Unknown Speaker  0:01  
Welcome to Engaging Ideas, the bi weekly podcast from Parsons TKO, bringing you conversations with mission driven leaders and luminaries to shift your perspective and challenge your assumptions on the art of the possible.

Tony Kopetchny  0:16  
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of engaging ideas, the Parsons TKO podcast where we talk to leaders and luminaries in the mission driven sector about their experiences, to gather insights and ideas, to increase our perspectives and understanding. And to always make sure you know, dear listener, that you are not alone. And we are all in this together. Before we begin, please, if you can leave us a review on whichever platform you choose to listen to us. we'd greatly appreciate your feedback. And we would love to hear how you are experiencing our show and what things you would like to hear more about on this podcast and most importantly, dear listeners, thank you for listening. Today, I am utterly excited to be joined by Rachel Kimber and we're going to have a fantastic conversation. She is currently serving as the vice president of Grants Management with Smile Train, she has over 15 years experience in the grant making space. And Rachel from your LinkedIn, I love this line on your bio. It says I am capable of incisive analysis on a boundless array of topics. I have found what I have not found the limits of my interests that I hope to share these talents wherever my professional endeavors lead me. I don't know I really resonated with it. I love the curiosity and the capability and the capacity and the gumption to go with that. I was

Rachel Kimber  1:41  
just like, that's heady. That's a lot. That's a, you know, a mouthful. But I do, I am a pretty creative researcher in the grants management space, and tech and digital infrastructure have called to me. And so that's where I've shown up and it's been a lot of fun to to dig in and learn about, what does it mean to establish a digital digital strategy? What does it mean to review the architecture to move data to information and knowledge and eventually start to understand impact in a more, you know, clear, consistent aligned way, I like to imagine that my endeavor on this planet is to figure out how to most efficiently move resources through grantmaking function from those who have, particularly financial resources to those who need them to do the great nonprofit work. And technology is a big piece of that in this day and age. Love it.

Tony Kopetchny  2:41  
All right, and we're gonna dive in. And I know there's a lot of people in the audience and just around the country that are thankful folks like you that are helping to move those resources to make all the good happen that we need. And we need a lot more for everybody. So Rachel, last year, we saw her return to travel, and this year, which has, and it's been wonderful to do it. You know, we've also seen a continuation of trying to figure out how to make progress on a lot of fronts, especially in terms of equity and inclusion, you know, moving beyond just the acknowledgments and putting the messages out as a company and actually getting this into operational practices. or what have you seen across the sector's emerging trends and equity practices and grant making and operations?

Rachel Kimber  3:24  
Yeah, I think there's a lot of really neat emergent work happening right now. One of the biggest shifts is around the branch manager, and the technologists at these nonprofit organizations being asked to now operationalize these value and strategic aligned calls to become more dei equitable, inclusive initiatives and advanced practices around those. And so I think where brands managers and technologists get to lean in is to say, Okay, it's senior leadership, and the board has decided that this is important, this is something that we need to prioritize. And so in our daily work as grants managers, and or technologists, we're being asked to figure out how do we develop those practices? And who are how are we assessing the success of those initiatives? Right, because it's one thing to roll it out and say, we're being more equitable. How do we know that we're being more equitable? And so there's been or accessible or inclusive, right, any of those buzzwords that the sector is leaning into at the values and strategy level? We're waiting to see what does it look like in implementation? One area where I've been helping steward that work with Blanche Vance at the growth foundation is around reimagining reporting. Right. So that's a tool that donors use right now. transactionally to learn about was the money spent, how was it spent? And so what Blanche and I are trying to do is lean into how can we use this as a tool for learning? Right? Right. So that's another really interesting component in the the grant making space right now is becoming a learning organization. And what that means is that as we are launching these initiatives like oral and alternate reporting, right, how do we reinvent the reporting format, to engage with learning more intentionally? And so in order to assess our steps in that direction, right, let's try oral recording. Let's see if that works. We then need to be able to measure that against progress, right? Like is that meeting grantee needs? For me, the the real push right now in moving from stated values to practices is closing that feedback loop and seeing are we actually moving closer to what are our grantee partners need to feel centered in the grant making process. And so Blanche and support from the peak grant making folks we've been able to move forward with the oral and alternate reporting work, many of the organizations that I work at are focused on conservation and efficiency, hence, the the lighting situation we have here. And so if we're focused on making sure that we are efficient organizations, and being good stewards of our resources, then we need to drill into which practices are we launching? Are they meeting our goals? And so it's been wonderful to work with Blanche on that project. And then to bring technology into that, right. So grant reporting isn't happening outside of technology, it's often being stewarded by a technological tool, you know, Salesforce flux, smart, simple, giving data, the whole realm of grants, management systems, all need to also come with us on that journey of creating practices and tools that are accessible. And so I think that's a really big push for this year peak NGO, have done a lot to advance conversations around equitable practices and grant making. I was on a panel, I think it was last year around demographic data. And so that's another area where we can start assessing, where are our blind spots? Who are we not serving? And if you're not looking at that data, and taking a critical look at what the data is showing us and then contextualizing it, it's really hard to come up with answers about whether or not we are being more equitable, or whether or not you know, we are serving the populations that we say we're trying to serve, collecting data, or importing it from a repository like candid, is a really efficient way to start to open up and look at those blind spots. Also, the Center for effective philanthropy will do grantee perception surveys. So again, helping close that feedback loop. As we're saying, again, senior leadership says we care about these practices and values, and now we have to operationalize them. And now we have to find out if as we operationalize them, are they working? Are they meeting that stated value? And so center for effective philanthropy, with its grantee perception survey, is able to really help us close that feedback loop and understand what's the grantee experience, another space that's doing really innovative work, as far as making sure that our commitment to racial justice and equity is seen and heard broadly across the sector is philanthropy, New York, and they just launched their strategic framework for the next five years. And it's an institution that is striving to live up to the highest values that the philanthropic sector is stating that we care about, right, equitable, sustainable democratic societies. And so philanthropy in New York is trying to create frameworks and tools to help us learn and live and implement the practices that align with those stated values. So it's actually it's a really big chasm right now. And so it's exciting to see what emerges from our stated values, right? We as donors and grant makers, want to see the world look more equitable, accessible all of these things, how do we actually implement that? And so that's resting right now with grants managers, administrators, technologists, to figure out how do we close that gap and actually start practicing our values?

