E111: Apply Lean to Nonprofit Boards with Sally Toister

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Sally worked many years in the hospitality industry applying Lean Six Sigma, and she shares her experiences to improve the guest experience. She also shares an example of a project that determined the optimal reward points to get customers to agree to reduced or no housekeeping, which was good for the environment, resulting in less linen being washed and less ergonomic risk to housekeepers. She has recently retired, and is now involved in helping nonprofits apply Lean Six Sigma methods. She is Vice Chair and an active board member of Kitchens for Good (K4G) in San Diego.

I first learned about K4G from Tracy O’Rourke, who Sally mentioned in the interview, explaining how she connected her to the organization as a volunteer during COVID. Tracy shared her experiences with K4G in our interview back in episode #91 from February 2022., and she wrote about it in more detail in the book, “Lean Six Sigma for Good: Lessons from the Gemba (Volume 2).” K4G also received the IISE Sustainable Development award in 2023, which is an award that I have sponsored since its inception.

You can watch the entire presentation below, or go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzyZZQNsQ7s

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Have you ordered the book, “Lean Six Sigma for Good: Lessons from the Gemba (Volume 2)?” 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. Now available in audiobook as of Feb 2024. You can also order Volume 1 released in 2019.

Transcript

Brion (B): Hi, everyone. My guest today is Sally Toister. Sally, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background in process improvement?

Sally (S): Sure, great, thank you. As you mentioned, Sally Toister. I live here in San Diego. I am now I retired operations executive, focusing on applying my passion for Lean thinking and leading with respect to meaningful causes. I currently serve on the Board of Directors with Kitchens for Good, and I work alongside a number of dedicated professionals and volunteers supporting the organization’s mission of “transforming lives through culinary arts,” and so with them, I work to share my expertise customer service, project management, and process design.

B: How long have you been on the board?

S: I’ve been on the board just over two years now and been volunteering with the organization since 2020.

B: So how did you get into process improvement? What’s the background there?

S: Background there, one of those rare individuals, I got a degree from Texas A&M in business analysis and my first position was as an operations supervisor at a pharmacy by mail. Shortly after I began my position there, they asked who might be interested in learning this thing called Green Belt, going through Green Belt training, and I was like me, me, me, me, and it just took off from there. So I got interested right from the very beginning of my career, and actually from my education, and was fortunate to land with training at that organization and kept going with it throughout my career from there to a retail services company, and then my longer-term career was with hospitality in it with Lean Six Sigma there.

B: When you went into hospitality, was that the role that you took on, process improvement, or did you also kind of make your way to that role later?

S: I did. Actually, when I was with the retail services company, I was doing Lean Six Sigma part time and an opportunity came up within the hotel industry to take a full-time Black Belt position located on-property. It was actually a step back around where I was in the company I was at, but it was an opportunity to take a Lean Six Sigma role full-time and that was very appealing to me. So it was one of those opportunities I saw where opportunity to take a step back for an opportunity for further growth going forward, and it opened up a ton of pathways for me in the Lean Six Sigma world and long career in it. Very, very fortunate to have landed that role at the time as a Black Belt on the hotel property.

B: I get asked the question a lot from people, it’s kind of like how do I get the experience and the expertise to be eligible for a position like that or to be able to get hired in full-time, and I think that’s a struggle. I was fortunate, too, that I studied statistics and quality management and then I went into a statistician role in the quality department, and I’ve just been doing that the whole time, and so I fell right into the role I went to school for and I don’t think that’s very common. For people who are kind of just learning this as they go or learning a little bit about it but wanting the experience or just the time to be able to step away from a full-time job and work in a department like that, what was that transition like from interest in Green Belt to going through Green Belt to I guess gaining some experience there to be able to then step into a new role?

S: It’s interesting because I staffed a lot for individuals within the roles, and it is very unusual to find individuals like us who that have a background and a degree in statistical analysis that just grow into the positions. And when I was looking for individuals, I always looked for individuals that had the mindsets and behaviors for the role because the statistics and the processes and the tools, you can train on those. It’s the mindsets and behaviors you have to have for change and growth and development, that’s the harder skill set and tool to have to be successful in the role. And so if I found that gem characteristic in an individual, that was the diamond in the rough that we could grow and develop someone to be very successful in the Lean Six Sigma role. That’s what I would always look for an individual that I found highly successful in a Lean Six Sigma role is that they had the mindset and behaviors component to change.

