If you’ve worked in the nonprofit sector, even for just a few years, then you have probably experienced burnout at least once. Some people are able to push through it, but many eventually decide to leave their jobs, their fields, or nonprofit work altogether. Therefore, it is imperative for everyone, from team members to team leaders, to take preventative measures.

Today Diane Leonard joins us to share how her teams identify and maintain a sustainable work pace via the Scrum framework. Listen in as Diane explains the steps she takes to keep her team productive and happy.

Listen to the Episode Here!

Links

Agile into Nonprofits Website

Super Sticky Post-it Notes:  https://www.amazon.com/Sticky-Sticking-Collection-Sheets-622-8SSMIA/dp/B01D8F5AWG

Miro Website

Timestamps

(2:17) Overview of the Scrum framework

(4:06) The layout of a Sprint

(6:34) The layout of a Scrum

(7:56) Common impediments

(10:03) Closing with a Retrospective

(12:58) Burnout causes

(23:29) Diane’s annual organizational system

 

Transcript

Dolph Goldenburg (00:00):

Welcome to the Successful Nonprofits® Podcast. I’m your host, Dolph Goldenburg. Whether you have just started your career transition into the nonprofit sector or you have been a dedicated nonprofit professional for decades, you know that our work is quite unique. We are surrounded by passionate team members and get to have an incredible impact on the lives of people we serve and the communities that we serve. But we also know that that privilege comes at a cost. Our work can be emotionally taxing, require highly technical processes, or, even worse, those really bureaucratic processes that are forced on us. And then, of course, paired with intense environments and the weight of knowing what’s at stake, not just our jobs, but the mission of our organizations. And day after day, these factors have a deep impact, making organizations susceptible to high turnover rates and individuals at risk for, wait for it. Wait for it. That’s right. Burnout.

Dolph Goldenburg (01:02):

That is why we invited our guest today: grant professional, speaker, and trainer, Diane Leonard. Diane has a wealth of experience. She opened her own consulting and grant writing practice more than 14 years ago. And during that time she has personally helped nonprofits secure $61.6 million and she has trained nearly 18,000 professionals. Her many years of experience and passion for helping nonprofits build their own capacity has brought her also to the point where she has created Agile in Nonprofits, with the mission of assisting nonprofits build their capacity and increase their organizational efficiency. To add to her very well rounded professional life, I gotta also share with you that she’s a graduate of the Jefferson Leadership Institute and serves as a board member for the Upper Saint Lawrence Riverkeeper. Hey, Diane, welcome to the podcast.

Diane Leonard (02:02):

Thank you so much for having me. Happy to be here.

Dolph Goldenburg (02:05):

I say this all the time on the podcast, but I know very little about sports. I believe you affiliate your work in some way with Scrum, but I don’t even know what Scrum is. So can you fill me in?

Diane Leonard (02:17):

Absolutely. Because you say “scrum” and maybe you know enough about sports that maybe rugby’s what came to mind. Or maybe you thought, “It’s nonprofits, so what acronym did we just say?” Scrum is a specific framework in the world of Agile. So, Scrum, co-created by Dr. Jeff Sutherland, is a way that teams approach doing their work. So it’s a framework. It looks different in every organization by just a little bit based on their organizational culture and their team, whether it’s software, nonprofits, for-profits. It’s just a framework for the way that we approach doing work.

Dolph Goldenburg (02:56):

Can you say a little bit more about that framework?

Diane Leonard (02:59):

So, the Scrum framework is basically summed up by what we call the 3-5-3. There’s not a lot of rules that you need to follow. That’s why it’s a framework. There’s a lot of patterns and other things that happen. And so what it’s looking at is the team and those that lead the team. So, you’ve got a Product Owner, really the person setting priorities. You’ve got a Scrum Master, someone trying to help remove impediments. And then you have team members, those that are helping to do the work. Within that, there’s five ceremonies, five events, that happen within each section of the calendar that you’re looking at. We call them Sprints. For example, our writing team does two weeks Sprints and our marketing and training team does one week Sprints. So it’s a period of time that you’re focused on your work. These five events happen in each of those Sprints and then produce some artifacts. Artifacts are things like the product backlog; I call them “the list of all the things.” So it’s a framework that helps you to look at, regardless of your industry, how you’re going to approach work as a team.