Tony Kopetchny  9:13  
Thank you. I have been writing furiously for keeping up with you there and getting a lot of follow up questions. So dive in a few things. And when I was just thinking, I really like to phrase operationalizing the values in there's a lot of pieces we just talked about. So if I'm sitting here and I'm in my work at the start of a new year, and I'm like, Oh, my God, which one do I focus on to try to start moving forward? You know, how did the How did the conversations go from, you know, where the values already set? Did you have to have some, was that a conversation and who needed to be in that to even get the values and then when it's now we want to operationalize these who's in those conversations? How did how did that all sort of happen for you?

Rachel Kimber  9:52  
I think it varies by organization. When I was working with the Arcus foundation, it was very working And so it was a program officer coming to me and you know, asking about their reporting queue backlogs. Right. So what is all of this? And what do I need to review? And what does the review look like? So onboarding a new program officer, and getting really reflective about what is this process, because it's a process that I do due diligence for, as a Grants Manager, I recognize that because I directly interfaced with this process, I could have some influence on how we shift it. And so the Arcus Foundation had stated value, right, we very clear value statement, equity, self determination, transparency, all of you know, the the words that are very weighty, it was helpful when I recognize that there was a practice that didn't really align with the values that we stated, right? This This wasn't an Arcus was on a journey to become a learning organization, and is on that journey. My thinking was, if we want to be a learning organization, I should be talking to the program officers about what do you want to be learning? And is there a better way to get that information than this form, that we're asking all of our grantees to fill out a lens towards right sizing, which is something that the Arcus foundation stands by, and a lens towards equity and access, like these are all things that the Arcus foundation in particular, is is very vocal about and cares about. And so it was easy to make that connection to reporting as a tool that didn't align neatly with those values right now at Smile Train. This is a tech forward organization. This is an organization that has gone places that other global health organizations haven't fallen. And so that's really exciting. And so I can see that there is an appetite, to learn and explore and to look at processes and figure out how as global health providers, and we set the bar for what it looks like to meet people where they are to center the grantee. So this isn't easy work. It's really helpful. If there's already some stated values, many organizations signed, you know, racial justice pledges or, you know, equity inclusion, you know, documents that state like, these are things that we care about. And so if you can get your board or your senior leadership to really clarify, what are the values that are driving this organization, then you can start looking at the practices, I think one of the unfortunate things is often Administrative Manager level folks might not feel empowered to recognize that misalignment, and then do something about it. Right, and the doing doesn't happen, you know, just by snapping your fingers, the doing happens by recognizing that there might be a mismatch, that there might be a solution, and then bringing forward that proposal, right? Because if you don't bring it to senior leadership, that's not their area of you know, technical expertise, especially when we start going deep into data and technology, which their strategy, their values, their, you know, so they may have some insight to what the mechanics look like, oh, it's our responsibility to bring that up to senior leadership so that they can attend to those places where we could be better aligned and better serving our grantee partners.

Tony Kopetchny  13:11  
Amy, you had talked and use the phrase learning culture and learning environment, a few times, learning organization, beloved, but I'm curious, you know, are there times and your cycles, even just what you were talking about there, if there's the administrator, and then they see the disconnect between the values and the operation happening? Or do you have built in retrospective time? So you get through a cycle? Is there hey, let's pause this as this is we're gonna do it for a week, two weeks, I want everyone here all hands on deck. Here's what it what did we learn in this cycle that we might be able to do different in the next is that

Rachel Kimber  13:44  
I think that's an aspiration. I think that's where, especially at conferences can make space for that. Right. So either you're going in sharing your learning and saying, This is what we did, this is what we figured out and then the questions from the audience can help you be more reflective and, you know, kind of grapple with, you know, this is as far as we got in our process, and we're cueing up the next step. But I think it's challenging to do that in our day to day work, because there's so much to do, right? We are serving nonprofit partners, and our nonprofit partners are hearing cleft palates, feeding hungry children, providing shelter for the homeless, right, these are really weighty tasks, and we are part of that supply chain, right, like the financial resources need to get to these people, because otherwise, they are not having their basic needs met. And so as that's our responsibility to lean in, and make sure that the resources are flowing, in the nonprofit sector writ large, there isn't a lot of reflective space. And I think that's a practice and a muscle that again, needs to be prioritized. Just like you know, working out your body, right? Like you need to decide that is something I care about, and I'm going to make time for and then you have to practice it right it's a daily Practice and don't beat yourself up if you fall off, right, like there's one week where you don't take an hour on Friday to get a little reflective or, you know, your quarterly meeting or your conference schedule. But I think the aspiration is absolutely, yes, Tony to take the time to do that retrospective to see how could we do this better? And to figure out how do you carve 10% of your week out for that kind of work,

