If you are experiencing burnout or symptoms of burnout, you are not alone. And you will make it through your burnout and come out stronger on the other side. We know this because we’ve experienced burnout, too.
On this episode, Bethany Planton and Trish Bachman join us to share their own stories. Listen in for a glimpse at life after burnout and inspiring ideas to help you avoid having your own burnout story.
Listen to the Episode Here!
Links
bmpconsulting: Website
The Write Stuff Delaware: Website
Grant Professionals Association: Website
Grant Professionals Foundation: Website
Podcast Episode152: Using Scrum to Avoid Burnout
Timestamps
(04:13) Bethany & Trish’s burnout stories
(13:51) Life after burnout
(17:33) Tips for avoiding burnout
Transcript
Dolph Goldenburg (0s):
Welcome to the Successful Nonprofits® Podcast. I’m your host, Dolph Goldenburg. Today, we are going to be speaking with Bethany Planton and Trish Bachman about recognizing and addressing burnout. This is a great opportunity for me to remind everybody that stressed out leads to burnout. 2021 is likely going to be a much more difficult year for most nonprofits than 2020. When we look at recessions in the first year, the government jumps in with some stimulus and foundations up their giving. In year two, the government pulls back on stimulus and foundations go back to what is now normal giving for them.
Dolph Goldenburg (57s):
Some donors have been hard hit and so they actually lose individual contributions as well. As I look out into the next year, I think it is going to be a much more difficult year. That’s why we are going to be offering a “coaching for tough times” group. It’s group coaching to make it affordable for every nonprofit. If you go to successfulnonprofits.com, you can find out more about our curriculum. It is going to start in January and help you manage what are likely going to be some very difficult times in 2021.
Dolph Goldenburg (1m 38s):
Now, let’s move on and talk about burnout. You have all heard me share my own burnout story on this podcast so I’m not going to do it again. If you’re a first time listener, let me just share with you. About seven years ago, I took the metaphorical plane that was my career, crashed it into a snowy mountain, stumbled out of the plane, bruised and bloody, and had to figure out how to piece everything back together again. I’ve experienced burnout and almost everyone has experienced burnout. If you’ve not yet, I’d be willing to bet at some point in your career, you’re going to. The reason I can safely make that bet is because burnout is endemic at all levels in the nonprofit sector.
Dolph Goldenburg (2m 21s):
Whether you’re the executive director, the development director, a case manager or the receptionist, it is almost guaranteed that at some point in your career, you are going to burn out. This is true as well for our guests, Bethany Planton and Trish Bachman. They have both experienced burnout and they have both successfully rebuilt their careers and their lives. That’s why we’re having them on today. We all need to understand what burnout looks like, but also understand that there is life after burnout. In fact, life after burnout can be better than life before burnout ever was.
Dolph Goldenburg (3m 2s):
Bethany is the founder of BMT consulting – a grant writing consulting practice. She helps organizations develop grant calendars, do their grant writing, and do their grant management. Trish Bachman is in a similar line of work and started The Write Stuff Delaware. Both are grant professional certified, and both have agreed to come on to share their stories of burnout with you, as well as help you understand what you can do to avoid burnout.
Dolph Goldenburg (3m 44s):
Bethany and Trish, welcome to the podcast.
Bethany and Trish (3m 47s):
Thank you so much for having us.
Dolph Goldenburg (3m 50s):
As I mentioned in the intro, I have shared my burnout story multiple times and one of the things that I know about the nonprofit sector is that we love to tell war stories. And even more than that, we all love hearing the stories of other people. So which of you wants to go first?
Bethany (4m 13s):
I can go first. I think we like to hear other people’s stories because it helps us know we’re not alone when we experience burnout. My story early in my career. A job opened up at a community college. They wanted a grant writer for 20 hours a week, which also meant no benefits. But at the time I had other responsibilities, so I didn’t want to be working full time. Being a newer grant writer, it quickly became apparent that they needed way more than 20 hours a week to make any traction with grants. So during my first year, they were making plans to make it a full-time position.
