked it and it worked.”

B: And then once you’re engaged there, what’s worked well for you in terms of timeframe? Are you going there regularly for a while? how often, I guess, when you do get some kind of momentum going? is it a weekly thing, or a couple of hours a time, or is it every day for a while? What seems to work well? because I think that’s one thing people will be a little concerned about. What am I committing to? how much time do I need to have available or how much are they expecting from me as a volunteer? is this going to be another job or is this going to be a little bit of coaching here and there?

L: I think, at first, when you first meet with them and you’re gathering the data, it’s going to be a lot more because you’re going to have to talk to the volunteers, you’re going to have to talk to people at different levels, maybe a Board of Directors, to figure out where the pain point is. I think you can make it as much or as little as you want because once you get in and really start looking, you’re going to find something that needs help, and so just knowing your limits and how much time you have available.

For me, what I’m doing it’s just once a week. So I’m volunteering with three organizations and so each one has a different day that I work on stuff for them with. And it could just be a few hours, it could be more monitoring and that’s what’s needed, but I have that luxury to be able to do that at this point. I don’t know if that’s always going to be the case. So think it’s just understanding you can make it what you want, just understanding what your availability is as far as time-wise. And I think the key is not to overcommit because if you say, “I can set up this whole website,” or something, whatever is needed, and then you don’t have the time or the skills to do that, then you’re going to be disappointed and they’re going to be disappointed because you said you could do something that you can’t.

And so I think it’s really understanding what your skills are and being able to communicate that clearly to the organization. Like, “Hey, I want to help you, but this is what I’m able to help with,” and really clearly defining the problem and what solutions you’re going to help offer them. It might be just a suggestion that they have to go implement or it could be like I’ve created Google Forms, which is something that I have prior experience with. It’s pretty easy to do, so I’m able to see that to completion. Whereas in other situations, it’s been, “Hey, you need to create some sort of onboarding, and I can give you a framework, but I’m not going to be able to sit down and put together each step of this onboarding process that you need.” So just making sure that you’re very clearly defining what it is you’re going to be able to offer the organization.

B: I think that’s pretty common too because I can think back to projects where it got to a point and it’s like, “This is got to go to a whole nother group, a whole nother department, and that’s not really anywhere near my skill set.” They were like, “We’re going to change out the HVAC settings.” It’s like, “I can’t really help you with that. I could watch and observe how you’re doing that and maybe give you some tips on how to do that a little more efficiently, but it’s completely out of my skill set range.” The other things I’ve done, though, is like, “I’ll set up the data collection forms. I’ll set up the charting and the reporting on the backend. I’ve done a little programming, I can do that part, so this can help us accelerate versus we have to go get a bid from an IT group and stuff.” That’s been nice when I’ve had certain skills I’ve been able to bring to the table to do some of that work, but then that’s not always the case. I think that’s going to be pretty typical is you run into things where you can help a little bit further, and then other times, you’ll have to hand it off to more experts.

L: I’ve realized that SOPs are a big part of this, just being like, “Hey, this is what needs to be done and I can tell you the process that needs to be followed, but you’re going to have to be the one that implements it and follows it.”

B: My experience has been, too, that there’s a lot of, not let’s say simple, but there’s a lot of things that don’t require a lot of complex solutions for. Like you said, SOPs, a perfect example. A lot of them know they want these documents. They have it on their list of to-dos and they just cannot get around to doing it amongst everything else. It’s like a nice-to-have. Or it’s a proactive thing, a thing that they should do and they know it’s something that they need to do, but it’s just going to fall to the bottom of the list of priorities most of the time.

So I think that’s something else where we can step in is I can follow that process and I can sketch out what I think the flow is, and then have the experts review it and tweak it and have someone else try it out as a new volunteer and see if they can follow that documentation. So it’s not a difficult task to do, but it’s something that just is not urgent for the teams. But they know they want it and they are happy to have it, but they’re not going to put the time and because it’s a daunting task to put things together. Even like screenshots of computer tasks that have to be done or just any rudimentary processes that just are not written down anywhere.

I think that’s a skill that is important for us in improvement and something that’s usually lacking in a lot of organizations, not just nonprofits either. I think, for most people, they’ll find that there is a lot that they can actually help with, but it’s okay if they don’t know how to do everything. That’s not what our role really is. It’s to help, I think, get people to start thinking about that, carving out time, looking at their processes in a new way, and then making sure they’re focused on the right key areas and maybe there are solutions we can provide to them or point them in the right direction at least. Even just follow-up I think is really important part of the volunteering to say, “How’s it going? what do you need help with? how is that last thing we did? is that working for you? do we need to change it?” I think that’s a really important skill that we can help with too.