B: So you went through a Green Belt training, and then did the helping with a project, and then did that just kind of grow from there? Because that’s that piece I think some people are struggling with is I want to get into this, I need experience.

S: Well, and maybe this is why I have a passion for finding individuals who have the mindset and behaviors because I was actually part of one of those organizations that said, hey, we have to find someone to go to Green Belt training. We don’t know what we’re supposed to do with someone who’s gone to Green Belt training, so I would kind of create opportunities for myself because I had this passion now for the skill set I trained. And as a supervisor of an operational area, this is well over 20 years ago now, but I would run these mini waste workshops almost, but we would call them of why are we waiting. We would run these question workshops of let’s answer the question of why are we waiting. As an example, with it being a pharmacy by mail, I had the male opening department and the question is why are we waiting for mail? One of the answers was the post office didn’t deliver the mail, and so I hopped in the car and drove over to the post office. Let’s go find out why we’re not getting mail. So we would start doing some root cause analysis to kind of redirect this behavior of pointing at others and blame. We created the let’s blame re, and re was redo, rework, re whatever the word of the week was that was a word that started with re, let’s blame re, and we did these little workshops around that.

And so that’s how I kind of created my own process improvement type initiatives and taking what I had learned in Green Belt training to try and find my own ways to make change happen within my pharmacy that we had. I was really kind of the only Green Belt in the pharmacy because I was the only one that raised my hand and said, yeah, I want to do it. And then we had a lifestyle adjustment and moved out to the West Coast as a family. I really had enjoyed those moments, and when I was looking for new place to work, I was looking for a position in a company that had Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma principles in it because I wanted to be part of a culture and a company that had that. And so that was, again, looking for that mindset and behavior, and I was fortunate to land at a company and in a role that 50% of my job was around process improvement and 50% was operations, so it was a good next step for me and that’s where I found it. But again, it was I raised my hand, I wanted to do it. I went after it, and I kept going for it. I just knew it was a passion of mine and kept wanting to find it.

And so I guess going back to your first question, if someone is interested in it, find your path. Find a way to make some change. There are so many resources now online to start learning and getting the tools and the resources. You don’t need a full project to start making change happen. You can do little workshops for yourself within your controllable areas to make change happen and get the bug going, you might find others that will join you or you might find a pathway for yourself to create those moments that can then create an opportunity for you somewhere else.

B: I think that is a barrier. People feel like I need to go through a program, and I need to do a full project, and I need to have all this background. It’s almost like I need a college degree before I make improvements. Yeah, that’s not the case. It’s really the practice, learning by doing that you’re really going to learn and there is so much good information out there that wasn’t available 20 years ago. If you’re committed, you’ll find all the free information you can on any topic. It’s pretty awesome, but you’ve got to say I know enough to get started, and if I don’t, I’ll figure it out or I’ll learn by doing it wrong.

S: Yeah. If I had the resource that are available today, who knows what would’ve happened. Back then, I think I read The Goal four times. That was my motivation back then back in the early days.

B: Okay, so part two. We had some technical problems and now we’re going to finish up interview with Sally. Could you share some examples of some of the projects or how Lean and Six Sigma methods applied to where you spent a lot of time, hospitality?

S: Within hospitality, it was wonderful. It’s a treasure trove of voice of customer feedback within the hospitality arena. If you’ve ever stayed at a hotel, I’m sure you yourself have had plenty of opportunity to give your own feedback as a guest in a hotel. One of the benefits of utilizing Lean Six Sigma there is that is an excellent way to utilize that voice of customer feedback to improve the processes to enhance that guest experience, but also a way to help minimize the pain in delivering that guest experience to really make sure you have a positive guest experience, but minimizing that pain in the way in which it’s delivered for the associate so that the associate has a better day at work. And then it also helps from a stakeholder standpoint because, as we’re improving it, of course, it helps to improve the bottom line. There are a lot of ways in which Lean Six Sigma was beneficial within the hospitality from all three standpoints when we applied it.

We had many projects that we could touch all of those key touchpoints, whether it was from the guest experience, improving the day-to-day work for an associate, and then also having impact for our stakeholders, whether it’s from a financial benefit or from an improving the guest experience, likelihood to return, likelihood to recommend, drive that revenue number for the organization. Some of those projects were smaller in touchpoint, so things like your spa experience or going to the workout room. What are some of the small changes? We want to make sure that when you get up early at five in the morning to go get your workout in before going to your all-day meeting, that when you step on that treadmill, that treadmill actually works. So what are the processes we have in place to make sure the regular maintenance routine is there so that we have working equipment for our guests to have an excellent experience when you get up early to go get your workout in that you’re there and working? So we’d have projects around that.

