How can you build resilient nonprofit organizations and teams?

​​Farra Trompeter: Welcome to the Smart Communications Podcast. This is Farra Trompeter, co-director and worker-owner at Big Duck. Today we’re going to ask the question: How can you build resilient nonprofit organizations and teams? And I am delighted to be joined by Peter Heller. Peter uses he/him pronouns and is the founder of Heller Fundraising Group based in New York City, with clients everywhere. Their firm collaborates with organizations to achieve transformative results, helping them raise more funds to advance their missions. A nationally recognized strategist, with over 30 years of experience, Peter has led the Heller Fundraising Group for more than two decades, helping nonprofits secure over $1 billion through capital campaigns, major gift programs, feasibility studies, and training. Peter, welcome to the show.

​​Peter Heller: Wow. I sound great.

​​Farra Trompeter: You sound great. You are great. Come on, everyone needs, everyone pat themselves on the back right now.

​​Peter Heller: That’s great. Thanks for that great introduction. It’s great to be here.

​​Farra Trompeter: My pleasure. Thanks for joining us. Well, we are recording this conversation on February 26th, 2025. And I named that date because it is just over a month of the inauguration of the President of the United States. And it has been a time of challenge for many, particularly in the nonprofit sector. I know that perhaps it’s just my feeds, but almost everywhere I look, I am seeing the word “resilient” and the need for resilience. And I just want to start there. What does resilience mean to you, Peter? How do you define it?

​​Peter Heller: Well, first off, I just want to point out, Farra, that we started chatting about this way before the election was over, and we already knew that it was an important thing in the nonprofit world because we all, you know, regardless of who’s president or the, you know, really challenging or, or scary things that are happening or the good things that are happening, we need to be, what I say, taking care of ourselves and our organizations. And we need to be resilient. So I look at it for starters to like really starting with the self and self-care, because if we look at any nonprofit organization and any company or you know, any other structure, I’m saying the obvious thing, but there’s people inside there. And people are the most important part of every organization. Sometimes we lose focus on that. We’re like, “Oh, you know, our mission.” But in fact, it’s the people who are carrying out the mission, both for the community of other people and by coming to their jobs and doing it. So we have to make sure that to be resilient as an organization, first, we have to take care of ourselves.

Peter Heller: And there’s a lot of different ways that shows up. Even in The New York Times. There’s always articles about best self-care for this and that best, you know, exercises for this and that, best foods for this and that. So I’m not endorsing that The New York Times knows how to do everything in the world, at all. But, but my point is that it’s very much out there in the world, and that I think that both the employees at any level in a nonprofit organization and its leadership staff and board need to be really aware that staff are being given jobs that can be done in a reasonable way, and that they’re not going to experience nonprofit burnout. And that, you know, that’s easier said than done because for all kinds of reasons.

​​Farra Trompeter: And we, we’ve talked about burnout on the show. We’ve talked about ways folks can take care of themselves. We’ll link to some of those episodes in the show notes at bigduck.com/insights. Peter, I do, before we go to the next topic though, I’m curious, do you have like a definition of the word “resilient” or “resilience” that you hold in your mind or that you’ve seen online somewhere? That is the way we can think about that word as we go into the conversation.

​​Peter Heller: Great. Well, I have a definition that I hold on Google.

​​Farra Trompeter: There you go.

​​Peter Heller: So I’m reading right here, which I, and I think it’s a great definition. It says “The capacity to withstand or recover quickly from difficulties.” And, you know, that starts all the way from childhood. I’m sure you’ve heard people talk about, you know, “Children are really resilient. They bounce back from things.” And, it’s the same thing for a successful, thriving nonprofit, is it, it really needs to have the ability to keep going and recover quickly from difficulties. And I think it’s kind of the definition of a CEO or executive director’s job is like: Deal with difficulties all day long and keep going.

​​Farra Trompeter: For some reason, I was just on a webinar yesterday where we talked about being Gen X, the presenter and I, and I have just the song Chumbawamba’s Tubthumping, “I get knocked down, but I jump up again”, or whatever that is.

​​Peter Heller: Now. Yeah, “I get knocked down. I get up again.” Exactly.

​​Farra Trompeter: There you go. So now that’s gonna be an earworm in everyone’s mind. So, let’s talk about this idea of getting knocked down and coming back up again. Let’s talk about this idea of resilience and more in the nonprofit world. You started speaking about this a moment ago, but how does it show up specifically for people on staff? And how, what it means when staff are resilient and supported in being resilient, or perhaps when they’re not?

