Nonprofit Hub Radio
Whether starting a nonprofit or taking an existing cause to the next level, The Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast is about breaking down how nonprofits can grow. Each episode features an interview with a sector star with insight, stories, or ideas that can take your nonprofit from good to excellence. Join host Meghan Speer every week to make your good go further!
Nonprofit Hub Radio
Building Sustainable Nonprofits Through Better Leadership
If you’ve ever tried to run a nonprofit on passion alone, you know where that road leads: long hours, reactive decisions, and donor updates that feel like fire drills. We sat down with Lauren Reilly, executive director of the Gratitude Network, to map a different path—one where nonprofit leaders claim the tools CEOs use and apply them to mission-driven work without losing soul.
We start by flipping a core belief: a nonprofit is a business. Lauren shares how to trade busywork for “CEO sprints,” short, focused blocks that pull you out of the weeds and into strategy. We unpack the difference between being a servant leader and starving your team of autonomy, and we show how mentorship, advisors, and executive coaching play distinct roles in a healthy leadership system. From crisis communication plans that calm donors to accountability rhythms that grow your next tier of leaders, you’ll get practical habits you can put on the calendar this week.
If you’re ready to replace scarcity thinking with systems, and replace burnout with durable impact, this conversation will give you the prompts, tools, and next steps to lead with clarity. Enjoy the insights, share them with your team, and if this helped, subscribe, leave a review, and tell us the one habit you’re committing to this month.
Get free nonprofit professional development resources, connections to cause work peers, and more at https://nonprofithub.org
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Speaker 2:Welcome back to the Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast. I'm your host, Megan Speer, joined today by Lauren Riley, who's the executive director at the Gratitude Network. You may have seen Lauren at CauseCamp this year. She was on our main stage to rave reviews. So we're super excited to have her in on the podcast today. Lauren, welcome in. Hi, good to be here. So, Lauren, tell our audience a little bit about yourself and kind of the work that you've done over the years that brought you to the conversation today.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. So I'm a former New York City educator. I taught ninth and twelfth grade in the South Bronx. Realized very quickly our schools are failing, our black and brown children. And so, one, because I like to paint out the lines, and two, thought I could drive stronger outcomes. I jumped into the nonprofit space, realized just as quickly of I cared a lot about children. I had a lot of passion, but I didn't know how to run a business. And at the end of the day, a nonprofit is a business. And luckily, I had a lot of support and mentorship that helped me figure out oh, this is how you grow and scale nonprofits. And so for the last 15 years, I have been building startup nonprofits and helping them grow and scale like a business. And so my current work, I'm the executive director of Gratitude Network. And what we do is we identify children and youth nonprofits and we give them a 13-month fellowship where they do exactly that. They learn how to grow and scale their nonprofit in a sustainable and accelerated fashion.
Speaker 2:I love it. You said the one thing that people are probably tired of me saying on the podcast. So I'm really excited that somebody else said it because I feel like nearly an episode goes by where I do not say the phrase nonprofit is just a tax status. You still have to run it like a business. I'm sure that there are people listening to this right now, like rolling their eyes, being like, oh my gosh, get a new phrase. But I'm really glad that someone else said it. That's great.
Speaker 1:Oh, a hundred percent. This is my my team is tired of me talking about it. It's all I talk about is yep. We come in with a background of passion. You can't run your nonprofit on passion alone. Can't you?
Speaker 2:Agreed. Okay, so to that end, that's actually a really great segue into the topic at hand today. Because you cannot grow and scale a business or a nonprofit without a solid leader. None nothing is going to move without that leadership. And I earlier this week was talking to an organization that was helping do some budget planning for 2026. And I asked about their budget for leadership development. The executive director at this organization is newer. She's been in her role for about two years. I asked about it, and she said, Oh, yeah, we have a budget for that. It's $39 a year. Yep. What do you possibly expect someone to learn and accomplish with $39 a year?
Speaker 1:No. Besides your like LinkedIn premium, $39.99, and only that, that's not helping you as a leader. That's a subscription.
unknown:Correct.