Bethany (4m 58s):
They were going to offer summers off, which sounded awesome to me, and it would offer a few benefits. I went through the whole interview process to make it full-time, including having to wait for an hour for the president to interview me after I’d been through other interviews. That should have been red flag number 10. After we’d gone through the whole interview process, they decided to continue to make it part-time. So there I am. 20 hours. New president has come in. I don’t know the strategic plans. I don’t know where we want to go with our grants. He’s brought in a consulting firm that’s supposed to help us, but there’s not a good balance of who is supposed to be doing what and how I’m supposed to help them.
Bethany (5m 44s):
We eventually make it to 30 hours, but still no benefits. After a couple of years that starts to wear on you. So, I made the decision that I couldn’t stay because I felt like I didn’t want to come into work. I’d come back from a vacation or a three-day weekend and be like, “Who wants to do this? This is awful.” Then they decided to make the position full-time, but at that point I was done. I said, “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t work under this kind of leadership.”
Dolph Goldenburg (6m 22s):
Bethany, I’d like for us to unpack this just a little bit. You had mentioned the interview process, waiting an hour to speak with the president was red flag number 10. Whether you’re looking for work or you’re the employer and are looking to hire someone, I always say this: you can’t fix fit. So what were some of the red flags that, had you seen, you would not have ended up in a bad way?
Bethany Planton (6m 47s):
The college was transitioning from a longtime president who’d been there over 10 years. He was retiring and the assistant president was retiring at the same time. The retiring president had kind of cleaned up shop, moved people around, and had people in different positions. The grant writer that had been working under him also retired. That probably was red flag number one – all these transitions. And get the new president set before hiring somebody to come in and do something as strategic as grant writing for a community college.
Dolph Goldenburg (7m 36s):
Got it. So it really just sounds like one of the largest red flags is there were just too many transitions in your organization. Were there any other red flags that you wish you would have paid attention to?
Bethany Planton (7m 48s):
The leadership did not understand grants and did not understand what I needed in doing grants. They didn’t understand what information I needed, what I needed access to, whether I needed to be part of meetings or what information needed to be sent back down to me. They just did not understand.
Dolph Goldenburg (8m 10s):
Let’s fast forward now. You took the job anyway and you’re now at the point where they’re offering you full-time and you’re like, “I’m done.” What was going on? What did that feel like?
Bethany Planton (8m 22s):
Well, they hadn’t even offered me the full-time. They just said, “let’s do the interview process again for full-time.” Even though I had been in the position, they wanted to do the interview process. I had already made the decision in my mind – I can’t keep doing this. I didn’t even mention I had moved offices four or five different times in two years. One of those was out where a receptionist would sit and greet people. Well, that’s not conducive to writing or having confidential meetings. So when they talked about going full-time, in my head, I was like, “Nope, I cannot go through this process again and be disappointed and frustrated if they decide not to make it full-time. I’m not trusting what they say.”
Dolph Goldenburg (9m 14s):
And how did this burnout impact the rest of your life?
Bethany Planton (9m 18s):
I was tired. I was exhausted. I didn’t want to do a lot of things, even fun things, things that I would normally want to do. I probably complained to everybody. I probably was not always a very pleasant person to be around because that was just weighing so heavily on me. It felt like there was nothing else good or fun to do, because work was just so heavy.
Dolph Goldenburg (9m 40s):
I’ll share with you, Bethany, that reflects my burnout experience as well. I literally became a toxic person. I can’t imagine anybody wanting to spend time with me, whether they were paid to work with me or they were my family, wanting to spend time with me when I reached that point of just complete and utter toxicity. Bethany, thank you so much for sharing your war story. I know we’re going to talk about next steps, but we also have to hear from Trish. Trish, what is your burnout story?
Trish Bachman (10m 13s):
I started in grassroots advocacy. I was a survivor of a crime. And when that happens to a person, it helps to assign meaning to it as a way of processing it. I became part of a national organization that didn’t have a local chapter. So I became one of the founding members of the local chapter. I was one of its first advocates, staff for managing volunteers, and eventually I became the first affiliate executive director. So a lot happened to me in a very short period of time. And the organization and advocacy and victim services are very emotional and passion driven.
Trish Bachman (10m 59s):
So the people who I was working with, who were also volunteers or staff, also had the same background, the same victimization. When you’re dealing with people who have different levels of victimization, different levels of healing, it can become very draining. So I was in a position where I took this leadership role. Part of being a leader of a new organization is coming to the table to be seen, to network with the right people, to shake all the right hands, to sit in the right rooms. So that became my focus. And I was driven to make the nonprofit vital, important, and strategic in working to solve the challenges.
Trish Bachman (11m 49s):
I’m very proud of the work that I did, but at one point it got to be too much. I had a home life and a very young family. And I was dealing with not only the immense emotional load of the victims and survivors, but also running a nonprofit, which I didn’t have any experience in. It just became too much. I got to a point where I was sitting on the bathroom floor on the phone with my regional director and it was 9pm and she was yelling at me for something that I knew I could handle, but I wasn’t being allowed to. My husband was on the other side of the door, telling me to give him the phone, that he would talk to her. And my child was in another room crying. That was the moment. I just knew that was it, I couldn’t take anymore. I had to turn in my notification and I gave them three weeks.
Dolph Goldenburg (13m 4s):
Obviously you turned in your notice, but what was the toughest part of addressing your own burnout?
Trish Bachman (13m 10s):
The hardest part for me was that I had so much passion, that I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to give meaning to my own victimization and I was working so hard for it. I had so many people that were depending on me, local people, the people that I was serving, the victims and survivors, the small group of professionals that were helping me to forward our mission. And O had to go to them and say, “I just can’t do this anymore. I’m going to close the door on this.” Fortunately, another agency, our office of highway safety, offered me a job.
Trish Bachman (13m 51s):
I was able to take all of the work that I had done and all of the credibility that I had worked for and I was able to push it forward through a government office to continue to educate, advocate, and work towards the mission. That was a very fulfilling time. I did that for eight years and I made a huge difference. When I look back over my history and the time that I had in the nonprofit, then moving into government work, I can see how I improved all along the way. Even though I was dealing with burnout, I was able to take those challenges and make them steppingstones.
Dolph Goldenburg (14m 31s):
Were you able to avoid burnout in your eight years with the government?
Trish Bachman (14m 37s):
Yes. As a matter of fact, I enjoyed the work so much. I was part-time and they allowed me to work from home. I had a new baby. So for most of those eight years, I was able to do everything that I needed to, including networking statewide with safety offices. I was able to forward the message, create meaningful relationships, and I was able to do it all from home.
Dolph Goldenburg (15m 3s):
Nice. You clearly demonstrated significant resiliency because you learned some things from the nonprofit experience and you carried them forward into your next job, which was with the government.
Trish Bachman (15m 14s):
Yes. That has actually grounded my work very much in consulting because I wanted a new challenge and doing the advocacy work became less important to me. I decided that I wanted to catalog all my talents, skills and abilities, and what I enjoyed doing, which is working with people. I enjoy nonprofits and I enjoy writing so grant consulting just came to the top. I feel like through my experiences I can relate to small and midsize nonprofits and the challenges that they’re dealing with. They have advocacy, they have passion, they have victim survivors, they have constituents, they have professionals that they need to network with to further their mission and their vision. I feel very blessed that I have all that experience and that when I’m talking to a new client, I can say, “I completely understand where you’re at, I remember being in that situation too and I’d like to help.”
Dolph Goldenburg (16m 11s):
Trish, it’s so nice when we can have true empathy with our clients. That’s awesome. Bethany, what about you? What did your life after the community college look like? And how did you rebound from burnout?
Bethany Planton (16m 29s):
Well, luckily, I had started subcontracting for other grant consultants while I was working since I was only part-time. I was getting experience, getting my name out there, working with clients. A couple of months after leaving the community college I established my consulting business and this year I’m celebrating four years of doing consulting and never looking back. I love it because I don’t have to worry about a president being an hour late. Now I don’t have to ask permission to go on vacation. I just get to tell my clients, “Hey, I love you, but I’m going on vacation, I’ll see you in a week.”
Dolph Goldenburg (17m 6s):
I love that. Although I also know, because like you I’ve been in my own consulting practice now for five or six years, that sometimes I’m probably the toughest boss I ever had.
Bethany Planton (17m 18s):
Yes, I do have that trouble. Trish can attest that I’m a pretty tough boss to myself. But I’ve lived with myself now for however many years, as opposed to trying to please someone else that I don’t know their thinking or someone not communicating well with me.
Dolph Goldenburg (17m 33s):
So what are you doing now to manage your work and your life so that you’re avoiding burnout?
Bethany Planton (17m 40s):
Great question. This has been a conversation in our groups a lot, especially with COVID. And I will say this year, I got burned out. I was not totally burned out to where I wanted to just leave everything, but it got to the point where I thought, “I can’t keep up this pace.” So knowing what those feelings feel like, I can take a few steps back much faster and be like, “Okay, let’s pump the brakes. We need to say no to a few more projects.” I needed to schedule time away from the computer this summer, so I ended up taking a full two weeks off. I went to my parents’ house and hung out. It wasn’t an exciting vacation. It’s not the vacation I would have chosen normally, but I knew I needed that time away from the computer, that time away even from my apartment.
Bethany Planton (18m 34s):
Because if I’m sitting here, I’m seeing the chores that I need to do in the apartment or other personal things. But being in a different place gave me a chance to play games with my family. I could hang out and let my mind rest from all that work that I had been doing. We have seasons where we have to work really hard for a couple months. I think especially of event planners, where you might have your big event coming up and you’re working a lot of hours up until then, but then schedule that downtime time afterwards to recuperate. Knowing I need to do that has been my biggest takeaway.
Dolph Goldenburg (19m 18s):
That’s awesome, Bethany. This year I have worked six to seven days a week, almost all year. And as we pulled into August, I was feeling a little tired. So this year I made the intentional decision to take every Wednesday off in September, October, November, and December. It’s kind of great because now I work two days, I get a day off, I work two days, I get a weekend. It’s kind of awesome. But I’ll also share with you that I’m not the one that came up with this concept. This actually was a concept given to me by an amazing boss. In the mid-nineties, I was a grant writer and I was easily working 55, 60 hours a week and she said to me, “You’re going to burn out.” And I said to her, “Look, I like the 10 and 12 hour days and that’s what I’m going to do.” And so she said “Dolph, if you want to do 10 or 12 hour days, great, you just need to take every Wednesday off. So, now you can come in on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.” So for a few years, I literally would work a four day work week and I took the middle day off. Sometimes I would make an exception and come in, like for a site visit. But it was a real game changer for me. So, as I thought back to that I thought, “I know what I’m doing this fall, I’m going to take every Wednesday off.”
Bethany Planton (20m 44s):
That is a great example because everybody’s schedule is different. I feel like we’re especially seeing that this year. So let’s build a schedule that works for us. If it works to take every Wednesday off, then great. If you prefer to take every Friday off, that’s great too. If you need to work a bunch of hours and then take two weeks off, do what you need to do, but take that vacation time and that time away.
Dolph Goldenburg (21m 5s):
And one of the reasons I wanted to share that is I would be willing to bet a lot of our listeners are listening to the three of us and saying, “Yeah, but you all are consultants, you work for yourself so you can do that.” So I also wanted to point out that when I was very early in my career, I had a boss that allowed me to do it as well. This is a great segue to ask you all, how does an employee have this conversation with their boss? It’s easy for us because we’re consultants and we can just say to our clients, “Oh, I’m going on vacation for two weeks, love you, see you in two weeks” and our clients would just accept that. How does the employee have this conversation?
Trish Bachman (21m 47s):
I’ll jump in right here. Planned vacations are probably one of the most important things that you can do. So if you have vacation time then go ahead and get that on the schedule. You can schedule vacations so that they occur regularly, like every quarter or every 6 months. It gives you a break and something to look forward to. Once it’s planned, then go ahead and get yourself a reservation, buy tickets, do something that’s going to hold you accountable to those dates. Be upfront with your boss and have a frank conversation. Some bosses listen and some don’t. Communication with leadership is a huge indicator of burnout level. If you have a situation where you can talk to your boss or someone in your supervision chain frankly, then express your challenges because it’s in their best interest for their employees to be engaged. We know that burnout causes disengagement in employees so starting that conversation is probably one of the best things that you can do. Open those lines of communication.
Dolph Goldenburg (22m 59s):
I love that, I couldn’t agree more. I would just add that if you have a boss that you can’t talk to about the need to take a vacation, you need a different boss. Whether that’s a different boss in the same organization or you change jobs, you need a different boss
Bethany Planton (23m 13s):
I agree and to go off of what Trish was saying, if you’re not quite sure how to start that conversation, one question for your boss is “I have all this work, but there’s not enough time to get it done, what is your priority?” So that your boss can see that you’re being asked to do a lot and they can help you prioritize what needs to be done now.
Dolph Goldenburg (23m 46s):
Executive directors and managers should also lead by example. When I coach executive directors, we typically lay out 5 goals for themselves for the year we’ll be working together. I am always clear that one of them is to take a vacation because too many EDs don’t do that. So a few years ago, one of my EDs set a goal for a one week vacation. I recommended 2 weeks. But the ED insisted one was plenty. As we got closer to the vacation, this person started to back out and actually said, “It’s not our culture in this organization for people to take a week off.” I asked “Do you think it might be because you don’t take a vacation? Maybe it’s because everyone looks at you and says, ‘Our boss’s boss doesn’t take a vacation so we shouldn’t either.’” To this person’s credit, they were introspective enough and self-aware enough that they were realized that alone might be a good reason to take a vacation.
Dolph Goldenburg (25m 7s):
I do think part of the message to our listeners who are managers, is just how critical it is that we’re open to these conversations. I also think it’s really critical that people actually be able to go away on their vacation. I don’t know if either of you have ever worked someplace where there’s this expectation that you’re going to check email or voicemail a few times a week or every day or something like that?
Bethany Planton (25m 32s):
Yes and that’s not a vacation, that is not time away if you’re always turned on.
Dolph Goldenburg (25m 37s):
I agree with you completely Bethany because you just can’t disconnect.
Bethany Planton (25m 40s):
My clients know that they’re not going to hear from me. If they email me, they’ll get the out-of-office response. I don’t even open the app to look so I’m not tempted.
Dolph Goldenburg (25m 55s):
I’ll share with you, my husband and I, usually go away for two or three weeks. I have really good boundaries about email and voicemail so while we’re on the trip, we don’t check email or voicemail. My agreement with my husband – and typically we go internationally so there’s a lot of travel time – is I can work until we reach our destination. At the end of the trip, the minute we board the plane to come back, if I want to start working again, I can. So from my perspective, I could watch some really stupid movies or I can arrive home in Atlanta with no email in my inbox. I’m going to choose the ‘no email in my inbox.’ But while we’re on the ground, we check no email.
Bethany Planton (26m 46s):
We have a colleague that both of us know. Her family plans the vacation so that they don’t have very good cell phone reception. That way there’s no temptation to check anything because if you don’t have cell phone reception, and you don’t have the internet, then it’s hard to do any work.
Dolph Goldenburg (27m 3s):
That’s what we do, we like to hike and trek. We’ve done some trekking in the Himalayas and in the Andes where there is no promise of access. You just have to say to your clients, “Sorry, you’re really not going to be able to get hold of me.” It’s a great excuse.
Trish Bachman (27m 18s):
I love that. The minute you put your out-of-office on your email or your phone, it’s like a mental switch. Sometimes I do that on the weekends but sometimes I do it when I really need that mental switch off when I need to just give myself the okay. It’s okay not to check your email. It’s okay not to check your voicemail. It’s okay to relax.
Dolph Goldenburg (27m 45s):
I will say there’s a couple of interesting things that employers can do to help their employees leave for vacation and take time off. One of them is to remove the email temptation. I had someone who worked for me who simply could not disconnect from their email. I realized this was the very first vacation they took and I was getting emails from them every day while they were gone. I’d always respond back, “Stop checking.” They’d say, “This is just who I am, I have to do it.” So the next time they were planning to take a week-long trip, I said to them about 10 days before, “We’re going to change your email password and you’re not going to have access to your email.” The person’s immediate response was, “What if an emergency comes up, I may have to handle that.” I said, “Don’t worry, all your emails are going to be forwarded to me and if it’s an emergency, I’ll take care of it. If it’s not an emergency, don’t worry about it. It’ll all be sitting in your inbox when you come back.”
Trish Bachman (28m 36s):
That’s great for transparency too. There are some sectors that require their executives to take two weeks off so that – for that transparency piece – if anything’s going on that’s not quite ethical, it will rise to the top.
Dolph Goldenburg (28m 51s):
Exactly. Another best practice is to pay a bonus for taking a vacation. I’ve only ever seen it in for-profit, but I’d love for executive directors and board members to try something like it. There’s a technology for-profit out of Denver that encourages all of their employees to take two consecutive weeks off and if they do, the employee gets a bonus. Now it’s taxable, so this is not the net, but they get a bonus of $7,500 to take their family somewhere. If they check email once or if they’re caught responding to any voicemail, even once, they have to pay the $7,500 back. I get that non-profit’s maybe can’t afford to do $7,500, but they could probably do $500 or $1000 bonuses in the same way.
Trish Bachman (29m 53s):
I like that. I like that a lot.
Dolph Goldenburg (29m 55s):
I love that. I am going to try to find a way to incorporate that in the work I do and maybe with some of the clients I work with. I want to make sure that we have time for the off-the-map questions. Bethany, I spent some time at your website and I noticed that your consulting practice has a director of health and wellness and I would love for you to introduce us to that director.
Bethany Planton (30m 31s):
Yes. My director of health and wellness, I’m an LLC, which means we technically have no employees, but I do have a director of health and wellness. She gets paid in food, walks, treats and naps. If you haven’t guessed yet, my director of health and wellness is a rescue black lab. She came into my life three years ago and I had seen a business that had made their dog their employee of the month, every month. I stole that and that is how I got a director of health and wellness. She actually does do a job because she’s a dog, and these statistics are out there, showing that animal owners are usually more fit and have better mental health.
Bethany Planton (31m 19s):
She gets me outside. Since I live by myself, there would be days I might not walk outside. But because I have her, I walk outside at least three times a day and that is great for my mental health. I can pet her and love her and have a little bit of companionship here in my apartment while I’m working. Sometimes she even helps me take a break because she’ll make a little noise saying and insist on being pet right now. So that is how she got her title of director of health and wellness.
Dolph Goldenburg (31m 48s):
That is incredible. I love that. I love the fact that you put it on your website. I think it really speaks to your personality and your values and clients and prospective clients have to see that.
Bethany Planton (31m 60s):
Right? Yes. She’s all over my social media. You can see the employee of the month too. I mean, it’s always a guess who’s going to get employee of the month every month, but you can see that on my social media. Then sometimes she pops in for other things. So she’s an organizational cultural thing now.
Dolph Goldenburg (32m 17s):
That’s really awesome. Trish, I understand that you have spent a lot of time studying Disney. So the off-the-map question for you is what leadership lessons can be learned from Disney?
Trish Bachman (32m 34s):
There’s nothing that I love to talk about more than Disney. Matter of fact, that was one of the things brought Bethany and I together was our love for all things Disney. I’m also a reader and Bethany is also a reader. At the beginning of the year, back in January, before we knew about COVID and it changed our world, I decided that my focus for professional development this year would be that I was going to take a deep dive into Disney leadership. There is so much information out there from Walt Disney himself to how they created the parks to Imagineering to the leaders in Disney. Recently, there was a book by Bob Iger that came out and that was the first book that I read in my Disney leadership year. I quickly moved to Imagineering and what they do as a group to communicate and create stories. What I have come to learn is that professional development, like leadership skills and techniques, customer service, etc., is so important.
Trish Bachman (33m 47s):
We need that in our grant professional lives. We need that when we’re dealing with other people, when we’re coming to the table at meetings, when we’re communicating with people that we don’t know, and when we’re putting our best foot forward. I have also found that professional development and strong leadership are great for eliminating burnout.
Dolph Goldenburg (34m 10s):
Absolutely. Trish it sounds like there might be a book in you sometime in the next few years about leadership lessons from Disney.
Trish Bachman (34m 17s):
There are a couple of really great podcasters who have Disney leadership-based podcasts that are absolutely free to listen and definitely promotes leadership and understanding and customer service. There are also a ton of books on Disney leadership.
Dolph Goldenburg (34m 45s):
Obviously our listeners are podcast listeners. So which one podcast on leadership and Disney would you recommend?
Trish Bachman (34m 51s):
I love ‘Creating Disney magic’ by Lee Cockerell. That one is fantastic. It comes out every Tuesday, I believe, and they have a great backlog.
Dolph Goldenburg (35m 2s):
Nice, we’ll have a link to that in the show notes. Trish, Bethany, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Listeners will want to know how to reach out to you. So listeners, you can go to Bethany’s consulting practice website, it’s bmpconsulting.org. There you will find resources on grant writing and you can also learn more about Bethany’s grant writing services. Also make sure you go to Trish’s website, writestuffdelaware.com. There, you will find information about grant writing as well as services that she offers.
Dolph Goldenburg (35m 45s):
Now they’ve also asked that I make sure all of our listeners know about grantprofessionals.org. They are a great organization and website. And if you go there, you can find out more about becoming a grant professional and getting a certificate in that. You can also go to grantprofessionalsfoundation.org if you are looking to get a scholarship, either to be a member or to take the certification courses. So please make sure you go to that website as well. Hey, Trish, Bethany, thank you so much for joining us today.
Trish Bachman and Bethany Planton (36m 21s):
Thank you for having us. This was so much fun.
Dolph Goldenburg (36m 23s):
Listeners, if you were busy Googling how you can start your pandemic trip to Disney and get those leadership lessons and a tax deduction all at the same time and missed those URLs, no worries. By the way, quick reminder, I don’t do tax consulting. I’m not saying that’s really tax deductible. Anyway, you can always go to successfulnonprofits.com. At that website, you can get to bmpconsulting, The Write Stuff Delaware, Grant Professionals Association and their foundation, and the Disney leadership podcast that Trish had mentioned. Quick reminder listeners, don’t forget that 2021 is likely to be a good bit rougher than 2020. So if you’re looking for some help, go to successfulnonprofits.com. Check out our group coaching – it is going to be curriculum based and it will help you have a successful 2021 regardless of what the economy, the pandemic or anything else throws at you.
Dolph Goldenburg (37m 30s):
One final thing, if you liked this episode, make sure that you listen to episode 152 – Using “Scrum” To Avoid Burnout’ with Diane Leonard. She’s another great grant writer that understands that burnout is real and that we have to do what’s necessary to prevent it. That, listeners, is our show for this week. Make sure that you go online to rate, review, and subscribe to this podcast. Finally, I hope you have gained some insight to help your non-profit thrive in a competitive environment.
Disclaimer (38m 6s):
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 and 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.
** We have edited this transcript because how you listen is not how you read. If you have a problem with this, remember you got this for free!