Dolph Goldenburg (04:02):

Before we go any further, what does a two week Sprint look like for your team?

Diane Leonard (04:06):

Sure. A two week Sprint always looks the same in the sense that we start with a team planning call where we’re talking about the work that’s coming up. If it’s our writing team, then they’re always thinking about grant deadlines and what’s coming up. Then we get together for 15 minutes for a daily Scrum to talk about the work that’s happening, what we’re doing each day towards that goal, and, in particular, if there’s any impediments. Teams always have some sort of impediment and we try to help solve them for each other. So the client work, that deadline work, that’s different each and every time. Is it foundation that week, is it federal? Doesn’t matter. The structure, and the framework, in how we interact as a team is what always stays the same.

Dolph Goldenburg (05:01):

Got it. And so now I think I understand the Scrum. So, the Scrum is like a huddle.

Diane Leonard (05:05):

Yes. That’s a great way. I didn’t know anything about rugby. When I went to read the Scrum book and went to my first class, I was like, “Nope, nothing about rugby.” But there’s a great video that they often play at the beginning of their courses to help get you excited. If you think about what it looks like when there’s a sports team and they’re all huddled in the starting formation, they’re all pumped up. Can you imagine if your nonprofit team, whether it was a grant team or development team, right at the beginning of their two week section of work, is so excited that everyone is linking arms and chanting together and getting ready to do the work? Our teams aren’t quite there yet, but man, the visual makes me laugh and get excited every time.

Dolph Goldenburg (05:44):

So, can we unpack the Scrum that you and your team have?

Diane Leonard (05:48):

Absolutely.

Dolph Goldenburg (05:48):

Great. So you said it’s 15 minutes long. Are you doing it in person or are a lot of your team members remote so you’re doing it virtually?

Diane Leonard (05:55):

We have two different Scrum teams that we run and they operate differently. The marketing and training team are in person so our daily Scrum is together. Our writing team is distributed, we’re across multiple time zones, so that one’s happening virtually. And then because there’s overlap between the two teams in terms of the work that’s linked, we do a Scrum of Scrums and that one, because we’re distributed then across the teams, is another virtual time for them to check in.

Dolph Goldenburg (06:22):

So, I love it because now we can talk about what a virtual Scrum looks like and what an in person Scrum looks like because you got one of each. So you’re in person Scrum. How do you structure those 15 minutes? What does it look like?

Diane Leonard (06:34):

We’re a caffeinated team; our marketing and training team really loves our coffee. So we usually have a coffee cup in hand and usually we’re standing, because the intent is for it to be quick and not drawn out. Not all team members are always able to stand at the meeting; that’s okay. But in our case, we usually are, and we talk through three main questions: What did we do yesterday towards our Sprint goal? What are we planning on doing today towards our Sprint goal? and What impediments do we have? It is anything but a status check-in. It’s not meant to be a list of here’s all the things I did yesterday or here’s all the things I’m going to do today. We’re talking pretty high level about how we’re moving towards our goal. So that’s how we do it in person.

Dolph Goldenburg (07:16):

Got it. And so when people are doing those status check ins, do they do all three at the same time? So if it’s my turn, do I share what I did yesterday toward the goal, what I’m going to do today, and my impediment? Or does everyone first say what they did yesterday and kind of go around the room?

Diane Leonard (07:31):

So in our setting, we tend to do more round robin. But I’ve seen teams do it a variety of ways. I think the daily Scrum, as long as it is not focused on the list of what people are doing but rather is a discussion of the big goal and how you’re moving towards it, then you can be pretty flexible. Again, it’s a framework, right? It’s not a mandate for all the details.