Tony Kopetchny  15:21  
I've often found in my experience, there's, it's the process of building a new process that everyone has to start being okay with, and then what, what happens a lot of times, it's people like, you're gonna change everything tomorrow. And I'm like, I'm actually not nothing is literally nothing's gonna change. But there's this one thing I want to start looking at a little differently. And until we have figured out what that one thing is, the whole process isn't going to change, but we're going to start looking at it, we're gonna start talking about it. But you're gonna keep like, because you do have to, I think there's an anxiety right? To your point, the operations have to keep flowing, you can't stop that, but then you're never going to change. Don't try to start even just talking about something a little differently. Yeah, it's, it's slowly getting everybody comfortable with it with that end goal of, you know, maybe a year from now. And I also think, because of technology over the last few years, and the pace of change of technology, and when disruption was the cool thing. And I'm like disruption is disruptive? Yes, not what you need all the time. And we aren't necessarily everybody likes to say it, because we all use technology, real tech companies now. But we're not really we're not innovative tech companies. We're using tools to move the work forward. But that pace of change is very different when it's just computer code that has to change rather than people and processes and getting money to someone who does need help, you know, with the type of work you're doing and feeding kids, so and we have to be sensitive, and there's all the pieces around it. So just for everyone listening, like set your mind to like one to three year horizons, you're not going to achieve this in your annual cycle. It's not going to happen six months, but like, what you have to put the work in? Yes, that's that's what matters, I think. Right?

Rachel Kimber  16:58  
Yeah. And I think it's a constant toggle between what are the immediate deliverables that need to, you know, you'd have to take those incremental steps. And then because we have these value statements, what's the longer term vision to get there? Right, so it's this constant toggle between the two. But as we can make space to make those little tweaks to a process. And I think, much like technology, it needs to be iterative. I think the expectation that we're going to get it right, on the first try is to fetus, right, I think it's so scary, to step into a space, and know that you have to get this right. I think there's a lot more space for creative creativity and innovation. When we allow people to try it. It's been well vetted. Everybody thinks it's a good next step. And then let's iterate. But getting so fearful to take that first step, we're never able to move through that iterative process, that feedback that the learning in our sector in particular, because there are lives at the other end of the supply chain means that I think there's a disdain for failure. But you can't have innovation. Without some failure, we're not going to hit a homerun every time. But if we don't try, and if we do call that a failure by trying and not going where we thought, I'd think that is just very defeatist, and will keep us exactly where we are, which I think is what's been happening in philanthropy for the last 20 3040 years is we've stayed exactly where we are, because we're so scared about not getting it right on the first try. That's where I get very excited about learning organizations becoming more of the norm is that we understand that we are trying to influence connected ecosystems, when you move certain levers, there are going to be unintended consequences. And that's okay. Because then as you were saying, Tony, you find that reflective space, you go to a conference and you talk about, this is what we did. This is what we learned, and you find other people who are on that same journey, who are starting the journey who are partway through the journey. I think a great example of this is moving through a strategic refresh. Right? Often organizations will recognize whatever we've been doing isn't getting us where we're trying to go, how do we start to craft a different approach and bring everybody along with us? And I think that's the challenge and again, grounding it back in technology. Tim Locky talks a lot about the tech stack and the human stack, I can get the technology flowing beautifully and executing. If the humans don't know how to engage with that tool. There's a really big disconnect. And so I think as we're looking at making changes and iterating, we have to be bringing, you know the whole front with us that means from grantees to partners, to our vendor stakeholders who are also involved in these conversations. because those are the tools that we work on to make technology work to help us make data informed decisions, we need all of the stakeholders, part of that conversation. And until everybody's around the table, working to solve these tricky problems, we haven't made a lot of progress in the last 40 years. And so I'm really forward approach that's more collaborative. And you know, shortening our learning curve, and bringing the ideas together. So we can fail and learn and fail and learn, whatever, whatever that iterative process looks like. We need to be doing it much more collaboratively than we are

Tony Kopetchny  20:32  
lasting change rarely comes through big bets. And massive moments. It's it's the, we focus so much on the outcomes, we miss the process of getting to the outcome. And then that's the real work. And I think we've just missed as a society of mistaken what innovation is because we just expect there's this moment and this great new ingenuity that came out. And it's you know, it was Edison and the good jillion light bulbs that he broke before he got to the one that worked. Nobody talks about that. Right. And it's, yeah, it is there is there's power in the process and the stick to itiveness. And I think that's how you get people on board. Like we use the phrase one step up two steps back, because it's a bad thing all the time. If you keep doing that, you're still going forward. And sometimes you need to take a step or two back because maybe you didn't get it right, maybe not everybody got on board, maybe you needed to reevaluate and take what were the lessons learned and they didn't work the way you want it. And we've had was years ago to me like they fail fast and fail better. And nobody wants that culture of failure because nobody wants to be a failure the same way they don't want their work disrupted. It's what are the increments we do this in and it's not failure, if you're experimenting, you know, you do fail on a big bet. And everybody sees that. And that's a lot of anxiety and pressure. And I think this work, what I just tell everyone in the audience to as we talk about mental health, more publicly now in society than we used to, but there is an emotional factor to this type of work for the people doing it people on the receiving end, and we don't put enough, we don't put enough active conversation and thought into that either. We're just like, you'll make this progress, you'll do this thing, and it's gonna change and be better. We're not thinking about someone who's been doing their job a certain way for 15 years. And then we move their cheese,