B: And a lot of places don’t have that. I can vouch for that.

S: Exactly, and it’s typical. We implemented kaizen events and doing three days and promoting going to the gemba and seeing and having individuals and associates go down. Go down and test the equipment. Which ones work? And if they don’t work, why don’t they work? And then what is the process? Walk backwards and see where it’s broken. What happens if a guest picks up the phone to report that a piece of equipment doesn’t work? How is it reported through the guest system? What codes are used? Does that code trigger to engineering? And utilizing those kaizen events to enhance that guest experience, and so we had a number of kaizen events that were small, quick win events for the guest as well as for the associates because of the associates don’t like getting those calls at 5:30 in the morning and then finding an engineer that could go down and that guest is already up, showering, moving on, and going down to the– you know the morning, tried to get up this morning to get my workout in, it didn’t work, and it’s just going on for the rest of the day. That’s things that we didn’t want to have happen.

And then you figure out the guest experience, ow they’re going up to the food buffet in the morning and they’re looking it, and food waste. Food waste was another obvious process improvement that we would look at and thinking about it hitting, again, guest experience. No one wants to walk up at lunchtime and see a massive amount of ranch dressing on the table that you know no one is going to use that much ranch dressing on their salad that is the equal size bowl. But it’s how do you manage through that and balancing, with the guest experience, food waste from the kitchen. A lot of it came down to what supplies were available, what bowls were available for the number of events, and how do you manage that into the kitchen, and reducing and then getting creative on purchasing, getting creative on understanding all the touchpoints across from sales all the way to the kitchen, into purchasing, and the supplies, so on, something as simple as a salad bowl getting there. And then understanding food production and food needs and the power and understanding of a BEO, banquet event order. A lot of menu engineering, a lot of food waste tracking to see what went out, what came back, and we would do large projects on food waste.

Other food projects that we would do, even simple things of the coffee shop line. How can we expedite? When you think about it, in the morning time or that afternoon, again been sitting all day in a meeting. Some of those meetings are not as fun and friendly as you’d like them to be, so at 2 o’clock, the line gets long but you only have 15 minutes for a break. How quickly can we get that line out and our guests back in the meeting space? So we would do operational reviews there to see how quickly we could improve the flow of the coffee shop line so we don’t do sales to the coffee shop across the street sometimes in a city operation.

Those are just a few of them, and then a few that some people might be familiar with from staying in some of our hotels, one of the large ones was Make a Green Choice. If individuals have stayed in some prior Starwood Hotels, and then converted to Marriott Hotels, where we offered a voucher for $5 for if you opted out of housekeeping. That was actually a major Lean Six Sigma project that we had. It was a sustainability initiative as well as really making sure there we’re only scheduling and cleaning rooms that need to be cleaned. A lot of times, people really didn’t need their rooms cleaned or didn’t want their rooms cleaned, so it was a way to take advantage of that. The Make a Green Choice program came out of a Lean Six Sigma initiative that started, actually, at a property with some Green Belts out in Hawaii, and it grew to a global initiative, so grassroots.

B: Wow, that’s cool. By default, I think I automatically put it on my room on do not disturb and don’t have the sheets changed. That’s ridiculous. I don’t do that that often at my own house, so why would I expect cleaner sheets if I’m staying for four or five days somewhere? That was cool to have an experience one time just to get some kind of incentive, like we can give you a discount or something extra. I think it was more points was added to my frequent flyer program.

S: 500 points or 250 points, depending on which hotel level you stayed at.

B: It’s incentivizing people to do things that it actually saves money for the business too.

S: Yeah, and it was really interesting because it started at a local hotel and their incentive was one-time. And then it was a great example of when we went to pilot it and expand it to different markets, it was, okay, where’s that breakpoint? And so there were different higher level of incentives, and they would keep changing it and lowering it and see what the take rate would be at which– at one point, I think we started it at a higher level number of points and $20, and lowered it down to lower points, 1000 points, to 750 points, to 500 points, and then I think it was 20, 15. It got down to find where is that take rate and breakpoint for the guest, and it landed at 500 and $5, and it was the same as if it was 20. So again, balancing all those key stakeholders in the process, and we found our win-win opportunity.