Speaker 2:So yeah. So I think somewhere along the line, we've lost the like the idea that we need to invest in leaders in nonprofits, which I think is really sad. So let's kind of level set today and talk about the importance of leadership development, how we can do it, what the good framework for that would look like, and also how we can do it maybe if we only do have $39 a year. Really more than that, because man, we would love to see you at CauseCamp. There's so many options of things we would love to have happen for you. But man, I just wish that we were investing in folks that way and valued that and the importance.
Speaker 1:Especially if you think about right, nonprofit leaders are supposed to solve, you know, the world's scariest problems. Everything from, you know, the sustainability, right, sustainable development goals for the UN to making sure that, you know, kittens and puppies have places to be safe and feet communities get fed. And like though, again, the world's most scariest problems. Yet we give them the most limited resources when we when it really does come to how to not only grow their business, but then how to develop themselves and take care of themselves. And if I think about nonprofit leaders, they deserve the same tools that CEOs get. Right. If we think about for-profit CEOs, they get data, they get coaching, they get strategy, they get communities. And then if you really pull back the layers here, nonprofit leaders are literally the people who put themselves last. They will put together budgets for professional development for their team.
unknown:Right.
Speaker 1:And then realize, oh, I only left myself with $39 for my one subscription.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Absolutely. So I would venture to say that there are probably nonprofit leaders listening to this right now going, oh, yep, mm-hmm. That's me. I can relate. I we're in that same boat. If somebody let's talk to that leader for just a second. First of all, how do we get them to understand that they are worth the investment? And then from there, what steps can they take to make that happen?
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I mean, we we hear right a lot of the professional development or coaching that nonprofit leaders get is really around work-life balance. And while that is important, I completely understand because you know it's that you can't pour from an empty cup. We hear that a lot. So nonprofit leaders need a lot of work-life balance coaching. But actually, that's right, that's support, that's mentorship. When I think about what a CEO, right, a nonprofit executive director, CEO, whatever you want to call yourself, actually needs, right? It's coaching around how to build your business in a sustainable fashion, which if you're doing that correctly, you will have work-life balance. You will have a productive team, you will have everything that you need. And so as I think about what I don't, I almost push nonprofit leaders of like, hey, get your mini MBA. Doesn't have to be an MBA, right? Doesn't have to be, you know, a certificate from Cornell or Harvard who are charging a fortune for these nonprofit, you know, tools. But how do you start to understand business frameworks? I'm really big on Vern Harnish's scaling up. Um, if you haven't looked at that book, that's phenomenal of really just thinking through what are some of those, you know, the business acumen or what are those business frameworks that you can do so that you're not the only one that's pull pushing forward because a lot of nonprofits were not efficient and we don't know we're not efficient. Uh, and that's the problem, right? It's acknowledging, hey, we can be doing this way better. We could be doing it faster, we could be doing it with higher quality, but you don't give that leader the time to step back and almost look at that 40,000 feet looking down. If the leader is always in the weeds, working in the business instead of on the business, that becomes problematic.
Speaker 2:So good. So I think one of the things that I heard you say, and I would love to expand upon it, right? Um, is this idea that let's actually let's first of all let's talk about in versus on. Yes. Right? Yes. Because I can imagine that there are some, especially some of our startup friends who are going, the I am the only one, right? I'm always in it. I'm always on it. I'm always in the weeds because I am the only person. And so we we do see you. There is going to come a day when that is not the case. But I think some of the things that and I I part of it just is a really unrealistic expectation for a nonprofit executive, right? That they're going to have to run a successful business and also solve all the problems of the world. It is legitimately like the hardest job. Yeah, it's a couple with the most unrealistic expectations. Yep. But within that, I'm curious your thoughts. Are there flags that you can see or like kind of stones in the ground of like, okay, this is where I know I'm too far into it and I need to take a step back. What does that look like? How do we evaluate that as leaders?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. So one of the things that I always look at, right, when you're and I push a lot of the CEOs that we coach through this of like, all right, working in the business means isn't the same as being a servant leader, right? I think we see that a lot. Oh, I'm a servant leader. I have to roll up my sleeves, I have to be with my team. Well, your team also needs that guidance. Your team also needs that strategic vision. So actually, you're doing your team long-term a disservice if you are always in the weeds. Because one, you're either taking autonomy from them, you're not allowing them the professional space to grow, and you're not developing your next tier of leadership. And so that's kind of a red flag for yourself of, hey, am I actually necessary? Who am whose life am I making easier? Who's who am I making feel better? Am I trying to make myself feel better, my team feel better? And really start to dig into that. One of the things, and I'm the worst at it. I feel like I will, oh yeah, I'll serve pizza, I'll stay for cleanup, but not realizing, hey, that's actually gonna hurt because I don't have brain power then to think strategically. So one of the things that we do here at Gratitude is we call them CEO sprints. And whether it's an hour on your calendar or you can't get an hour because you're a team of one, you know, maybe it's 20 minutes every two weeks. But that is you either get off your computer, you go for a walk, or it's something where you stare at a blank screen or a word doc and you just do a CEO sprint. And it's purposeful, right? An hour, 20 minutes where you're not in the weeds and you are writing one big idea, one milestone, one new SOP, right? Standard operating procedure, one new innovation you want to try. And then at least you have a log, right? You do it once a week or every two weeks, you have a fairly good chunk of thinking time, which will ultimately end up turning into action longer term.
Speaker 2:I love that. And it's I like the actionable there. Of like, no, I could set aside I can give myself half an hour every other week. Yes.
Speaker 1:And at first, I will say, at first, you might need an accountability buddy. Like I've got another executive director, and we do it, we do it together. We go on a walk and we write, we're on the phone and we're talking through it, CEO to CEO. She doesn't know a lot about my business, but enough to know that she can be someone, but it's an accountability partner to make sure it actually gets done. Because if you're like me, you move things on your Google calendar, you're like, oh, I don't need that. I can do it later. I can move that. Yeah, you can't move it when it's a call.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No, that's great. And I think it it speaks to there's a kind of a community in business, right? And then an idea that like I can be with other leaders and I can work with other business partners collaboratively, that somehow we've lost a little bit in the nonprofit space. We're not we view it as competition because we don't want we're competing for the same dollars or the same grants or the donors or whatever the case may be. And that spirit of of competition I think has done us a disservice as leaders. Oh, 100%. As opposed to the folks who are in the for-profit space who just naturally bend more towards that collaborative approach. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, and it comes from, I feel like, a scarcity mindset. And US nonprofits are like the worst about this. Because again, gratitude's a global organization, and we love hearing from our global orgs of like, you know, that like you can do what you're doing with half the budget. This is what we do with a $10,000 budget. And all of our nonprofit leaders in the US are like, what you do, what? With what? And so again, that like talking with other leaders, and I do, I sit in a women's CEO circle. Uh, they're all for-profit women CEOs. Because again, I don't, you're right, nonprofit leaders don't play well in the sandbox. Um, that is, I guess, the next actionable. Find a nonprofit bestie. Um as your next as your next and recognize that, like, hey, there is enough, there is enough philanthropy in the world, there is enough funders. And to be honest, we're hearing more and more from funders. They want nonprofits coming to them together and saying, we both do youth development. Here's how we do it slightly different. We want a larger grant to work together and to make this change for the community. So nonprofit leaders should be talking more often, not just for leadership development and a peer, but also because funders are saying, hey, we want you to come together and figure out ways to work together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Talk a little bit then about some of the the way I really like the idea of getting yourself into a group like that, whether it's for female CEOs or whatever the niche might be, maybe there's one in your city, your town, however it is, and learning. I think this is the other man, if I could just like tear down a silo. Yep. Uh somehow we have this idea that the for-profits are we don't want to be like them.
Speaker 1:Right. But there's you don't want to be profitable, you don't want to pay yourself more, you don't want to have better benefits.
Speaker 2:Exactly. There's so much to be learned though from those thought processes. Yeah, especially if, and I I know this is true for a lot of leaders, they've come up and don't have that business acumen, right? They didn't go to business school. Yeah, they don't have an accounting degree or a marketing degree or finance degree. There's so much to be gained from the for-profit side when we can stop looking at it as like, oh, those evil for-profiters, right? Yeah. I'd love to learn what your experience has been with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we uh we've actually taken a lot of learnings. And actually, we I'm a Goldman Sachs 10,000 small business alum. And that was something that I learned of like, hey, I can take a lot of the prints the principles that I like from the for-profit world and I can apply them to the nonprofit sector. I don't have to take all of my principles, but I can take the ones that are going to make me a more successful business. And donors are right, donors are getting smarter. They want business savvy executive directors. They want you to understand terms like ROI, right? Return on investment. Even though it's not an investment, it's a donation. But being able to say, as a donor, this is what you're getting, right? This is what your investment allows us to do, and having really concrete metrics, but they also want you to be able to talk about your operations costs and how you're keeping them low and what you're doing to scale. That's going to impress a donor far more, right, than some of those hearts, puppies, and rainbow stories. You need both, right? But donors are getting, especially with corporate philanthropy, they want to hear more and more about how you are a smart nonprofit, not just a pull on the heart strengths nonprofit.
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Speaker 2:Like when we decide if a program is actually producing results, part of that has to be is it at least breaking even?
Speaker 1:And do you have a way to break even year over year over year, right? It can't be please, sir, can I have some more waiting for that donor? It's here is my strategy. And if that strategy doesn't work, here is the diverse revenue strategies I have.
Speaker 2:Yes. Well, because at some point, right, donors, you're to your point, donors are getting smarter. Yeah. If all you do is come to me with crisis after crisis about your funding, yeah, my assumption is that you just don't know how to manage your finances. Yeah. You don't know how to manage your organization. Yeah. And then I don't particularly want to keep giving to that.
Speaker 1:But then taking that example, right? Because nonprofits do experience crises. There's a difference between coming to a donor with that crisis versus, hey, our team just spent the last week creating a crisis communication plan, right? We'd love for you to take a look at it. We're experiencing these. These are our operating procedures for when crises happen. This is what we do, and here are the steps. A donor is going to be, whoa, blown away that you actually have a formalized document. And then when that crisis happens, hey, we're following step number two. Just wanted to give you a heads up. Is there anyone in your network who can help us get to that next step? And now you're showing, oh yeah, you're not reactive, you're proactive. So good. So good.
Speaker 2:So I'd love to know, Lauren, is there where do you feel like mentorship falls in there? Yep. Right. And how how important is that to development?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So what I right, and I, and this is another piece that we talk a lot about you have mentors, you have coaches, and you have advisors, right? Okay. Mentors are there, right? Mentors are there to support you in your needs, right? What do you need as a human? What do you need as a as a leader? Advisors are there to really to tap into like very concrete. You need help with finance, you know, you need help with marketing, you need help on strategy, right? And then you have executive coaches who are really coaching the frame, like your leadership framework and how you're running a team. And so I think if I am an executive director, the goal is, and hopefully people listening are thinking, oh yeah, here are my two that are mentors, here are my advisors. Oh, am I missing executive coaching, right? Which of those bodies am I missing in my like, you know, community that's going to help me as a leader? But being a leader is scary. It is very lonely at the top. And even if you have a work bestie, you have to pay that work bestie. So there is a power dynamic, whether you want to call it one or not. Sure. And so having right, having that coach or having that mentor is so important and making sure that you have a regular cadence. A lot of nonprofit leaders are scared to say, hey, would you mind talking with me quarterly? Or like, can I just put this on our calendar every other month? And if we need to skip one, we skip one. That's my favorite thing to do is I meet really smart business people. I say, Hey, I could learn a lot from you. Can I just put every quarter for us to do a 30-minute check-in? And if you need to skip it, you skip it. And I've learned so much from them because it's just on my calendar. It automatically is going to happen. And that's another good CEO sprint for me that day. Yeah. That's great.
Speaker 2:So when it comes to obviously, like we're not going to grow and scale without a solid leader. Yes. But there are the flip side, right? Is that I have talked to organizations who are scaling almost too fast. Growth has happened almost too quickly for them to keep up. So let's talk to that leader for a minute. If you find yourself in that mode where maybe, you know, all of a sudden you got a grant you weren't expecting and now we're we're doubling or program size has doubled or whatever the case may be, the snowball is is rolling. Down the hill we go. How do we keep up?
unknown:Yeah.
Speaker 2:How do we like as leaders? When do we know how to pull back and kind of pump the brakes a little bit on it?
Speaker 1:A hundred percent. Yeah. Everyone's always, oh, is mis is Mackenzie Scott gonna send me the seven million dollars, right? Uh is it gonna happen? Sometimes money is a blessing and a curse in the terms of hey, if your team is not ready for it, you can't serve another 30,000 children overnight. Your infrastructure. It's not there. And that's why we really push teams, whether they got the big grant or not, to have the frameworks in place. And so one of the one of like the frameworks that we use is this like product is king, distribution is kingdom, and profitability is your right to rule. And really that out. And I can I can say that again. Yeah. Like your product is king, right? So your service, right? Whatever your organization is doing, like that is the most important thing. And making sure that is codified and written down, right? My homeless shelter is the best because this is what we do. My program is excellent. The lives are changing. Here are true strong outcomes, and I can write those down. Now I go to the next thing, right? How big is my kingdom? Right. Distribution. How am I reaching the communities I need to reach? Are there new communities I haven't even thought about? Who are my partnerships? Am I missing partnerships? Am I actually creating scale? Or is it, oh, if I get the $7 million grant, we can scale, but if I don't, I've got no scaling plan. Then you know you're in trouble, right? That's you know an area where we got to actually go backwards because that there's no plan in place. And then last but not least, like profitability is your right to rule, right? Do you have the financial sustainability, right? What are those diverse revenue streams? Who's responsible for them, right? Where are the accountability measures? Do you have revert reserves for when like there is, you know, a downturn or financial aid is pulled or you know, something else happens that's out of your control? What do those reserves look like? And then a lot of nonprofits I'm pushing to have like earned income structures, right? Where like not just asking for a handout from a donor, but they're partnered with a school so that they can use school budget to do their programs, or they're partnered with a corporation and they're doing all of their employee engagement experiences, kind of that pay-to-play model, right? Like what are some of those things? Because then if you are a profitable nonprofit, and believe it or not, that's okay, right? We hope that you are, right? Then you deserve the right to rule your kingdom. You deserve to be there. And so I always love that framework because any nonprofit leader, whether you have a hundred thousand dollar budget or a five million dollar budget, can put those three things at the top. And you can see I'm a teacher, right? Like the worksheet. That's what the worksheet will look like. Yes. Put the three concepts at the top, and then you have your plan for each one. And it's a really fun exercise to do with your team, or it's a really fun CEO sprint to do on your own, and then have your team do it on their own and see where the gaps are, right? What you thought is true versus what they thought was true. And that could be a really, really great team offsite as well. So good. I love that.
Speaker 2:Okay. So if somebody is wanting to learn more about Gratitude Network, or tell us a little bit, first of all, again, about the work that you guys do and how somebody could get involved with it or how they would learn more.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. So gratitude stemmed out of this idea that nonprofit leaders need exactly the support I'm talking about, right? Everything from the executive coaching to the curriculum to the peer network. And so we're a 13-month fellowship where we pick about 30 leaders, all in children and youth. You have to be serving children and youth in education, basic human rights, or in healthcare. My big goal, let's get beyond children and youth. But right now that's where we're at because we are also scaling. And I'm thinking about my distribution as well. Sure. But yeah, that cohort, again, everyone receives a one-on-one executive coach. They go through 12 scaling up sessions where we use a lot of the curriculum I talked about today. Um, and then they're in a peer cohort so that they are learning. If you are in Detroit, you're learning from people in Madagascar to Ukraine to Mumbai. And you really do get that global approach to, hey, we all might be working in the nonprofit sector, but you get to bounce ideas off of, you know, people from other places in the world. And so actually, applications are open now through the end of February to apply for our next cohort. So if you are interested, definitely apply. And it's just gratitude-network.org. And it's fun as a nonprofit accelerator. Our nonprofits that go through our program are 7xing the number of kids they serve and 4xing their revenue. So if you're going to call yourselves an accelerator, you better have the data to back it on. Absolutely. And that's very good data. Yeah. Um, so we're excited about the work we're doing and how we're scaling. So again, highly recommend if you're looking for that kind of more framework. Hey, I need to, you know, really force myself to work on the business instead of in the business. I think gratitude is a really great option for those in the youth development space. But I'm also Megan, the number of resources we use from your guys' website as well are, you know, phenomenal. So I think it is. It's that pick and choose what you have time for as a leader, but also what you're looking for.
Speaker 2:So good. I uh I'm gonna make a little a teaser announcement. Because if that is something you're looking for, Nonprofit Hub has some big things to talk about scalability, right? Nonprofit Hub has some very exciting things coming up here probably around April-ish in 2026. So big announcements coming soon, right around that idea that'll hopefully help even deepen that a little more for folks. But uh okay, give us the website again for Gratitude Network. Yes.
Speaker 1:Uh so www.gratitude-network.org.
Speaker 2:Perfect. And again, slots the applications are open until February. So we'd love to see some folks take advantage of that because what an amazing program. Uh Lauren, as we wrap up, the question that we've been asking everybody this season, because we're we've deemed 2026 as the the year where we're working on ourselves, both as so this is a very timely conversation for all of our leaders. Yes. Um, but I'm curious, is there a specific book or podcast or you know, blog that you follow that has been instrumental for you as a leader that you would recommend to folks?
Speaker 1:Yes. So uh beyond like a podcast about The Bachelor, which is like my guilty pleasure. So I just put it out there, it is my uh my embarrassing moment there. Um but I actually just reread Scott Harrison's Thirst from Charity Water. Um and one of the things that I was like, Charity Water, I always put on a pedestal of like they crack the nut on fundraising, they figured out how to scale their organization, and their metrics are gorgeous. And so in Scott Harrison's book, he talks a lot about how he creates the well, and that well is a group of donors who just support his operations, right? So that he can actually go out and do program, right? Programming funding. But the book just really talks about so much of how he set up Charity Water to be, you know, one of the top leading organizations that we should all, you know, strive to be. And so highly recommend. Definitely a great pull at your heartstrings, but also put on the business hat. The other one I will always say is Vern Hardness just scaling up a little bit more dry, but gives you a lot of the worksheets and the business acumen that you might be missing. If you're like me and a former history teacher and have no background in business, um, that's a really great, you know, starter book for how to scale your business as well. So good.
Speaker 2:It's interesting. This is a total aside. I was talking to somebody the other day who, a friend of mine who's an orthodontist. And he was talking about the same thing, actually, in the idea that he comes all the way through dental school, goes to be an orthodontist. There's never a business class in there. They expect you to go and run your own practice, but nobody teaches you that side of how to do it. And it's it was just it was interesting how many crossovers and how many areas of the world where they're like, here's this skill, go run a business. But we do not teach you how to run a business.
Speaker 1:Well, you you see it in college professors too. College professors do not have to take a single education course to be a correct professor. Yet they are teaching 18 to 25 year olds. What? Yes. So yes. And again, I guess that is like, hey, if the if 2026 is the year to educate yourself, like be vulnerable, figure out where your gaps are, and then find the people like a Megan or a me who can help you find the tools and resources you need to fill those gaps. Uh, you need to take responsibility for it because no one else will.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely. Lauren, so many good takeaways from this conversation. I really appreciate all of your wisdom. Thanks so much for being here today.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and thank you so much for having me and looking forward to working with you guys more.
Speaker 2:This has been another episode of the Nonprofit Hub Radio podcast with my guest, Lauren Riley, who's the executive director at Gratitude Network. My name is Megan Speer. I'm your host, and we'll see you next time.