Rachel Kimber  22:16  
right? And it's also afraid person, right? I mean, we all have lives going on in the background. So grandma gets sick. And we're in the middle of an implementation, right? Like, is there room for you to show up as a whole person? That's tremendous to me, because we are all hold people. And if we are trying to do these difficult, you know, professional, technological, technological, I can't get that word out today. So then we need to make sure that we're supported in all ways. And that brings me to another, I think, pretty broad truism is that language matters. And so as we're using the word failure, like there's got to be another way to talk about this. And so I find it frustrating that, you know, we haven't figured out a better way to talk about learning culture. Yes, I imagine it's coming. I hope someone's working on it. You know, failure is a rough word. And that's a hard thing to oh,

Tony Kopetchny  23:07  
I struggled earlier in my career with what I think now is the unsung hero of any organization that has it, which is the knowledge management team. I didn't really understand at a certain point, and it was the one place I had worked, who had a library, and it was the librarians that were the knowledge managers, what I think what I missed was, I never saw the sharing. I just saw people collecting it. So it was, there's this gap and that learning culture to where it's, it doesn't need to be collected, doesn't need to, but then it has to be shared and talked about at some point. And we just never give ourselves the breadth or space until it's time for annual performance reviews. And oftentimes, that's really recency bias based, that we're only looking at the last couple months of things that we have done or thought about, rather than that 12 month stretch or the 24 month outlook. And I think you're right, there's something within the nonprofit sector here that we have to start, how do we take a breath once in a while and pause, and where it's not, it doesn't feel like everything's on the line, and you could really have an open moment.

Rachel Kimber  24:06  
It comes back to the deeper collaboration, and I'm a huge fan of it, because I don't know everything. And I want to know a lot and I want to help a lot. So that means that I have to have a broad community of people who are experts and do have the knowledge or have maybe, you know, launched that project and then I can just pick up that work and learn from there. That's been the model that Blanche and I have been using with the oral and alternate reporting. We we've brought a group of people together and we're like, we don't have the answer. I don't know what it will look like at your organization. But we've pinned on something that is not working across the sector. And we want to help you figure out how to make it better and give you space to talk about it. You know Blanche has already launched the work at her organization, right? This isn't an opportunity for her necessarily to learn how to implement but an opportunity for both of us to make space for others to explore questions and find synergy And I think, for me, you know, underscore hashtag collaborative learning is major. And that requires a lot of listening to folks who you might not usually listen to right, your grantee partners, vendors listening to your clients in a way that maybe you haven't heard us before. And so I think, learning how to do, the word that's coming to mind is empathetic listening, there's a whole field of work on what it means to really tune in and hear, what is the conflict, where's the friction, and then to start working together to find the solution. And that usually isn't a linear process. That is where I would love to see the nonprofit space start to change is to recognize that we don't have to be linear, that donors will provide space for you to iterate and experiments. And to just make space for that I'm going to use the word normalized. But I don't even like that word very much. But just make it kind of standard, like you had your first year of grant funding. What did you learn? As opposed to what did you do? Right? But let's let's let's reframe the way we talk about it, because what did you do is so retro, right? Like, that's looking backwards? Like, what are you learning? That that's more forward? That's pushing us towards impact? And that's where I want to see the nonprofit sector going, talking about what's the impact and figuring out? How do we develop language to talk about that, that isn't transactional accounting terms, right? We spent the money, that's not learning, that's not helping us solve problems.

Tony Kopetchny  26:32  
I really, really love that. Sitting with it. Like, what did you learn rather than what did you do, because if you get people talking about what they learned, they'll inevitably talk about what they did, and how that led them to the learning. So you're still gonna get, right you still get, but you'll get it from a very positive forward looking, helping momentum, helping energy helping keep them wanting to be engaged, rather than did that thing

Rachel Kimber  26:57  
didn't work? Well, it just didn't make space to talk about what might be construed as a failure, right? Like, you learned, okay, we're not going to do that. Or if we do that, we're gonna make sure that we give a month notice instead of two weeks, right, like you, there's something that you got from that. And if it wasn't, you know, gold stars all the way across the board, well, we can try again, right, like we can get closer to, you know, three gold stars as opposed to two. And that's, that, for me is the goal is to just keep learning and improving. And that's where, you know, me being a curious researcher, and, you know, grounding myself in this space. I want to keep learning, I want to keep exploring, and I want to keep doing better for the spaces that I get to show up

Tony Kopetchny  27:35  
in do you have talked a bit about some changes in Impact Reporting and respond to dive a little more than Impact Reporting, you know, experiences I hadn't getting into that empathetic listening, and people I've talked to over the years now, there's a lot of anxiety and trying to get your reports to a grant maker. Right, even though, you know, what I've heard from the grantee side is haven't really been told what to put in it, kind of thing I kind of think I'm making they spend a tremendous amount of time coming up with what they assume is a desired impact report about outputs, but they're not really sure when they hand it over. And they're just hoping to keep the money going. And I feel sympathetic on both sides. Yeah. What are your thoughts on that? I mean,

Rachel Kimber  28:16  
ya know, I think, first of all, it's a big time suck. If we're not doing it with a clear purpose and a clear, joint learning opportunity, right? Both the donor and the doer have an opportunity to be reflective and learn from each other in that reporting moment. I think, because of the SDG metrics from the UN, there's always been, but I think this kind of deepened our commitment to quantitative reporting, what can we count? How many people did you serve? How many events did you host Right? Like, those are the kinds of metrics that are easy to collect to a quantifiable? Where I think there's a lot of value and the sector hasn't really figured out what to do with the content is the qualitative data, where you go back to stories of, you know, the rural village that built a well. And we assumed that by building the well, everything would be sunshine and flowers for the community. And instead, you know, we find that there's an increase in alcoholism or lack of community or and it's like, how did these unintended, but you can't get that from things you can count, you will get that from the qualitative stories from the women, we used to have to walk to the river, who now have an extra three hours in their day. Right? So that's the qualitative storytelling that can help the learning journey for grant making organizations. And so I get really excited when we have machine learning and AI conversations about nonprofit technology because that is how we can start to learn from reams of paragraphs and words from our grantee partners, as we figure out how to take that qualitative information, those stories, those cases Is and use that to inform decision making. Right now that's really challenging to do because lifting up the trends or you know, right sizing, information input is super challenging with the technology tools that we have

Tony Kopetchny  30:13  
dashboard and madness. Everybody wants a dashboard.