B: That’s cool. That’s an interesting example of almost like a design of experiments and a study, which is hard to come up with examples in nonmanufacturing of DOE, so that’s cool.

S: It was a really cool project to work on.

B: Plus the environmental benefits of not having to wash as many linen and the cost reductions.

S: Yeah, and safety elements. We had less rooms being cleaned, less repetitive motion happening all across the board.

B: So then tell me how you transitioned into some of the nonprofit work you’ve been doing lately, including as a board member in some of the organizations.

S: I’d always wanted to give more back in my local area, and working in hospitality, I’d been on the road about 70% of the time, it made a little bit difficult. There were a few pockets of time where I’d be home and be able to jump in on a few projects with friends that I knew that were working in local nonprofits, and then COVID came along and I found myself home a lot more. And there were a number of nonprofits in town that were growing in need to help the community through food service programs and other needs with the growing need of what COVID was bringing to the community.

And so our fellow friend, Tracy, I reached out and she was about to jump into a project with Kitchens for Good to help with their increase in demand for food production. I eagerly joined that initiative, and through that, found a very strong connection both with my background with hospitality and what I’d done to support hotels and kitchens and work, and then just the passion that they have about transforming lives through culinary arts and finding sustainable jobs through hospitality, especially here in the San Diego community. And so that enabled to build a very strong working relationship going forward with Kitchens for Good. Have continued to work with them with process improvement initiatives as well as I did join the Board of Directors with them, and then I have also supported additional nonprofits here in San Diego. I’m on an advisory committee with the San Diego Humane Society, and have also supported Voice of San Diego, and Chefs De Cuisine, helping with them with some strategic planning and Board of Directors meetings here locally, utilizing Lean Six Sigma efforts. So feel very fortunate to have been able to give back to all those organizations here locally with Lean Six Sigma.

So with Kitchens for Good, it’s a very connected, engaged Board of Directors, which is wonderful, and having the opportunity to dive in and support the mission of transforming lives through culinary arts. There’s a few ways in which I’ve been able to help bring Lean Six Sigma tools to the table to help fulfill their mission. Some of the examples include finding opportunities to help make some small incremental changes, but then have been able to help bring some of the Lean Six Sigma tools to guide some strategic planning and support for them as a board member. Some of it is, as an example, the meal production. Going to and helping them with the line, but there’s some other ways.

Their primary program in which they fulfill the mission is through a culinary arts apprenticeship program, and they have three paths. Actually, they’re continuing to grow in the paths, but their three primary programs are culinary, hospitality, and baking. With that, I have been a guest facilitator and bringing some of the Lean Six Sigma training there, and working with the apprentices and teaching them with running little sessions on effective communication, and so utilizing some of our tools and techniques to work with them on teaching them on effective communication. And then I’ve also worked with the leadership team of Kitchens for Good on bringing tools to help them with projects that they’re already working on.

That’s one of the key things, I think, that is key to remember when working with nonprofits, that it’s not always about the large, big projects of finding to help them work on, but how can we, as Lean Six Sigma practitioners, meet them where they’re at and bring our skill sets to help enhance the work that they’re already doing. And so as an example, they were in process of upgrading a software system that they already had in place and knew that they needed some guidance on direction of what’s next for them in this software. They were starting to work on fields and what neat fields were needed, and through conversation, I realized that they weren’t internally speaking the same language about their fields. And so I just had them take a step back and say, hey, before you dive further into what’s next for your software system, let’s go through an exercise around operational definitions, and it was like operational what? And I warned them. I was like this is going to be painful. This will be out of the comfort zone, it’s not a fun exercise. I’m going to put this on the table. It’s not going to be fun, but it will be very worthwhile when it’s done.

And they agreed, it was not fun, and it was painful, but it was extremely worthwhile when it was done, and to this day, this is almost two years ago, to this day they still are like, hold on, how would you operationally define that? It’s now part of their culture. They speak to that because they realized the value in speaking that same language when they’re working through things because they recognized that the groups all may define the same word slightly differently, and understanding what that means to each other is just as important as when they’re speaking with other groups and organizations outside externally as well. So that’s just one way in which you can bring one of our tools that we utilize in our toolbox to have impact within a nonprofit without it being a major initiative, and also meeting them where they’re at and utilizing our tools to support them.