L: Yeah, definitely.

B: Any other examples or things you wanted to share?

L: Nonprofits, they all deal with the same issues where the supply is limited. You don’t have an endless number of volunteers. You don’t have an endless amount of money that you can spend. And so a lot of the directors are just grinding every day, trying to pool people to come volunteer, and trying to stretch their dollar to make that impact. It’s, usually, their goals are amazing stuff that’s needed in the community. I don’t have any specific examples, but for me, it’s really just I was able to help this director use two less volunteers, and so instead of them spending hours of their day trying to track down volunteers, they’re able to actually focus on moving organization forward. And so I think knowing that what I bring to the table is taking the weight off of them so that they could go make that bigger impact is what really drives me.

B: That’s a great way to look at it too. It’s freeing them up to do the work that they signed up for or just having an impact in their community.

L: Because a lot of directors and people that get into nonprofits are there because they’re passionate about the people they’re serving. They’re passionate about it. It’s not because they’re great at Google Docs or because they have a great mail merger program set up. It’s not something like that. The administrative stuff isn’t what gets them to it, but then that’s a lot of what ties them down and so just talking with people and being able to work through solutions that when they look at it, they’re like, “Oh, this is going to give me so much time,” that’s really cool.

B: Another thing I’m noticing is there’s a lot of the waste of overexertion where people are burning out in these roles. The passion’s there and they want to have an impact and the processes are bogging them down or getting in the way. That’s leading to, “I love this organization. I love what they do, but for my own self-preservation, I can’t keep going at this pace and at this rate and to deal with that.” I think they’re losing a lot of good talent over the years because of some of the inefficiencies that are there. And so your point of freeing them up from some of that administrative burden so that they can get out there and get that rewarding experience of helping people and having an impact and leaving work on time and just having a balance there between their work and life.

I think that’s other things we can bring to the table that won’t show up on the bottom line of the organization until you see long-term turnover and things like that where you do see an impact or even just volunteer retention. You’re not burning out the volunteers either. They’re not even staff, but they don’t want to come back because it was overburdening of what was being asked of them, running a whole program when there’s no structure there to do it and they just had to figure it out. That’s draining. I think that’s a lot of things we can assist with too.

L: Yeah, definitely. It’s a good learning experience for sure.

B: How can people get a hold of you? if they wanted to seek your help or learn more about what you’ve done in the past or network with you, what’s the best way to connect with you?

L: I’m on LinkedIn just at LaurenNader, and then I just have a Gmail account. It’s just my first and last name at Gmail. It is my primary way to contact me at this point.

B: Okay, I’ll put that in the notes for this podcast. So it’s L-A-U-R-E-N  N-E-D-E-R?

L: Yes, at Gmail.

B: Okay. I’ll put the LinkedIn profile link there. Do you have any other websites or anything else?

L: Nope, not at this point.

B: Not yet.

L: Not yet. We’re working on it.

B: Great. Where are you based out of?

L: I am in Lynchburg, Virginia.

B: What’s that nearby in terms of larger cities?

L: It’s about two hours from Richmond, and it’s about three hours from DC.

B: All right, so if anyone’s in that area, please reach out to Lauren.

L: I’d love to connect with anybody who is doing something similar or has any thoughts or ideas. I’m just trying to be a sponge at this point and absorb as much as I can.

B: I also wanted to also wanted to remind everybody that, in December, we’re going to have a nonprofit Zoom call basically, an Unconference around Lean and nonprofit. So if you’re interested in joining that, I’ll put a link in there too. It’s a couple of hours on a Tuesday afternoon. We’re going to go through and just have open discussion with people like Lauren and myself to talk about these types of things and how we can band together and learn from each other and also see how we can expand this idea around helping out nonprofits.

L: Yes, I signed up for that.

B: I saw that, yeah. I think it’s going to be a great discussion, and hopefully the first of many discussions like that.

L: Thank you for this opportunity to share my story, and hopefully somebody learned a little bit.

B: I think so. I think you have a lot of good things to offer. Thanks for your time and all the work you’ve done and good luck in the future.

L: Thanks.

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