Rachel Kimber  30:19  
For Alex Pittman at impact mapper, she has been banging this drum for years and has recognized how important qualitative reporting is to, you know, becoming a learning organization and being able to make strategic grant making decisions. Again, that takes a lot of innovation and resources to make happen. And we, as a sector need to recognize the value in investing in this kind of infrastructure, tech infrastructure.

Tony Kopetchny  30:45  
I mean, we do data frameworks, data work, we do data analysis, all kinds of things parts to but the first or second thing you're ever going to hear come out as qualitative really matters, you know, and then Stephen, who leads our team and I, we worked together at Pew, as one of the things I was bringing into putu. Was this qualitative really matters against these numbers. It's a for the context. But you know, we always use the example of this one thing gets 10,000 retweets, but then Michelle Obama retweets you once. Right? That's, yeah, you need that. And everyone needs to see that because that one tweet is worth a lot. Right?

Rachel Kimber  31:21  
Exactly. And this is where like, the impact conversation is so different from the accounting conversation, right? There's just completely different weighted scaling, you know, scoring that needs to happen when we're talking about impact, versus we gave you $100,000, did you spend the entire sum of that right, and we're showing me the lining, it's just a completely different way of talking about outcomes, that we don't have great tools to do that with yet.

Tony Kopetchny  31:47  
It's the whole thing too, I mean, this, that it needs to be hard skill versus soft skill, when you were talking about empathetic listening, and different things like that. And it's like, those are skills, like, you're gonna learn them in your learn how to run a meeting, or learn how to be effective with people. It's the same in the day to day like, yeah, there's numbers, but then there are, there's the qualitative approach. And that used to seem soft, it was soft sciences that did that. But I remember having a debate with a professor that I worked for in grad school, and he was like, Look, there's economists and they want to quantify love. But if you had, if you have a high love score, does that mean you love your wife more than someone else loves somebody else's spouse or partner? Yes, yeah. And then he's like, Well, how do you really think? Do you really boil it down to the number? Or do you boil it into what you're doing in the moment? And I was like, Yeah, because culture? I mean, how do you quantify culture, it's the thing that you're living and experiencing. So it's, it's this rise of having those moments, again, I think where it has to rebalance itself, and I like you had talked about I think it was, like the verbal storytelling when it comes to Impact Reporting, instead of just the numbers. I mean, it's

Rachel Kimber  32:49  
every data point, context matters. I mean, that's kind of, that's my drum. Like, you can look at the data, you can have the great dashboards, but if you don't have the context, you can't make informed decisions. And having both of those, in a technology tool has been challenging.

Tony Kopetchny  33:06  
I think, too, that's, you know, we hear this and we're gonna keep seeing it. And everybody executives are interested in data now. And they want the executive dashboard, and then you get the staff below them. It's like, Oh, my God, but the CEO is gonna see this, and they don't understand what was on the numbers. And while we try to talk to people, everyone's got to get into a culture of analytics culture of data, like, the whole organization has to start getting behind what it means why you use it, how it's being used, it's not being used against you didn't have things to hold against your performance evaluation. It's what are we doing together as a team?

Rachel Kimber  33:36  
Right. And I think this goes back to, you know, the role of a technologist is to also assess appetite, right, to really get clear on where is the organization? And how do I help them on their journey? And so 100% You know, data awareness, technological aptitude, right? These are things that are kind of starting points to be able to engage in these conversations. But I think making room for more voices is pretty key. Alex Dunn talks about technological intuition, technical intuition. And her idea is, you know, being able to bring as many voices to conversations about technology, right, it's inclusive, it's accessible. There are no dumb questions, right, like everybody is figuring it out together. And if you have the technical expertise in a particular area, but not the technical expertise, I mean, like you're the expert in safety and quality for anesthesia, you know, whatever, whatever your knowledge area is, to be able to feel comfortable bringing that to technology conversations, because now I need to build tools for you to be able to track that. And I can't do that in a vacuum. We all again, going back to the collaborative learning we all have to come together. My brain is only so powerful, and I need other voices to help inform. How do we get there? And then because I'm the technologists My responsibility rests on me to figure out how do I bring the rest of the organization along on that journey? Because we've talked before Tony about the knee jerk, you know, fear reaction that people get when you say data, or when you say technology like it, it can make people very uncomfortable change. That's another one. Right? So all of these words, it's about assessing, where's the organization? And how do we begin this journey? PARSONS TKO does roadmaps. And I think that's another really powerful tool to help the organization see, where are we today? What do we need to get done in the next 12 months? But where are we going? And how is this serving, you know, the mission? And how does technology fit into that? And how does becoming more data aware and looking at the information that we collect? Is that actually fueling our ability to make strategic decisions. And so weaving all that together takes time. And so I think an organization like Smile Train, is setting itself up to be ahead of the curve. Because we're starting to grapple with that now. Foundation Connect is sunsetting, we need to start exploring, what is the next GMs? How are we going to pull our data in so that the programmatic team can make strategic decisions? Are we collecting the right data? Are we meeting our grantee partners where they are? Is our app mobile compatible, right? Like are they able to access pieces of information when and where they need it, that doesn't happen in a 12 month goal cycle, that's a five year journey to make sure that you have all the pieces moving in lockstep, and that the whole organization is coming on that journey. When I came to Smile Train, I recognized that there was a disparity between how the different departments were using and deploying technology, for me, and the vision I'm bringing to Smile Train is that we need to start creating a unified front, right, if we are going to be a tech forward organization, that we need to be really clear across departments. What does that look like? Where are we going? And how are we going to deploy that vision?