B: I think that’s a good way to think about it too because I think there’s plenty of projects already active. Oftentimes, we’re encourage them to pick something new, you don’t have a solution in mind. You’re going in so you can apply the full toolset to that, but that is a challenge and I think maybe saying what are you already doing? Can we start at the back end and say how are you going to measure success on this? Can we make sure you have a metric in place that will tell you if you’re successful, because I think that could be missing or a gap? And then that starts the introduction of why are we doing this in the first place? And maybe the next project, we can start to think about a charter and a primary metric of success and approach it differently. But you’ve already got something started, you’re already working on it. I’m not asking you to do something brand-new. Maybe we just start to help them tweak what they’re doing, and eventually, down the line, they can do a full project following the steps and the right sequence and set themselves up for the best success. But I like that approach of meeting them where they’re at.

S: Absolutely, and it is, it’s integrating one tool at a time and you do ask those questions without overwhelming them. It is like how will you know this will be successful? Or how will you know you have reached your goal? What is the north star? What does success look like for you? Asking those questions we know will give us what we need to fill in the Lean Six Sigma components of our project but without overwhelming because they know the answers. They know what it means to them, it’s just what lingo do we put in to get what we need out of it and have them achieve success out of there. But integrating even one tool at a time, it’s tenfold in impact to them than a traditional for-profit organization.

Another example, I’ve been a couple of FMEA exercises with them in modeling, and really, especially during times like COVID and volatility now of recession, no recession, what’s going to happen and thinking about those key program elements that they have right now, and just having them go through the exercise of what could happen? What do I need to do to be prepared? And thinking through that helps them be more prepared than they may not be, and just putting some structure around that thought process. They have all those ideas there. It’s just putting that structure around it formalizes it into a process, and now they’re tenfold more prepared than they may have been if we didn’t provide that exercise and that tool for them.

And you have to remember that nonprofit organizations are very resource constrained, and they are running at a thousand miles an hour, working seven days a week for the heart of the organization. And so any time that we can give them one tool at a time to help, it just helps lessen the hamster wheel for them that much more so that it’s just the impact of the organization is just greater. Even if they can take just one more breath, it helps and that’s what I’ve found. Anytime you can introduce one tool, it allows them to have one more breath towards the mission.

B: That’s been my experience too. It’s 55 projects each, and it’s just trying to keep up with keeping the organization running. They’re usually understaffed for what they’re trying to do, and yeah, I think anything that sounds too big, it’s just overwhelming right now. We’ve got to get those early wins to free up that space and time to be able to go after some bigger stuff, so I think that’s a great way to approach it.

S: I’ll give an example. I was working with them recently and we were having a conversation and I just stood up we just started applying some aid structured brainstorming within the meeting and started utilizing. And then I was like let’s multi vote it, but I was like okay, say you get $1 million on a grant. Let’s divide this up. How would you spend it? And going through it, and then I was back there a week later, and they talked about how they used that tool just in another meeting with their next team, and they carried forward and how it helped further that discussion in another way. They pick them up and they move it. If it had been a whole project, being able to replicate that wouldn’t have been as easy, but just being able to provide one simple structured way to have a conversation, they were able to replicate that in their next meeting that gave that just small little more structure for them to move the conversation forward into action. That helps. It helps them more than we realize.

B: I think that’s what a lot of these tools are geared around. It’s really to provide some structure for how they’re going about that decision-making or analysis. It’s not the entire piece of it. It’s a guide. It’s a template. It’s like we’re going to get there somehow. We can do it a very painstaking way or inefficient way or incorrect way, or we can take a little step back and get organized to say let’s follow this template that works for the situation, we can get there little faster or with a little bit agreement or have the dialogue with a discussion on things that we hadn’t considered or thought about like an FMEA. It’s not to fill out the tool correctly, it’s to drive the dialogue and the discussion that the tool creates, and so I think that can be just very helpful. If they think about it’s really just the principle that this tool drives, how can this help us move past this next phase of whatever project were on?

S: And I apply that, I take that to our board as well and in our board meetings. We recently had our board retreat and we had a breakout of brainstorming of what can we do to help further the mission of the organization. It was a multigroup brainstorming, your typical throw out some ideas, but instead of coming back and just sharing the ideas, I just threw in an extra layer to it of, as we share the ideas, you’re going to plot it on an impact effort grid. If we activated this idea, what would be the effort of the board to activate it, and what would be the impact to the organization’s north star metric? By adding that one extra layer on the traditional share what your group discussed, by plotting it as they shared what the group discussed, when that was done, it was like there’s five ideas in this upper left quadrant. So between now and our next board meeting, guess what we’re going to be working on? Those five ideas in that upper left quadrant. There’s our recap of the day.