Dolph Goldenburg (07:51):

Can you give an example of a type of impediment someone might say they’re having?

Diane Leonard (07:56):

Sure. So we’ll stick with the training team. So we’re putting together a really big free online summit with one of our partners. And they also rely on an Agile Framework, so we speak the same sort of language, right? So we agreed on some timelines for what would happen with sales pages and when they would go up. We’re coordinating speakers and their bios, and one of the speakers didn’t give us his bio or his title. And so even though both partners were totally on the same page, without one of the eight bios and titles, we can’t release the sales page, we can’t release the Save the Date, and everything is on hold. So, because that came up at the daily Scrum, we could determine who on the team can help fix that. And actually, in that case, it was me. I said, “I know that person really well, let me drop him a quick note. And if nothing else, I’ve got his cell phone number, I’ll just give him a quick text.” So you quickly come up with a solution, you try to implement it, you see if it works, and hopefully that impediment is a thing of the past.

Dolph Goldenburg (09:02):

I will say there’s nothing like the chief executive reaching out and there’s also nothing like the deadline of something going into print. Like, “Okay, we need your title by today or it’s not gonna end up in the Save the Dates.”

Diane Leonard (09:15):

Yeah, absolutely. And on the writing side, we tend to find that often the impediments are clients not sending in information that is needed for a grant application because they don’t understand how critical that one piece of information is. Sometimes it takes somebody else on the team, not their lead writer, saying that information is so important in order for you to get the money. We get that it seems like one detail, right? Like who’s the letter of support from? How many people are you going to serve? But you’re holding us up. So sometimes playing the power differential in the team helps remove that impediment for sure.

Dolph Goldenburg (09:52):

Right. At the end of that Scrum, I don’t know why, but I’m picturing everybody’s hands in the center of a circle and saying something like, “Go marketing!” or whatever. What happens at the end of the Scrum? How do you end it?

Diane Leonard (10:03):

Sure. So, when the Sprint is up, the way that you’re supposed to close it is with a retrospective. So what went well, what didn’t go well, and what’s one thing that we could do better as a team to make us happier or faster? So you try to come up with a Kaizen that the team can implement. Really, it’s the top priority thing you’re actually going to do over any other work in the upcoming Sprint. So sometimes there’s a long list of things that went well, right? Other times you’re like, “Oh gosh, this is a longer list of things that didn’t go well. We didn’t see that coming.” It’s different every single time. But we give a time box of up to 45 minutes for the team to discuss those three things: what went well, what didn’t go well, and what could we do that would make us faster and/or happier.

Dolph Goldenburg (10:49):

Got it. And so when you’re doing a two week Sprint, have you ever reached a point where you get to the end of the two weeks but you’ve not reached the finish line?

Diane Leonard (10:58):

Despite our best efforts, it has happened because when we’re long planning on something like a forecasted grant opportunity, you think something is going to happen that doesn’t. You think grants.gov is supposed to release something by a certain day; the grant world’s always a moving target. And so as a result you’re like, “Oh, well we thought this would happen, but the externality got in our way.” And so all of a sudden it was out of our control. So we shift our planning. You can shift the scope during the planning. The Product Owner, the one giving the priority to the team, can do some shifting during a Sprint and maybe trade something out. You realize, “Jeez, that didn’t open the way we thought it would.” So you can get started on Draft B instead of Draft A and trade things in and out that are of the same size.

Dolph Goldenburg (11:44):

So it’s a two week Sprint, what happens after that? Do people get a break? What happens afterward?

Diane Leonard (11:51):

I’m a runner in my spare time. It feels like when you sprint, whether it’s around the track or on the treadmill, you want to walk. Or you get to the top of the hill and you’re like, “Okay, time to slow down, or time to grab a glass of water.” The retrospective gives that time for everyone to pause and reflect and sort of catch their breath before you start again. Part of why it’s so important that you think in these smaller chunks is to keep a sustainable pace for a team. Because if we sprinted, physically sprinted, all the time and never paused for water or for rest, well I guess we’d be in the Olympics, or winning world records for marathons. But we need to pause. We need to catch our breath. So that retrospective and then the planning meeting, that’s the next step. Those are meant to be a natural pause to catch your breath, assess the speed, the sustainability, the velocity of the work that you’re doing.

Dolph Goldenburg (12:51):

And to your point, I don’t know that you’d be in the Olympics, though. I think you’d be in the hospital, which is that burnout question we’re going to be talking about as well.

Diane Leonard (12:58):

Yeah, exactly. I mean, nonprofit burnout, right? One of my favorite books is The Happy, Healthy Nonprofit, which I guess is a weird favorite. But when Beth and Aliza wrote that book, I think the reason that it’s taken off and been so well received in the field is because there’s so many people that are so passionate about their work, but that are feeling like they’re constantly sprinting and they’re not getting a break. They’re not getting a chance to breathe. And to your point, their health could be at risk.

Dolph Goldenburg (13:28):

After that Sprint, it sounds like you’ve got a few days that are not as task oriented.

Diane Leonard (13:35):

Well, it’s not actually about having a few days off. It’s a short breather. It might be that, for example, your Sprint starts on Mondays, so it’s Fridays when you’re doing the retrospective so you happen to have the weekend. But really in terms of business days, you’re not taking days off. It might be just a few hours of planning time in terms of business days, they roll one right next to the other.

Dolph Goldenburg (13:58):

So let’s transition over and chat a little bit about burnout because, like you, I think that burnout is probably a chronic syndrome in the nonprofit sector. And I think many of us who work in the sector probably have experienced burnout more than once.

Diane Leonard (14:13):

Unfortunately, I agree. I think it’s a huge concern. I think that when we look at the work that nonprofit professionals are doing, there’s some passion usually underlying why they get into the work. I mean, for-profit folks can be passionate about their work. Sure. Designing the car or the rocket ship or creating a great meal and restaurant experience, whatever it is, fill in the blank. But when you’re dealing with people in the social services sector, and I’m generalizing in a huge way, there’s usually a different motivation behind it because the pay often isn’t the same. So there’s some intrinsic motivator for why it is that they’re involved in nonprofit work.

Dolph Goldenburg (14:53):

Right. So what are some things that nonprofit organizations, managers, executive directors, or boards can be doing to help people meet that intrinsic need without burning out?

Diane Leonard (15:06):

Sure. And I think this is part of why we started to look at Scrum as a framework for our teams, because, as writers, just like your work, we say we’re for-profit but with a nonprofit heart. So we’re crossing the lines, we’re constantly in the nonprofit space, even though physically my office walls are for-profit. So we’re in that space. We see how deadline driven our work is and the stress that puts on the nonprofit staff, whether it be one main staff person or even a team. How do they pause? They feel like they constantly have a fire hose of deadlines open on them and so, #AllTheThingsStressesThemOut, and rightfully so.

Diane Leonard (15:53):

So what’s the sustainable pace? One of the biggest questions I get asked when I’m teaching newer grant professionals is: How many grants should I be able to write in a year? That’s a loaded question, right? It depends on so many things. But there’s pressure from the board, from those they serve. They always need more money and that will never change. They always want more money because, even if they’re doing great financially, they have more new ideas and therefore they need more resources. So the drive to find more money is then creating pressure, and therefore burnout, because they’re not structuring their work in a way that’s sustainable. It’s going to lead to burnout which means that they are going to change jobs or change fields. There’s a lot of different ways that it plays out in our sector.

Dolph Goldenburg (16:36):

Right, right. It’s not uncommon for boards or for executive directors to expect three, four, or five grant proposals a month. I think oftentimes the unintentional consequence of that is that they essentially get boilerplate proposals and they get, frankly, proposals that are not that great. Those grant writers also will often draft proposals to really small foundations and funders for $1,000 for $2,000, and you’ve got to get a lot of $2,000 grants to make $1 million.

Diane Leonard (17:13):

The math says yes.

Dolph Goldenburg (17:16):

Oh my gosh, hold on, hold on. I want that as a bumper sticker: “The math says yes.” Oh my gosh, I love that. But, but you get my point. When there are these unreasonable expectations, at some point grant writers are going figure they’ve written to all the probable funders and now there’s other follow up work or things they need to be doing. But they’re expected to churn out proposals so they see if JC Penny has a philanthropic fund they can apply to.

Diane Leonard (17:38):

Yeah, there’s a lot of different ways to work the metrics. If we’re thinking about our strategic plan or vision that is setting forward the work for the nonprofit, how do you find the resources? Talking about small grants, oh, we need a whole different podcast conversation for that. I started as a grant maker. Sometimes there’s a reason that you want to give that small grant, and it can make a difference. But when you think about the work and the money it takes to write and implement it, you’ve spent more than that before you even get it in the mail or put it in the online portal.

Dolph Goldenburg (18:15):

And also, I have to say from your perspective as a grant maker, and this is not true for really small family foundations that might only be giving $50,000 or $100,00 dollars a year, but if as an organization you’re giving away tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars a year, you’re not going to have the human capacity and bandwidth to do that in $5,000 and $10,000 grants. You’re just not.

Diane Leonard (18:34):

Yeah. It’s on both sides that it’s just not sustainable. So if we think about the burnout and that idea that you’re trying to constantly write more so that you can help meet the board and the management team’s goals and metrics, what happens? Heroics. Heroics like “I stayed up and I wrote until 11:59, got it in, and everything was great.” Occasionally really weird things happen and those types of heroics might be necessary to make it through grants.gov; I admit it could happen. But 99% of the time there is no reason we should hear stories like that in the field. But they’re what we hear at Grant Professionals Association conferences all the time and it just, it makes my professional heart really sad, because we’re going to lose those writers and their colleagues who had to help at those weird hours or who had to work all weekend on a grant proposal. It’s not okay and it’s not sustainable. Our industry can’t hold that methodology. It can’t hold that idea of heroics as the way that we survive.

Dolph Goldenburg (19:40):

It’s interesting that you say that, Diane. My first job out of college, I was part-time doing direct service and then the other 20 hours a week I was doing grant writing for the same organization. And I think that’s what a lot of organizations do; they take a really junior staff member and say, “Yeah, maybe you can write proposals, give it a shot.” Frankly, it was a great opportunity for me. But it was also remarkably difficult. I actually remember, in that first year, having to pull two or three all-nighters. Finally I went to my boss, who was the development director, and I told her, “In college, I never pulled a single all-nighter. In fact, normally my papers were done a day and a half before they were due because I never wanted to pull an all-nighter. Can we talk about this?” She was fantastic in mentoring me and coaching me and helping me understand how I could better prioritize so that I did not find myself in a place where I’d pull all-nighters.

Diane Leonard (20:32):

I always say the same thing: I physically couldn’t pull all-nighters in college. As a mom, I’ve gotten close a few times with babies and sicknesses, but then I’m like a zombie the next day and I shouldn’t be allowed near a computer to type anything. To have you go as a young staff person, talk to your boss like that, and get that type of reaction; I would call your mentor an Agile Leader. I don’t think that many nonprofit professionals feel comfortable that that would be the reaction they’d get if they said, “This is exceeding my capacity. Here’s the velocity we have happening, but its beyond my capacity. I need help. It’s not sustainable.” That’s such a great story, though, to show it can happen in our field, and it does often. It just sometimes gets buried and there’s fear. People don’t know if they have an Agile Leader or not.

Dolph Goldenburg (21:24):

And I’ll share with you: I really lucked out in that job in that the development director I was reporting to for my grant writing was a late term professional. So she had been doing fundraising for 30 or 35 years. She had another five or 10 years left in her career and she really just kind of brought this gravitas and this wisdom saying, “Oh yeah, if you’re going to be doing this for the next several decades, you can’t wear yourself out now.”

Diane Leonard (21:49):

It’s so true. I actually have three colleagues of mine in the Grant Professionals Association. They just wrapped up a survey about burnout and are going to do a big GPA Journal piece just on grant professionals. Here we are, in 2020, and it feels like we should have figured this out by now. Burnout is not new. But it’s something that still needs more attention, I think, not just our field as grant pros, but all nonprofit professionals.

Dolph Goldenburg (22:19):

I want to get those colleagues on the podcast when that piece is ready to go to press. So please, please link me up with them. We need to get them on the podcast.

Diane Leonard (22:27):

You betcha.

Dolph Goldenburg (22:28):

Well, Diane, we’re rapidly starting to run out of time. I want to make sure that I leave time for the off the map question and one of the reasons why I’m wrapping up a little bit earlier to ask you the off the map questions is that it’s actually not that far off of the map. So I had thought about asking you an off the map question about the Cornell Formula Race Car Team. And then I also thought about asking you an off the map question about boating safety training with the Coast Guard, the United States Coast Guard. And then we got on Skype and I’m able to see you and you’re able to see me, and behind you there is a whiteboard and on that whiteboard is taped 12 calendar months. I see pink stickies and yellow stickies and it looks like bluish or greenish Post-it Notes. And then I see some things have been written and some things are highlighted. So I am fascinated by what’s clearly an annual organizational system right behind you. I need you to tell me about it.

Diane Leonard (23:29):

I need to be careful with what’s my backdrop for Skype! All in trying to keep light out from the screen! So what you see behind me is our content planning calendar that drives our marketing and training team. Because our entire team is co-located, we’re all about making work visible. So this rolls around and it’s got 12 months literally taped to it with painter’s tape. Every training, every podcast, I’ve got a keynote next week for a United Way; everything goes on it. That’s big stuff, like all those high level things, so we can see and plan. Our marketing and training team works in one week Sprints.

Diane Leonard (24:20):

So when we’re getting ready for that backlog refinement session, our planning for the next week, we can look not just what’s happening this week, but we look further out and see, “Jeez, we’ve got this two day course coming up in three weeks. So we need to make sure that that whole deck has been reviewed, approved, and is at the printer on time so that it gets delivered on time.” We have a similar version, but it’s electronic for the grant team. Instead of big trainings and speeches, we’re talking about the big grant applications. By having it visible, we’re all able to see what’s happening, to think about our role, to come prepared. Yes. I love Post-its. Honestly, I should be sponsored as a business by 3M, in case they’re listening. I mean I could use some college money for the kids; that could be helpful. I do recommend super sticky notes or they will fall off your whiteboard and onto the floor. And if you have an office puppy, it would be treacherous.

Dolph Goldenburg (25:21):

I want to ask you questions about the colors on those sticky notes, but before I do, what are super sticky notes? I’ve not heard of these.

Diane Leonard (25:30):

They’re sticky notes. They’re still the 3M normal Post-its. But if you flip them over they say “super sticky” and it means there’s some sort of extra adhesive. I don’t know the engineering behind it, but they’ve got some extra oomph and they will stay for long periods of time instead of an hour or two. They’ll stay up for weeks and they don’t go anywhere.

Dolph Goldenburg (25:51):

Nice. Now I’ve got to ask you, is there a color coding? I see some things are highlighted in yellow. It looks like pink Post-it Notes and yellow Post-it Notes and I can’t tell if that’s blue highlighting or blue Post-it Notes. Is this color coded? How have you organized it?

Diane Leonard (26:05):

It is color coded and the color coding across the teams actually isn’t the same. So they don’t have to be the same; the team operates independently even if they share knowledge. So you’re looking at the marketing and training team; pink and blue are the two primary colors. Pink is actual events, whether it’s a webinar or in person training. Blue is for things relating to Agile and nonprofit, like licensed Scrum master courses and our quarterly free book club. The green that you see on there is actually team members’ birthdays; those are really important and we don’t want to forget them The other shade of green is special days like National Writer’s Day, International Grant Professionals Day, and things that are related to the field that we want to help people celebrate in a fun way. But the writing team’s colors are based on their versions. So version one, two, three, and four of the drafts are different colors.

Dolph Goldenburg (27:05):

Man, I love that. I am hoping that you might be willing to take a picture of that whiteboard with all the calendars on it. You know, obviously zoom out far enough that you’re not giving away any trade secrets. Seriously, that is such a great system. I am a paper kind of a person and that is such a great organizational system. I love it.

Diane Leonard (27:21):

It’s going old school. If you haven’t ever heard of the Miro app, M-I-R-O. It’s a free, virtual whiteboard. You can take a picture of your physical stickies off the whiteboard, it will translate your handwriting into text that other people can read, it’s online, it’s free, and it’s game changer. I know, I can see how excited you are. My favorite app. Maybe Miro will want to sponsor me, too. Between 3M and Miro we’re going to get nonprofit funding for everybody.

Dolph Goldenburg (27:51):

So we will post links to two additional things on the show notes. I will find those super sticky notes and we will post to those and we also are going to post MIRO. And I’m going to have to check MIRO out myself.

Diane Leonard (28:03):

It’s so fun. I’m such a tool dork. I love it. But when you’re thinking about how to make work visible and easy and fun whenever possible, right? I’m all in.

Dolph Goldenburg (28:12):

So unfortunately, Diane, we’re not going to have time to talk about your formula race car experience or, for that matter, your Coast Guard boat training experience. So listeners, if you want to hear about either of those two things, you will undoubtedly need to register for one of Diane’s book clubs or go to one of her trainings or make sure you go to a conference where she’s a keynote, and then you’d be able to learn about those things and you are going to have just a great conversation with Diane when you do that. Hey, Diane, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. You have just provided some incredible information for our listeners about ways that they can use Scrums and Sprints to keep their team members from burning out and to really keep their team members’ energy high. So listeners, if you think that Diane can help you or your organization in boosting the capacity or securing that game changing grant, you can find her at dhleonardconsulting.com. From there you can get the Agile Leadership Training. You can find out about grant services. There’s a great blog, templates, and other free resources and webinars that you’ve got to make sure you check out. Hey, Diane, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Diane Leonard (29:36):

Thank you so much for having me. This was a fantastic conversation. We’re gonna have to pick it up over a cup of coffee sometime.

Dolph Goldenburg (29:41):

Absolutely agreed. Now listeners, there is no need at all for you to be worried. If, for example, you’re standing in a subway car and in one hand you’ve got your phone and in the other hand you’re hanging onto a pole so you don’t fall down as the car lurches from stop to stop. So if you were not able to write down Diane’s information, don’t worry about it. We got it for you at successfulnonprofits.com. And also while you are on our website, please feel free to make sure you hit that subscribe button and then rate and review us on your podcast streamer of choice. And I always say this, but I love listeners that reach out. I love answering questions. I respond to every email that I get. So please, do not be shy. Reach out to me on email or on LinkedIn. That, Dear Listeners, is our show for this week. I hope you have gained some insight to help your nonprofit thrive in a competitive environment.

Dolph Goldenburg (30:42):

I am not an accountant or attorney and neither I nor the Goldenburg Group provide tax, legal, or accounting advice. This material has been provided for informational purposes only, is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for tax, legal, or accounting advice. Always consult a qualified licensed professional about such matters.