Tony Kopetchny  37:05  
Yeah, I mean, the roadmap for us Summit, it's changed management manifest, because it helps everybody and then it helps you find those gaps. It's because then somebody could come in from a different program or department be like, Oh, you're missing this piece. Where does that fit into the plan, and it gives, and it helps an organization see that there's, it's not willy nilly change for change sake, but there is plan and thought behind it. And there's dependencies but saying what can go first, and you can't have a whole new system, if you have no staff for it, and then it gives you the staff, I mean, the power in it. I had a just recorded a podcast with folks what I have learned, it's the University at Buffalo, not the University of Buffalo. But we talked about, we talked about their roadmap, and I liked what they had said it was in the beginning, it was hard to describe the value of it. And then when it was finished, everybody completely sees the extreme value of it. I think, for anyone listening who is contemplating these things just is hard to sell first, because people are like, what I'm taking the time to do X and then when they have it, they're like this thing's great. You know that to change, you know, change and change fatigue? I think it is it is a tool to combat change, too, because then your staff could sort of see what's happening. Because every time you do say new data project, new tech project, everyone's eyes are probably rolling, their guts are screaming, and they're like, Oh, my God, here we go again. Yeah. And so you want to see some of that in a way where I can go look at it and say, Oh, now I get it. Okay, this is this is why this is coming. They explained this to me. I don't have to be overly anxious to there's just and then the capacity for change that all like it just flows in, like, you can only do so much a certain period of time. And so like, bundle that how do we how do we get there, this, this make me think to just from where we're at, you know, come back to the beginning of what we're, what role to operational units really play within an organization helping set architecture for organizations, not to just, you know, as all these different practices, we've been talking about dei practices and weaving it into the culture and and then what do we what are the Operations units? If we think about those? Yeah, how do they step up to the table? Because here, it's really easy in the nonprofit space to always think about the program side who's delivering what, at the end of the day to, you know, whoever we're serving, they're out there in the field, you could see that that's everyone thinks they're putting the money there. But then there's that operation side of the house that right.

Rachel Kimber  39:27  
And I think, again, in the nonprofit space, there's an under emphasis on what is called overhead. That's what pays for the tech projects that

Tony Kopetchny  39:35  
are on this now because I got

Rachel Kimber  39:37  
I know, I was like, I don't want to go too deep into it. Chantel, Forrester and tag has written numerous articles on how we need to invest in technology and the infrastructure to make sure that we are making good decisions for the practices, maybe business practices, yes, all of it. So I think there is certainly the siloed departments don't have All right, the way we are currently budgeting is by department, right? You get your bucket of money, and then you figure out what to do with it. Unfortunately, tech projects span the whole organization. And so I think the way we look at annual budgets are going to need to shift. I think, again, the collaborative learning aspect makes it essential to figure out how do we work cross departmentally? How are we learning, and that means that the projects and the capacity and the resources are all going to start to kind of lead beyond these, like box silos that we've, we've been very comfortable in for the last 3040 years in our planning. So I think the financial tools to help figure out how do we look at this information, and plan to be good stewards of the resources? How does that all fit? And I think, again, the roadmap is a great tool to help inform the financial decisions. But I think the way that we are budgeting is probably going to need to shift in order to accommodate these kinds of enterprise initiatives that will become more prevalent. And then that filters into the HR component, right? So HR is the hiring and the skill gaps, and what are the needs, what's the capacity on various teams to hold these projects or drive them. And so as we've entered into digital transformation, which, again, if you didn't know what that was March 2020, we all slammed into the wall of digital transformation, which is a culture shift, right? We all had to learn how to work with each other, not in our cubicles, and not in an office space, we had to figure out how to do that. So that required a culture shift, we had to make appointments and zoom and figure out how to do all of that. What we're stepping into now is digital strategy. How do we come up with a strategy instead of slamming into pandemic, everybody goes home, right? That was unplanned and chaotic. Now we have a moment to get planful and think about what kinds of resources are we going to need? And again, based on the values and where the organization wants to go, how do we start to fill those gaps? And so I think, again, roadmap is critical, because otherwise, because we've been in silos for so long, it starts to become a well why are they getting in Wired, I get it, like, will you get yours in 24 months, but in the next 12 months, we need to focus on this because otherwise yours isn't going to work. So I think there needs to be kind of a shift in the way the cross departmental mechanics are working. And especially in nonprofits, that doesn't mean dumping more work on someone else's plate, it means getting really clear on what are the critical, essential things that we need held? who's holding it? And what does that budget look like? And I think nonprofit tech infrastructure is going to skyrocket and how critical and essential that support is, we're already I think we're seeing kind of like the beginning curve of that where, you know, there's been an exodus from the for profit, people want to feel good and enjoy the hurt, you know, experience on this planet in a way that the corporate world may not afford. And so I think we've seen a lot of talent come into the nonprofit space. And you know, the trick is going to be how do we deploy that talent? For the best at these these organizations? Yeah, just for

Tony Kopetchny  43:07  
anyone who is making that transition, just pacing, think about pacing, when you come over to the nonprofit side, you are going to have to have more meetings and get to know people and get into conversations. You're just not going to lay a plan out and start hammering away like,

Rachel Kimber  43:23  
yeah, no and inclination. And that again, when I came to smile, train, my inclination was like, I know how to fix this. I know how to solve it, I'm going to get it done quickly. And then I looked at who are the people that I need to bring with me? And I realized, I may have answers, I may have solutions, I need to make sure that everybody is on board. And that takes time that takes relationship building. And that's, again, moving at the speed of trust.