B: And not the other ones.

S: Right, exactly. Just by adding that one tool at the end of the retreat, at the end of the brainstorming, again bringing in one tool to our board, it set our action plan until our next board meeting. It guided us, and it worked. Before the recap email went out, the recap email went out and, oh, by the way, so-and-so is already taking these three steps on action step number one. So it was already driving action, which that’s the intent, to help support the organization in moving the mission forward, and so it had its intended effect.

B: What’s the commitment around being around the board? I don’t know if you’re executive or a chairperson or what your exact role is, or board member, but could you just explain that for people that may not know or haven’t been in that kind of role before?

S: For the Kitchens for Good board, I started off as a board member and I am now a Vice Chair of the board. The commitment for Kitchens for Good, it is a three-year term with a second three-year term that you can roll into, and then you roll off after two three-year terms max, and then you can come back on after you’ve been off for a year. You can be voted back on after that. So I’m Vice Chair now for two years, and then I’ll have two more years afterwards of my term. And then our commitment on the board is we have a set number of meetings to attend, and then we agree to commitments around supporting the organization with time, talent, and treasure. We commit for that to engage with the organization at that level.

B: And so you’re meeting like once a month perhaps or once a week?

S: As a collective or board, we meet I think it’s about four times a year, and then with the retreat, and then we also join committees. Each of us are on two committees at minimum, and then I chair our audit committee that meets once a year, I’m on the operations committee, and our finance committee as well. So the committees then each have a timeframe in which they meet. Operations is more ad hoc depending on what programs are active and where the need is, and then our finance and apprenticeship committee, they meet monthly, and then we have other committees that meet periodically. Our committees are made up of board members as well as some non-board members that meet on a regular basis. It’s a fairly active board, actually. A well-functioning, active board, very committed. It’s a great board. If anyone’s interested in learning more about the board and they’re in San Diego County, please reach out.

B: Then you talked about the retreats. Anything else to add on board retreats as you’ve been asked to help with a few others? Do you want to talk through that process a little bit, of how that works, for an organization that might be interested in some help or want to try that themselves?

S: Board retreats are a great opportunity for Lean Six Sigma practitioners to get involved. What I have found is there are a few nonprofit organizations that have– board retreats, it’s very common to have them once a year for boards. Sometimes twice a year, but at least once a year, and I have had an opportunity to be an outside facilitator for those for a couple of nonprofits here in town, working with, usually, either the CEO or COO of the organization, and then the head of the board, the chair of the board, to design what the day would look like, the goal, and then facilitate the session for the day. It’s a great opportunity to get involved with the organization but then also to bring some of the strategic planning skill sets to the table to help them have a more formalized agenda and meeting and to help them achieve their goals. It’s a great opportunity to get engaged, a great opportunity to help boards to have productive meetings flow and really help to drive action to help support the mission of the organizations to set the table for them for their year, or to have a midyear retreat to see how they are doing and pulse check through the year to make sure that they are focused and driving support for the organization in the right way.

Some of them have been, hey, we’re stuck. What do we need to do? How do we get over this hump to better support the organization? Some of it is we are low on resources; we don’t have capacity to fully support the organization that we need to. How do we help prioritize our focus and really utilize the resources we have in the best way? How do we prioritize that work? So again, it’s just using those strategic planning tools that we have in our toolkit to help the organizations align and work better together to focus their needs. I find a wonderful way to support the nonprofits utilizing their skill sets, minimal time involvement, but huge impact.

B: You said there’s a planning activity that you’re doing ahead of time, and then the whole thing is just one day? What would that day look like? What are the major things you’re going through?

S: The ones that I’ve been involved with, typically, there’s been a couple of planning sessions beforehand, typically within like six weeks before the meeting timeframe, a couple of sessions just understanding the goal and the objectives of the day, and then I put a couple of here are some thoughts I have on a way to achieve your goal for the day, and which ones do you like, like a pick and mix kind of approach. And so again, because understanding one thing with boards is you have, usually, quite the mix of styles and leaders and individuals in the room, unlike for-profit businesses where you’re pretty well-known of what roles and responsibilities might be in the room. Different with boards, you usually have a different mix. You don’t have your typical here’s your financial, your operations, your HR. You usually have different community-based individuals that are supporters of the cause that will be in the room. That’s why it’s nice to do a pick and mix so you can figure out what tools will resonate best with your audience and to help drive the outcomes.