​​Peter Heller: Well, look, we’ve got all kinds of people showing up as staff members and as bosses and leaders. And when I look at our 20 years of clients, I can go, “Oh my God, this one. Like, yeah, they, that was a really tough place for people to work. Oh, this one was great. People were really respected and look at the, the amazing work they did.” And first of all, you know, I’m not a believer in that, like, “Oh, look at that amazing work. But, you know, he abused his family” or what I, I’m not a, like, everything needs to line up for me. Like, you can’t be in an organization doing amazing work that’s having stressed out and, you know, and not a well-functioning staff. That doesn’t work for me. And, you know, we also see it all over the place. So there’s always, you know, you can look at resilience also as the continued effort to improve and make things better inside your organization and for the community you serve. I don’t know if I’m answering your question, but that’s what comes to mind for me.

​​Farra Trompeter: We’ll go with it. We’ll go with it about, I want keep talking a little bit about this idea of cultivating resilience. You talked about leaders, right? So, what can leaders do within organizations? How can they foster skills and practices that really welcome this idea of being adaptable and nimble to situations?

​​Peter Heller: All kinds of things come to mind for me. I’ll give a kind of strange example. So we did a campaign at a synagogue. We’ve done a lot of synagogue campaigns and we did one about six years ago and the theme of the campaign was “A home for the future of Judaism”. And they ended up raising $16 million. It was a wonderful campaign, they were able to build more space and really welcome their community even better. And what we suggested was they wanted to embody that phrase “A home for the future of Judaism.” And they already were in a lot of ways, I’m not going to get into like the details of that, but what we suggested was that they actually take that concept and bring it into their senior leadership team meetings and discuss “How are we going to action this concept through our programs? Through our work with our members?”

​​Peter Heller: And the reason I bring that up is that their concept for their campaign was something that was in and of itself a building of resilience because they were a home for the, for the future of their faith. But at the same time, resilience doesn’t just happen by like, you know, “I’m snapping my fingers. It happens.” You need to figure out how to weave the process of consciously thinking about it, you know, into your work life. So bringing that discussion into senior staff meetings and then, and then taking action throughout the organization. And I don’t care if you’re a synagogue or not, it’s, it’s just that kind of thing, you know, having a senior staff like, “Okay, geez, what’s resilience? What does that mean to us? How do we make sure, you know, yeah, sure, we believe everybody needs to do self-care, but how do we actually inspire people? And make sure that people are taking care of themselves? Oh, I see. So and so was working super late last night. What, you know, is that because there was a deadline or is that, is there something going on? They need some support or something like that?”

​​Farra Trompeter: Yeah, as you were talking, I had two thoughts. One is we recently did a podcast, my colleagues Brenda and Claire, on how can values strengthen your organization? Right? So the idea of resilience, being nimble, being adaptable might be a value for an organization that they may hold. And whenever you have a value, or you don’t want to just put it on your website or your annual report or your capital campaign case statement. You want to make sure it’s alive and well within the organization. And as you were saying too, sometimes these brand identities, these campaign themes for us, brand strategy or positioning, right? These aren’t just ideas that sound nice on paper. They have to be authentically rooted in who the organization is. So, sometimes there’s a chicken and the egg. Sometimes there’s a great tagline or a great idea, that then we think about how do we make that real? Other times it’s how do we sort of mine: What is the essence of us and figure out what to call it? So, I think that’s an interesting thing you brought up there.

Farra Trompeter: The other thing I wanted to share, and we’ve been talking a lot about it on our team, especially the past few weeks, which have been hard for folks individually, as well as being leaders in our organization and, and partners with our clients, is the spheres of influence. So, people may or may not be familiar with it, and I’ll be sure to link to an article in the transcript at bigduck.com/insights. But this idea of these concentric circles: Things I can control, or the circle of control; Things I can influence or the circle of influence; and then things that are outside of my control or the circle of concern. And sometimes it can just be helpful, in these moments, to just map things out. What can I control right now? What can I influence? And what is outside of my control? I need to be concerned about it, I need to be aware of it, but I should put my energy elsewhere. And I think that can also be a helpful tool that folks can use in day-to-day situations or big-picture planning. So I want to offer that into our conversation.

​​Peter Heller: Thank you. And the reality is that the majority of things in our work and in our lives are out of our control.

​​Farra Trompeter: That is true, right?

​​Peter Heller: Figuring out the things that are actually in our control. What time do I wake up in the morning? What do I do with my free time? What do I eat? What, you know, how do I…

​​Farra Trompeter: How do I nourish myself physically, emotionally, spiritually? All of that.

​​Peter Heller: When I sit down at my desk at home, or I go to an office, how do I make sure I’m focusing on the most urgent tasks of the day, or the week, or the month?

​​Farra Trompeter: Right, right. These are all things.

​​Peter Heller: Yeah. We had a staff member a while ago who’s like, “Well, we’re all really busy.” And I was like, “Yeah, that’s not the point. Are we focusing on the things that matter most?”

​​Farra Trompeter: Yeah, I think examples are good. I’ve gotten good feedback when we ask for folks at the end of the podcast, we often ask guests for examples just so people can apply these ideas. And I’m wondering, Peter, if you can share an example of a nonprofit or folks you’ve seen out there that have used communications or fundraising to build or sustain resilience?

​​Peter Heller: Yeah, so I want to focus on fundraising because that’s our expertise. So, I’m gonna say a couple things. There’s two points I want to make, and I see this again and again. One is a kind of the secret positive outcome of really good fundraising and especially of a really good capital campaign. The other is a cautionary tale about making sure you build resilience. So the first thing is that when a nonprofit’s development team does fundraising really well, or when a nonprofit’s development team runs a capital campaign really well, either way, it’s a team sport, meaning you’ve got the staff in development, you’ve got the executive director or CEO, you have board members and perhaps other volunteers, and you have donors. Through that effort, you obviously want to raise a lot of money and as much as you can. And at the same time, if it’s done really well, you’ve knitted together the community even more around your purpose and your mission of making your particular community stronger and better in the future. And, you’ll find that you know, just by virtue of people sending, spending time together on a campaign committee or a fundraising committee, or having to talk about how you explain your organization in a really focused way, and this is talking about communications and the work you do, you get a goal, but you also get people connecting more deeply. And that’s, that builds resilience because people understand each other better, they care about each other more. They’re all like sticking to their resolve and plowing forward in the same way.

​​Peter Heller: I’m gonna pause there and then say the, the second thing, the cautionary tale is we’re we have an organization we’re working with now, this has happened a whole bunch of times in the past where an organization will depend way too heavily on a single donor for their annual budget. The organization right now, in a few years, they’re going to lose an $8 million gift. Luckily they have a runway to know about that. But you need to have diversified fundraising streams. It’s amazing to have that $8 million. And I’m not saying you should be like, “Oh, we know exactly what’s going to happen when that leaves.” I mean, that’s part of what we’re working with them on, but getting really dependent on that, it can cause all kinds of problems. And I, you know, I could list like three or four examples just like that. So resilience to me means diversifying your top donor pool.

​​Farra Trompeter: Yeah. And I know you, your organization, our organization primarily focus on building relationships with individuals, right? Whether they are your donors, your prospects, your activists, your program participants, your volunteers. What we’re seeing now too is organizations challenged by, they were reliant on federal funds, and some of those federal funds are going away or being challenged or being threatened to take away. And so this need for diversifying of funds is certainly coming up more and more in conversations, so I appreciate you naming it. We may have covered this, but I’m just curious for you just, you know, as we wrap things up, how can we connect a resilient organizational future to a fundraising campaign? Right? You mentioned the word future a minute ago. You were talking about that theme of the campaign. So much of this idea of being adaptable and yeah again, getting back up after you’ve been knocked down, is about not only how we approach the moment, but how we set ourselves up for the future. So how does this, all this idea, connect to a fundraising campaign even beyond what you were just mentioning?

​​Peter Heller: Well, here’s another little secret that we use, and I’m sure you’re quite familiar with this because of your communications work. I’m going to focus on this future idea, which is, it’s very simple, but it’s also very powerful. The best fundraising tells the story of a stronger future for the community that your nonprofit serves. So, it’s not actually about your nonprofit, it’s about the community you serve. And any community that is stronger in the future is, by definition, more resilient. So a lot of organizations get caught up in number one, they talk about themselves. Number two, they’ll talk about, like, if it’s a capital campaign, they’ll talk about how important this building is that we’re building or, or the endowment that we’re building. Those can be important, but the overarching story that needs to sit on top of that is a stronger community that’s going to be in the future, whether the future is six months or three years from now, or whatever.

​​Farra Trompeter: Great. I love it. Well, I like optimism. I like hope. Let’s go forward with that. If you’re out there and you’d like to connect with Peter, learn more about what the Heller Fundraising Group does, access some helpful resources that they have, and more, go to hellerfundraisinggroup.com. Peter, before we sign off, any other advice or thoughts you’d like to share with our listeners?

​​Peter Heller: Keep it real.

​​Farra Trompeter: There you go. I like it. Keep it 100, keep it real. All right, everyone, have a great day out there and take care.