Tony Kopetchny  43:48  
moving at speed of trust, we got to have confidence. Yeah, that is there was the pandemic, six months in or whatever. And it was it was some report where they showed that digital transformation curve, six, you know, whatever, 10 years and six months, but as like that didn't hit the nonprofit space yet. I think to your point, it's, it's just coming in right now. And every people have to think about that. And they've got to think beyond just technology. This is about your staff. This is about how your staffing, this is about what you're doing with staff. And it's interesting to see you and I talked about that like there was that one piece, essentially like what's the upstream of digital transformation? And I've been thinking long, hard about that. And I do think it's finance and HR. And then when you think about systems because they are cross departments, it's a horizontal, not vertical of the organization. Where does the governance sit? And often we would think about who's the one person who's going to govern the system and I think in recent conversations coming around to is the power of a governance committee again, that comes from the different departments and there was University of Buffalo folks who were telling me that one thing they did with theirs is there is HR representation on it and finance representation within their digital cover In its management team, and I was like, brilliant, because there's no HR is never taken aback like, oh, you need what type of talent now or finances like, oh, it required X, they're just in it.

Rachel Kimber  45:12  
I thought that was finance and HR because the nonprofit model is lean. Right? So who has time? Right? You're, you're the technology expert, you deal with it. And, and so again, like this collaborative thing, it takes time, it's slower. It's a little clunkier in efficiency practices, but you ultimately end up with a better end product, you end up with a really clear picture of where are we going? And how do we get there? And if you don't have HR and finance on board, yeah, and it's not going anywhere fast.

Tony Kopetchny  45:44  
So it's the African proverb, if you want to go fast, go by yourself, if you want to go far go together. Yes. Yeah, I have. Gotta hold true to that everybody. We got to we're in this together, just move forward to just, you know, thinking about other models that are out there. Oh, wait, no, sorry. I'm gonna get to another question. First, because we are talking about integration. There, there is a phrase that you've used in conversations before you've referred to yourself as a human API. And I just thought that was really cool. And I started telling everybody about it. And I told my wife, she doesn't she's, she's a performance artist. And she was like, why not explain it to her? She's like, No, that is really cool. I was like, Yeah, it's really cool. To tell people about human ape. Yeah,

Rachel Kimber  46:28  
no, I think it comes down to what you were talking about with the Governance Committee, right? You need people and understand, what is the technical lift? How much is it going to cost to bring in consultants? How long is it going to take? Do we have resources and team members like all of that, somebody who is pretty close to the work, right, what I consider the system owner needs to be involved in kind of betting and helping get some of that information together. And then presenting those ideas to the strategy drivers, right? Like, who is deciding that these three projects are most critical to driving our strategy? And, you know, meeting our roadmap goals? I think it's that role, that human API who needs to sit between the technological, you know, development conversations, and then helping drive strategy and helping explain, you know, why is this $50,000 development project critical this year? And so as a human API, I try to help bridge that right, like, really deep technical understanding, and what is it going to take to make this happen? And do we have all the, you know, component parts to it? And then does this fit within strategy? And can I make that pitch really clear, so that we can get again, the financial HR resources to make it go? So that's the human API part is being able to explain, you know, things like you were talking about, like I could come in guns blazing. And you know, let's get this done. But it's not helping anyone, right? What's going to help everyone is to understand, why are we doing this? What's the end goal? And then really clearly laying out? How are we going to get there. And I think, again, going back to the roadmap, it's making knowledge explicit. You're all experts, we all know what we need to do to get through our day to earn our paycheck to hit those goals and get a good performance review. What is so critical, is making sure that all of those pieces are aligning across the organization. And that's not easy work. And sometimes that will take a third party to come in and kind of help everyone get, you know, lined up. The vision that just came to mind is like when you're doing the school photographs, photographers stand this way and turn that way. So it's a little bit like that you need somebody to come in and just kind of help like, this is this is the shape of it. And it's iterative. You know, you're not coming in and saying, do it this way. You're saying, based on my expertise, this is what makes sense. And then, you know, the strategy team comes back and says, where we're trying to go isn't quite that right. Like, let's iterate let's have a conversation. Again, underscore hashtag collaborative learning. Nobody has all of the answers and all of the expertise. And so as we can start coming together and figuring out how to communicate around these tricky parts will make progress, we'll actually start seeing some of these tricky problems of the world resolved, as opposed to 30 years later, watching, you know, the problems into

Tony Kopetchny  49:24  
Yeah, I mean, that the API part, I mean, that connectivity showing people that connections between all these various pieces, whether it's between programs, or, or software systems, like the stuff connects, here's what it's going to look like. And then you can start to think about even broadening like, wow, I didn't even realize you had that type of data over there. I could actually start to use some of that in my research, that would be great. I know.

Rachel Kimber  49:46  
Exactly explicit knowledge. If it's, again, a lift, it's in your brain that all makes sense to you. To get other people to come along with you. You need to take some time, write it down, share it with the folks that will help you move it forward. Yeah.