I’ll usually have a premeeting, and then put together a couple of tools and activities and messaging of a way that fits their timeline agenda. Some retreats have been four hours, some of them have been six to seven hours a day. And then I’ll have a second meeting for them to review and talk through which works for them, what do they like, not like about certain tools. Sometimes, we’ll take what has been proposed, sometimes I’ll go back to the drawing board to pick a couple that didn’t resonate at all, and then we’ll have a final planning meeting to put it all together and close out the agenda. And then the running of the day is usually me running the full facilitation of the day, depending how it is getting there, making sure the room is set and then running the full strategic board retreat, and then wrapping it up at the end of the day.

I personally have been able to do those as a donated time type event because, for me, I don’t want to take donations away from the cause. That’s just my personal preference, but that is something that you would want to make clear with your organization of what your expectations are before engaging with that so that they know what that expectation is. That would be my one advice before engaging with the board on if you are able to do that, and if not, make sure you’re just clear on what that expectation is upfront would be an advice to have from a funding standpoint. But it’s very engaging, again just knowing who that audience is in the room and what the expected outcomes are, and then work together on what tools will help you get there would be the advice for that. Very rewarding, though.

B: I think that’s, if we went back to too much stuff going on, overwhelmed, and ability to step back and say this is what we can actually do. Let’s focus on fewer things and do them well than trying to do everything. Because I know that the drive is there because of the mission and the organization of what they’re trying to do, and it’s hard to say we can’t serve that audience or we can’t help that group or we can’t do it the way we want to. It’s hard to say no to that, but also, there’s other groups that would benefit more if you could focus on that. That’s a tough decision they have to make sometimes and it’s hard to say we’ll just work harder. We’ll just burn ourselves out. That tends to be the answer, and that’s not good for the people doing the work either.

S: Right, and it’s interesting because if you do know a nonprofit that you think you want to get involved with, a lot of times, they don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t know what’s out there and they don’t know what resources are available to support. And so again, in that spirit of meeting them where they’re at, I would encourage if individuals think there may be an opportunity to support a nonprofit that you have a passion for or want to help, if you already volunteer with them in different ways or you support them financially, set up a meeting with a connection at the organization, whether it’s the CEO or COO, and schedule a get to know them session and learn if there’s an opportunity where you have an expertise that may benefit them now. They may be working on a project, again, that they need support. They could be online right now learning how to do something and spending hours of time to learn how to do that, and you could already have a background and expertise in it that could save them hours of time to get something accomplished where those hours could be redirected to where they’re already an expert in, on mission-driven work. But they don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t know those resources are necessarily out there, so don’t be afraid to pick up the phone. If it’s not a fit, it’s not a fit. They’ll tell you. But if you can, they will eagerly say yes. It’s an either/or type thing. They are always looking for individuals to support them, again, in time, talent, and treasure, and the talent one sometimes are gifts that are unknown to them until they appear at their doorstep. Don’t be afraid to find that connection and you never know. I got lucky with Tracy, reaching out to Tracy who I knew was connected with the nonprofit community here in town, and I just asked the question and here I am, three years later, continuing to give back to the same organization. So you never know until you ask. It can be a very powerful question.

B: And they’re well connected with each other in a lot of cases, so if that’s not a good opportunity, they might say this other group we know could actually use your skills too.

S: To that point, I got involved with one of the other organizations in town because a member of our board is the COO of that nonprofit and very well connected. That’s how we all got connected around each other.

B: I think that’s a great way to end. A great suggestion for everyone just to reach out and have that discussion, see what happens. Just offer up what you can do, your skill set, your background, your interests, and see if there’s a fit. Maybe not right now, maybe later. Maybe it’s a perfect fit, maybe they don’t understand yet. It starts the dialogue, what is this process improvement stuff you’re doing? What’s this Lean Six Sigma? Tell me more, and that could lead to you getting a chance to educate or teach or coach people through that process.

S: Absolutely.

B: Is there anything else you wanted to add?

S: No. Thank you for the opportunity to share the information on how to support nonprofits. It all helps causes in multiple ways. There are so many ways we can help them, so I appreciate the way the support.

B: Thank you so much.

S: Thank you.

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