Tony Kopetchny  50:00  
and really important point you're making there too, just that connection matters because it is easy to fall back into the rhythm of this was my performance plan for this year, here's where I'm at inside of this group, these are the people I see on my weekly meeting, then, you know, it's not that you're not wanting to talk to the people just don't see them as often. And then you're like, oh, man, I should have, I should have gone over there and made that connection, lots

Rachel Kimber  50:20  
of connection. And again, that takes time, it takes time to have those conversations and connect all those dots. But again, it's a more powerful way of moving through digital transformation, or, you know, whatever the change management journey is taking the time to connect the dots and bring people along.

Tony Kopetchny  50:37  
Yeah, there's something there just right, the people doing the work. We have society in the US, at least we've gotten so used Thomas instant demand, I could just, I needed that thing. Oh, well, there's Amazon gonna get it, it's gonna be in my house tomorrow. Like, you don't put the work we're doing, it's just not going to happen that way. So it's it's trying to level set your expectations of things that have been happening so fast around you in life was needing that pace and the time to build the trust, move at the speed of trust and build the confidence. And even like, if you really think about that I'm like, a year to achieve some of these goals. Pretty fast. Oh, five years, three years, like for massive radical changes? That's fast? Yes.

Rachel Kimber  51:19  
I mean, again, digital transformation. And something like a digital strategy is relatively new, right? There's marketing strategies or social media strategies, but to really stop and think about what is our digital strategy. And those people who are coming off foundation connects, because they're sunsetting, that tool, it's an opportunity to really get reflective and decide, does this tool align with where we're trying to go? Right? Is this meeting our needs in a very, like big picture kind of way? But taking the time to do that, instead of this is what we've been on. We're just going to stick with it. Like that's, that's a fine knee jerk reaction. But I don't think you're doing the organization any service by just picking the easy answer

Tony Kopetchny  51:59  
makes you feel comfortable, but it creeps up on the end that it gets pretty quick. Yeah, we're here in the States. It's it's easy to just be lost in what we do nationally and some of the conference's we go to and talk to other people just within the states. And but certainly we are not the center of the universe, there is a wide world out there have a lot of interesting things happening. And just, you know, what are you seeing out there just for kinds of innovations that we might be paying attention to and other parts of

Rachel Kimber  52:27  
things that you've thought about? I think it goes more into like the grant structure and conversation and the technology. Again, I think there's lots of emergent tools out there across the pond down under, you know, definitely I think, exploring what is out there as far as digital technology goes, is is worth doing. As far as grant making structure goes, it just listened to a podcast with Brian Mitchell efflux. And she was speaking with Devall son, Debbie sandvi, based out of India and decided that because it's become so difficult to do grant making in India because of the restrictions, and you know, Indian due diligence, it took me 15 years to become expert at us due diligence. And so if you're grant making to India, you're basically being asked to learn a whole other due diligence structure, which is massive, right? It's like this is no small feat. Deval is working with an intermediary structure, which Borealis philanthropies Australia Foundation, there are lots of organizations stateside that do similar work. And so I think there's a lot of power in leaning into intermediary partnerships where you want to work in a region or with a population of people. But because you're a large grant making organization, you might not have the kinds of relationships that an intermediary might. So I think that's a really neat approach. I also look to New Zealand, frequently. It's a region where the sectors are a lot closer together. So you can have you know, the head of a government body, sitting down with the head of a philanthropy, sitting down with the person who is running, you know, the child, nonprofit. And so you get those three people around the table and you're like, Okay, we have a problem with truancy at schools in this region of the country, what are we going to do. And so it's just really neat to see that synergy happening in real time. In the United States. Obviously, there's a lot of expansive spread between the different sectors. And so I love to kind of look to New Zealand, as many case studies and how you can really get different layers moving in the same direction, which not easy work, and New Zealand is a fantastic place to check out. And then in Central America, there's this neat trend where it's become dangerous to register as a social justice organization, so many NGOs in Central and South America. And they're not even NGOs they're kind of like these dispersive entities will come together and collaborate to acquire a 501 C three equivalents. status, and then be able to receive grant making funds and safely distribute them to the organizations that are doing social justice work. So that's another really neat model in using what are the grant making structures that the United States has in place in order, again, my calling is to move the resources from the folks that have it to the folks that need it. Those are just some really great current event examples of how folks are doing that. I think

Tony Kopetchny  55:26  
some of those, even just for trying to reestablish small local nonprofits here within the US that are doing direct service within communities, I mean, at that Central American model sounds really interesting in a way to sort of pull these really tiny groups together to try to find ways to disperse the money locally, just thinking about things I've seen in different small towns that I've been visiting and talking to people within.

Rachel Kimber  55:51  
And then there's my plug for Community Foundation's Leon Wilson at Cleveland Community Foundation is also a technologist and doing incredible work in weaving those two themes together of small, regional, local grant making, and what does technology do to support those local needs?

Tony Kopetchny  56:08  
Thank you for this awesome conversation today. I appreciate it. I always love talking with you. Thank you so much for all this and anyone who has been a regular listener of this show. You do know we end with same question of all of our guests, because we have created a Spotify channel to help you get through your weekend work or you're hanging out or whatever you want to do, and you're running or doing some house errands. But what is your go to song when you need a boost? And why?

Rachel Kimber  56:34  
Um, yeah, my like, end of day dance it out is Lizzo It's about damn time, because it's about damn time, because it's about damn time.

Tony Kopetchny  56:45  
Thank you. We're gonna add that into our Spotify list. I really appreciate it. I know speaking on behalf of the audience that you've given us a lot to think about today. So really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for being with us.

Rachel Kimber  56:57  
Thank you, Tony. Bye bye now.

Unknown Speaker  57:00  
Thank you for listening. Join us again for more engaging ideas with your host Parsons TKO CEO Tony Kopetchny. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a comment and share with your friends. Send us your feedback at create change at Parsons tko.com.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai