Community Possibilities
Community Possibilities
Nonprofit Leadership with Brooke Richie-Babbage: Building Resilient Organizations in Challenging Times
Nonprofit leaders feeling the weight of challenging times need more than grit to thrive—they need resilient organizations built on sustainable systems and supportive networks. Brooke Ritchie-Babbage shares her S.T.R.O.N.G. framework for building nonprofit stability while growing impact.
• Strategic clarity keeps everyone focused on the "cathedral" they're building beyond daily brick-laying work
• Well-designed tools and systems create the interstitial tissue connecting teams without bottlenecks
• Resources include not just funding but sustainable approaches like monthly giving programs
• Ownership means everyone understands their role and has appropriate decision-making authority
• Networked capacity extends organizational roots beyond staff to partners, advisors, and collaborators
• Governance provides appropriate oversight and accountability that evolves as organizations grow
• Growth and stability aren't competing priorities—stability is the foundation for sustained growth
• Burnout isn't a badge of honor or personal failing but a structural mismatch requiring systemic solutions
• Building recovery and assessment into organizational rhythms is essential for long-term impact
• No leader should try to go it alone—find coaches, mentors, and peer communities for support
Check out Brooke's podcast at https://brookerichiebabbage.com/podcast/
Brooke's Bio
Brooke Richie-Babbage is a nonprofit growth strategist and social impact advisor. She is the founder and CEO of Bending Arc, a social impact strategy firm that supports the launch and sustainable growth of high-impact nonprofits, and the host of Nonprofit Mastermind Podcast.
For the past 23 years, Brooke has worked as a lawyer, nonprofit leader, and social entrepreneur. She has founded and led multiple successful organizations and initiatives, including the Resilience Advocacy Project (RAP), where she served as founder and Executive Director for 11 years, the Sterling Network NYC and the NetLab Initiative, both initiatives of the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, where she served as Director of Network Initiatives for six years, and the Social Justice Accelerator (SJA), an initiative of the Urban Justice Center, where she has served as SJA Director since 2019.
Brooke received her JD and MPP from Harvard and her BA from Yale. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two sons.
Brooke Richie-Babbage | LinkedIn
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Hi everybody, welcome back to Community Possibilities, the podcast where we talk about what's possible when we show up with vision, heart and a deep commitment to community. I'm your host, anne Price, and if you're a nonprofit leader feeling the weight of these challenging times, this episode is especially for you. These challenging times, this episode is especially for you Because today we're talking about how leaders like you cannot just keep going but truly thrive, and I'm thrilled to be joined by someone who brings both wisdom and lived experience to this conversation Brooke Ritchie Babbage. Brooke is a nonprofit growth strategist, social impact advisor and the founder and CEO of Bending Arc, a strategy firm that helps high-impact nonprofits launch, grow and sustain their missions. She also hosts the Nonprofit Mastermind podcast, where she shares deep insights into leadership, strategy and building organizations that last.
Ann Price:Brooke has spent more than two decades in the trenches as a lawyer, social entrepreneur, executive director and systems thinker. Her work spans everything from launching the Resiliency Advocacy Project to building leadership networks to shaping public policy, always with a through line of justice, sustainability and care. In today's conversation, brooke shares her take on what it means to lead with clarity and purpose, how to navigate burnout and why now is the time to rethink how we lead. This is a conversation full of honesty, practical insight and, yes, inspiration, and I can't wait for you to hear it. Let's get into it. Hi everybody, welcome back to Community Possibilities. So I've been having a mom chat with my new friend, dr Richie Babbage. We've been having so much fun getting to know each other. We've been having so much fun getting to know each other Absolutely.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:I can have mom chat with you all day.
Ann Price:Mom and I have to Nana chat. Yeah, I can't get my head around grandma, that just feels too old.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:But Nana, I have to tell you you don't have grandma energy, but you do seem like you'd be an awesome Nana.
Ann Price:Well, hey, if you want to bake sugar cookies with me, you come on over. I'm all about the sugar cookies. So, everybody, I found Brooke because, you know, not only do I have a podcast, I listen to a lot of podcasts, so Brooke is my friend around my walks in the neighborhood and I'm going to let you talk about the podcast in a minute, but before we get started, I just wanted to open up the space for you to do your introduction and always ask people to just share how they came to be who they are.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:So I, I have to say I love that question. I ask it also just how did you find your way here? And as I was thinking about what to share, what I centered on is that sort of social change and social impact has always been my life. I don't remember a time when being a social justice person or doing social impact work wasn't really central and really part of what I felt like my purpose was. I would say that my happy place is right at that intersection of social change, entrepreneurship and strategy.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:Growing up, social change and social justice were just in the water that my sister and I swam in. My mom actually founded and ran a nonprofit for most of my childhood and young adulthood, so I saw that firsthand. We, you know, were down at her office packing goodie bags for the young people she worked with, and I sat in on board meetings. And then my dad, in addition to being just a raging liberal, was a really active and vocal board member on organization. So I got to see that side too, and they both talked a lot with us my sister and I both about how part of our purpose in life is to leave the world a better place than when we found it and I believe that, and so there was just no doubt in my mind that I would find my way in some form into social justice work and social change work.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:I feel like I found a sister I didn't know I have, I mean, the first time we spoke, there was so much synergy just around our orientation to the work Absolutely.
Ann Price:Yeah, Orientation to the work, orientation to the world, orientation to what you're called to be. So I love that so much. Yay, Awesome. So you and I both have a heart for nonprofits. I work with nonprofits a lot, a lot of community-based organizations, as do you Been on a board, so I know that the good, the bad and the ugly there. So tell me how you came to work in the nonprofit space, because I don't think this was it was not a direct line to mom and dad, to your work with nonprofits and what you do now and then definitely not what I do now, although you know you get to be my age.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:You start looking back and you're like, oh, there is an interesting through line. So officially I started my career. I went to law and policy school and I went because I knew I wanted to do nonprofit work and social justice work. And this was back in the 90s and there was really only one way to do social impact work. And this was back in the 90s and there was really only one way to do social impact work and that was to be at a nonprofit. So I knew at some point I was going to be at a nonprofit.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:I co-founded my first organization while still in law, in graduate school, also with a friend named Brooke. I grew up in Birmingham, michigan, she grew up in Birmingham Alabama. We just got such a kick out of that and I was really bitten by the bug. I found that I loved the institution building part of things as much as I loved the mission-based part, sort of the programming part and that's probably the sort of non-direct line you're talking about. And I was an anti-poverty lawyer and a policy advocate in New York City and the work that I did in communities with community organizers and young parents and policy think tanky people. There's just a wonderful, exciting community at the time around anti-poverty work. It led pretty organically, I think, to starting my second nonprofit and so I ran that organization for a little over a decade and at the same time I started teaching.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:I was a professor of social entrepreneurship and community lawyering here in New York, various graduate schools and law schools and I stepped down from that. I guess now, maybe eight years ago, which feels like a blink of an eye we were having mom chat. That was right around when my second was born and so it feels like both a blink and a lifetime ago. But since doing that I've come to now work as a strategist and a coach with nonprofits and social impact organizations. I founded a company called Bending Arc. It's a social impact strategy firm and what we do is partner with foundations and nonprofits around the country to support the strategic and sustainable launch and scale of social impact. So I get to bring my love of strategy to bear to help organizational leaders figure out how do we build institutions that are a joy to run, that last, and that have transformational impact in the world.
Ann Price:Okay, I gotta ask you a question because fun fact and no joke, right?
Brooke Richie-Babbage:Okay.
Ann Price:You know how you take career testing at some point in your college career? Oh yes, always yeah right, the number one like result for me was law school, Really.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:We really are like long-lost besties.
Ann Price:Yeah, totally true, and I'm not sad about not going that route. Did I really miss anything?
Brooke Richie-Babbage:Did I really I will tell you and I cannot speak for all previous law students or lawyers I loved law school. What I loved? Almost everything about it. My dad is also a lawyer. He's a corporate attorney which I have never worked at a law firm or a corporation which I suspect has something to do with why I love it so much but he gave me really great advice. He said law school is a trade school and one of the problems people have is they arrive and they think that it's about justice and you're going to learn how to change the world.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:It is contracts and case studies and long books and highlighting and because I went into it knowing that and wanting to, on the back end, have the tools to make laws better, it was really concrete. This is the Virgo in me Very concrete about why I was there, what my purpose was and how it was going to help me do better nonprofit work. I had no expectations of it being anything other than what it was. I loved the topics. I loved the people I went to school with. I went to Harvard. It was really big. It's a big law school. The Kennedy School was filled with fascinating people who were journalists and medical students and I saw my time there as an opportunity to build my skills and my knowledge base and my schema and make amazing lifelong friends, and that's what I did. So I had a blast.
Ann Price:Okay Well, harvard Law School that's impressive. Okay Well, I just had to bring that up. But let me get us out of the rabbit hole.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:Okay, that's right, we can also go down that path.
Ann Price:Yeah that I let us down, but maybe there, before we talk about like because I do want to talk about kind of the state of the world of nonprofits right now let's you talked about social entrepreneurship and social impact. Maybe we should do a little like a little bit of a definition in case people don't know what social entrepreneurship is, absolutely.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:And I will try to avoid jargon I can go off into sort of jargony land. So when I say social impact, I actually just mean all of the work that takes various forms. Some of it is nonprofit, some of it might be for-profit work that is mission-based. Some of it might be seated in various government agencies. There are so many different people who are trying to change our society for the better. They are trying to impact our society, make it more just make it more equitable. So I have started to use the term social impact as a way to include nonprofit work, but also to include those partners and people that I work with that maybe aren't at a traditional non-profit but are doing what they consider to be mission-based, society-changing work. So that's what I mean by social impact.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:Social entrepreneurship is just I am a builder, I like to create things, and one of the things I like to create are, and help to build are, institutions that last, and most of those institutions that I've helped to build are some form of a nonprofit or social enterprise, and so that sort of going into an empty field and creating a new institution is again, very generally what I mean by entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship takes so many different forms. I think social entrepreneurs are people who, during COVID, started mutual aid groups. They are organizers that rally the people in their communities to support one another. All of that. To me, those are forms of entrepreneurship, of creating something new to benefit our society.
Ann Price:Yeah, gotcha. So you're based in New York.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:I am.
Ann Price:I am based in Georgia by way of Florida.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:Yes, and you're youngest, young middle Someone lives in Florida.
Ann Price:Yeah, my youngest does actually. Yeah, absolutely the other two. The other two are here, but I'm just curious because I work nationally but, you know, based in Georgia. How are your nonprofit leaders doing, because mine are kind of tired.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:So I work mostly nationally. Also, the work that I do is it is not region or city specific and I would say tired is exactly the way that I would describe and I would also say heavy. I think nonprofits are feeling weighed down right now. There is this subtle but really palpable edge of unease, the sense that something is shifting around us and it makes what I think is already a tough job leading an organization, stewarding a mission it's already a lot of work, it's always been a lot of work, but this uncertainty around us and this sort of chaos swirling is making everything feel more fraught, more nerve-wracking and harder.
Ann Price:Yeah yeah, for sure, and I know yeah, and you talk a lot, I know, on your podcast about you know a leadership and being a leader in lots of different kinds of ways and we're going to talk about that. But what's the pep talk you give your non-profit leaders?
Brooke Richie-Babbage:I would say that the fundamentals are always true, right. The things that make organizations strong, the things that help us share leadership or power with our communities, the things that lead to real impact, were the same 20 years ago as they are today. And so if we can sort of lock arms and focus on those fundamentals what makes our organization strong, what makes us strong as a team, if we can stay focused on those, we can sort of stay steady. I use the metaphor sometimes of a really small tree that is being like blown in the wind. So if you can picture a tree and it's like bending, and the leaves are sort of bending back and they're being pushed, but the tree is still sanding, it's got roots, and so lean into those roots right now and, you know, hold hands with the people you work with and lean into those fundamentals and the storm will pass.
Ann Price:Yeah, yeah, and that kind of makes me think about something I wanted to talk to you about was this idea of resilience, which I know you also talk about. Yeah, and, fun fact, people have heard me say this before I actually did my dissertation on resilience. I know, yeah, resilience in children, go figure.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:Which is what my second organization. It was called the Resilience Advocacy Project. It was building resilience in children.
Ann Price:What the heck right? I know, and I know you and I both come from this like community systems lens, but if we're talking about organizational resilience, what does that look like?
Brooke Richie-Babbage:Yeah, I'm really glad you asked that and I just love talking with resilience about people who sort of gone deep. So one thing, I guess I'll start with what. It isn't what. I think, it isn't.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:I think that and it's especially true now, given what you and I were just talking about, the heaviness that people feel. I think that we often in our society, in our spaces, talk about resilience as being synonymous with grit. Right that truly resilient people or resilient organizations are the ones that, like, dig deep and try harder. Right they push, and that that's what makes you resilient.
Ann Price:Yeah, I hate that because to me it's like the message that you're giving people is just be okay with your really crappy situation. That's right.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:Just try harder and everything you know.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:It'll be fine at some point and in the meantime, the fact that you are running yourself into the ground is just what we do because we care about social justice. I also hate that.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:I think the way I talk about resilience in my work and my podcast is that it is about design that's the best way I can describe it that people who are resilient, organizations that are resilient, are ones that create the environment where they can hold fast to those fundamentals. Right, it's structural, not personal. Right that pushing hard isn't a strategy, it's a response, and sometimes we have to do that. But the thing that makes us resilient, able to stand, you know, and not be blown down by the storm, is if we have those roots right, if we have designed our institution, our organizations, in a way that keep us steady and don't collapse either under the weight of sort of external chaos or, for a lot of the organizations that I work with, because they are growth stage, the chaos that comes along with growth. So I talk about organizational resilience as being about sort of these core elements of design that organizations that are steady have focused on really well.
Ann Price:Awesome, let's dive in. That sounds like a framework to me. I love a good framework.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:I love a good framework, so this is what I call the strong framework. It has six parts and I tried to distill sort of all of the research and work and all the fun resilient stuff that I've done over the years into something that organizational leaders and organizations can remember and can apply. So I'll just walk through each of the papers. Yeah, let's do it. Awesome. Okay.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:So the first one is strategic clarity, and this is about strategies. What gives organizations their direction, their alignment. It reminds everybody on the team what their shared purpose is, so that in the chaos, in the busyness of doing impact-driven work, we don't lose focus collectively on what matters most to us. Right, why we're all here. And sometimes the metaphor that I use is what is the cathedral we are all building? Right, on any given day it feels like we're laying bricks. Right, it's hard work, we show up, we lay some bricks. But if everybody is clear about that North Star, right, the mission, the theory of change, the shared purpose then on those days when it gets really hard or when we look around and we feel confused, we can see that cathedral we're building. So this strategic clarity and keeping people grounded in purpose is the first pillar.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:Strategic clarity and keeping people grounded in purpose is the first pillar, the first sort of core element. The second are what I call tools. This is your tech, your infrastructure, this is the interstitial tissue, that, or the network, the sort of strings that tie everybody together. So this is where you think about things like internal systems, how you share information. This is low-tech and high-tech. So I don't want people to hear tools and think right, I have to use ChatGPT or you know, I have to use ChatGPT. What I actually mean is low-tech, first right, oh, 100%.
Ann Price:Oh my goodness, Like I'm having flashbacks to non-profits that go and buy nothing.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:salesforce, sales nothing hey, you guys can't see it, but we're both holding our heads right now. Oh my gosh, how did.
Ann Price:That's exactly what I was gonna say. Right, not that there's any. Hey, if you are right size for sales, go for it, that's right.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:But whatever the high tech tool is, whether it's Salesforce or Asana or Monday low tech first, right. So, when you think about your tools, what are the ways that we have created to work together easily so that we can move forward together? These are things like not to sound wonky, but SOPs, right, standard Operating Procedures. This is really simple. This is a Google Doc that says every single time a new donor comes in, these are the four things we do, right. So, as you create these internal systems, templates of language that you use, what does it mean to communicate with a partner? These are things that, as you grow, you standardize, you agree on norms. These that interstitial tissue, so that you can make decisions, share information easily, without friction or bottlenecks. The third is resources, and this is money and other resources, right. Especially when I was doing community-based work, money is very important, and so are other resources, and so the reason that this third pillar isn't called money is because it's really important to think about all of the resources that you are bringing into the organization, that your organization needs, and to think about them in ways that are sustainable. So I want to highlight something about this particular pillar right now, because there's a lot of talk about reducing dependency on government and institutional funders as a way of building resilience in this area. So Stanford Social Innovation Review actually just published a great article about this and thinking about community members as resources and different ways of grassroots funding as building, bringing in resources in a way that are sustainable. So here I encourage the leaders and organizations that I work with to think about how they bring resources in in sustainable ways. So monthly giving programs are really powerful. There's a really amazing woman, dana Snyder, who talks about building monthly donor programs from the ground up in ways that are about community building, not extractive fundraising values aligned and she's awesome. Definitely check her out. And this pillar is about how you manage your resources. So, are you thinking about your financial health? Do you and your board have conversations beyond just approving the budget or looking at budget to actuals that are aligning what's in the budget with what's in your strategic plan? Right? These are little ways to make sure that your resources are stable.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:Okay, the next pillar O is ownership, and I include this one because I talk a lot with folks about teams and because I work with executive directors of growing organizations. There's a lot of conversation about how to build a team, how to manage a team, how to empower a team, and really what it comes down to for stable, resilient organizations is that they have shared ownership of the work right. Whatever your team looks like, however, you've structured leadership or power authority. Strong organizations that can withstand chaos are ones where everyone on the team understands the role they play on the team and has the right amount of authority and autonomy to make decisions for their work. If you are the chief development officer, that will necessarily look different than if you are, you know, a donor manager or a data entry analyst, right? So that's going to look different depending on where you are in the organization, but it's the same question. You are playing a role in moving this work forward. Do you understand it and do you have what you need to own it right, and that's really important. You need to own it right, and that's really important.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:And then the next one is networked capacity. So often when you talk with organizations and this, I think, is really important for smaller organizations, really important for, like, under a million dollars, under 500k thinking about your capacity beyond just your staff and your board the more networked an organization is, the more they can leverage the people and resources in their ecosystem to move their mission forward. So this is where you look beyond your staff and board to advisors, to peer organizations that you can partner with, to mentors, to other people in institutions and, honestly, even beyond your sector right To government partners, to for-profit partners. Who are the people in our network, in our ecosystem, that care about our issue, that can bring perspective, strategy, connections, money, just information, and how can we make sure we have a structured relationship with them? And so when you think about you know those roots under the ground of a tree, they spread right. They don't go straight down right. So this network capacity is about thinking about people more broadly.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:And then the last one is governance, oversight, accountability, making sure that you are dotting your I's, you are crossing your T's. Again, like I said, I work with a lot of growth stage organizations. I work with a lot of founders and they remember, as I do, the days early when they signed all the checks. They, you know, ran all the board meetings, they did all the things. And as you grow questions about what oversight looks like, who you are accountable to, what it means to be accountable to your stakeholders, to your community members those things change right. What compliance means, what risks you have. Those change as you shift and grow. So knowing what those are and staying on top of them, it's unsexy but it's really important. So those are the six. S-t-r-o-n-g Gotcha.
Ann Price:S-T-R-O-N-G. Hmm, what does that spell, guys? That's right strong.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:That's strong, and I will say, for those of you who are trying to follow along and take notes, I've actually pulled all of this together, including an organizational assessment seven questions. It'll help you figure out which of these elements you are really good at with your organization, where you might want to focus. There are worksheets, model agendas, templates, policies, et cetera, in my Resilience Ready Toolkit, so I'll share information, anne, with you about-.
Ann Price:Oh, that'll be sure, and include a link to the toolkit in our show notes. And oh, I do love a good assessment.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:Me too. I love it. I've taken all of them.
Ann Price:All of them. That's so great and you know, I was having flashbacks, like when I started my business and I was the accountant and I was the IT person and I was the marketer and the development person and the copywriter and all of the things. And as you grow to your point, you can't do, you cannot hold all of that, you cannot be strong, you can't be resilient, you can't grow. And it's not about like we we're going to talk about.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:It's not a badge of honor to hold it all.
Ann Price:No, it's really not. It's not a badge of honor to be, like, completely burnt out. So that kind of leads me thinking to this idea of stability or growth, and maybe this is a selfish question, because that's kind of where I am in this world that we're living in April of 2025. Stability or growth, stability or growth. So is it time for nonprofits to focus on stability or growth, or both? How do you decide when folks really are struggling with everything that's going on?
Brooke Richie-Babbage:I love that because I know that has to feel so present for so many folks that you work with and that you're listening.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:So I would say I think that I actually don't think that there's a real choice between them. I think that even if growing your impact is the goal for the year, and for lots of organizations, they may be thinking about growing their budget or just growing their programs. Growth is fine and stability should always be at the center of growth plans. There is no growth, or there should be no talk of growth, without also talking about stability. I build Jenga towers my youngest son loves the game Jenga. Build Jenga towers my youngest son loves the game Jenga. And if you think about growth as sort of building this tower right, if you grow without also constantly asking yourself, rooting yourself in these questions of stability, then you're just building a wobbly tower right, you can get taller, you can get bigger, but the center won't hold.
Ann Price:Yeah, I'm thinking about it. Getting back to your tree metaphor right, yes, you're building a tree yes and uh, the storms are going to get, the winds are going to come, but it doesn't have the roots to stay. Okay, you can't have one root, right? Yeah, I get your metaphor.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:Yeah, now at the same time, I think that the other reason I say that it's not really I don't think organizations should feel like they have to choose is because and I have this conversation quite a bit with the folks that I work with they can feel guilty if they go to a board or go to a funder and growth isn't on the agenda right, if they're not bigger than last year, or at least trying to be. So one of the things that I like to remind folks about is if you want to grow and really sustain your impact at each step along the way, then the smart, strategic thing to do is, every few years, look and say are we doing this right, right? Call it a pause, call it a strategic reflection and assessment year. But the way to actually grow, part of growth is to actually have, if you sort of look at, a growth curve. It's not always up into, it's not just straight up into the right, it's a step function.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:And there are these steps where organizations smart organizations say we are still growing and part of our growth cycle is reflecting, assessing and being strategic about our next step. I don't think that's different from growth. So I think that you know, going to a board, going to a funder and saying our goal is growth of our impact over the next three years. Some of that is going to be increased budget. You know, year over year some of that may be increasing the budget and then doing a strategic assessment of what worked and what didn't. It's all about growth.
Ann Price:Yeah, no, I love that strategy and that, yeah, it's kind of a continuous cycle really and so that means, if you are right, now, things are crazy.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:If you're an organization, now things are crazy. If you're an organization, that's like we just need to figure stuff out. That's amazing. That focus on stability doesn't have to be made to feel internally like you aren't still thinking about or caring about growing your impact. It can be, and I think it is part of how you will grow your impact. You will look around and say what is our funding? Who are our partners, what's happening in our community and with our issues, and once we're clear, we will keep moving forward.
Ann Price:Yeah, and I think, especially in the environment we're in, when it seems like every five minutes there's something new, there's something to be said about. Go and pause, go and pause, go and pause go and assess. Right, Absolutely. Reflect and assess yeah reflect and assess that's a much more eloquent way of saying it and to even think about like because I'm leaning more and because I do like strategy development, that kind of work. But if you think about strategic planning doing a three-year strategic planning rather than a five-year strategic- plan.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:Oh, I only do three-year strategic planning. It's a nice round number but it's not realistic in the life cycle of an institution, Absolutely.
Ann Price:I think 2020 probably taught us that. Absolutely yeah, because we didn't see that coming. No, nope, oh my gosh, that's right, that's right. Yeah, because we didn't see that coming. No, nope, oh my gosh, that's right, that's right, yeah. So yeah, it's we were talking about, like the health and mental health. We talked about the health of nonprofits and the mental health of nonprofit leaders around to that, because it's all related, right, because so many nonprofit leaders do carry their burnout as like a badge of honor.
Ann Price:Like you know, I haven't worked out since 1975, right, Whatever, it is right. What kind of advice do you give to like nonprofit leaders in terms of, you know, dealing with burnout?
Brooke Richie-Babbage:Yeah. So the first thing I'd say is martyrs can't have impact right. So if we martyr ourselves because you're dead, it?
Brooke Richie-Babbage:defeats the point, exactly, exactly. So that's. You know, I try to remind myself and my folks. But I'd say four things. So the first is, in the same way, that burnout isn't a badge of honor, it's also not a weakness, right, it's not a personal failing, it is, and it probably won't come as a surprise to you for me to say this.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:I think most things are structural right, or there is a structural element. Burnout is a systemic mismatch between the level and scale of work you are trying to do and the resources you have to do it level and scale of work you are trying to do and the resources you have to do it. And so if you think about it as a structural mismatch, then you can ask yourself what needs to change structurally right. You don't have to beat yourself up about being tired, being worn out, needing a break. Remind yourself if I burn out, if I am a martyr, I'm not actually helping my cause, right? I'm, as my husband would say, sort of weakening a nation, right? So that's the first thing sort of the mental, the mindset shift away from it being a personal failure or something you have to solve on your own to saying, okay, what's the structural challenge? Which then the second thing I would say is look at your systems and your structure and try to right-size them.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:Have conversations with your team I suspect for most folks listening if they are feeling burnout other folks they work with are also feeling burnout and so naming it and saying, structurally, what resources are we missing? Where's the mismatch? How can we decide together almost like a mini audit how can we decide together what shifts we're going to make? I would say, third, building that kind of conversation, that kind of mini audit and then space to make changes and recovery into your organization's operating system. So, once or twice a year at a minimum, have an explicit conversation about burnout, mental health, structural supports, however you frame it in your organization. Don't make it an afterthought. It's okay, it's part of organizational design to say are things mismatched?
Brooke Richie-Babbage:And when they aren't, let's bring them back into alignment. And then the last thing I would say is ask for help. I think nobody does this work alone, and when I first started doing nonprofit work I guess it's now like 27 years ago leadership and being a leader, and especially in the non-profit space was seen as this like thing you just shouldered and the the strong leaders were the ones out in front doing the work and, you know, weathering the storm on their own. That's awful, that is not healthy. It a myth. I have never met a strong organization with a solitary leader that didn't have a coach, a mentor, a peer group, a leadership circle. So if you are feeling yourself really hitting your wall, reach out to other people and say some of the support I need is psychological. Right, I need advice, I need help, I need somebody to unload with and to share the weight with. That is part of the work. I don't think that's a nice to have. I think it's really central to making it through.
Ann Price:Right yeah, and a smart board an organization who has a nice, healthy budget should respect that. The need for executive coaching for sure, absolutely, absolutely, yeah. So if you're loving this very practical advice, you should definitely check out the Nonprofit Mastermind podcast. So, brooke, do you want to talk about your podcast?
Brooke Richie-Babbage:Yes, it actually is the first thing that I started when I started my business, so it's one of the longest running parts of what I do. I love conversations like this, I love podcasting, I love teaching. My podcast is really my way of pulling back the curtain on what I think, on sort of the real talk about what it takes to build and run a nonprofit that is having real impact and that will last. So a lot of the stuff we've talked about here, I try to keep it super practical Think mindset, strategy tools, actionable. I am a teacher at heart and it is my space where I get to say and so I called it the mastermind None of us do this alone. I've learned a lot in the last almost three decades and I have done it by talking to and growing with the people in my sector, in our sector, in my community, and so I try to bring that to bear for the folks who are listening.
Ann Price:Yeah, and I'm all about the practical and the skill. Give me the skill. Give me the thing I can use, right, I love a good conference, but, oh my gosh, I only can take so much theory. Yeah, you know what I?
Brooke Richie-Babbage:mean yeah, I'm a sort of theory into action. So I'll talk about the theory and then I'll say and here's what we can do, a hundred percent. You know even the mindset stuff. I want my listeners to feel like they have a trusted strategic thought partner, sort of, in their earbuds every week.
Ann Price:Right, and so the podcast is out there. How else do you help?
Brooke Richie-Babbage:folks. So I have a great newsletter. I think it's great. I really enjoy writing it. It's called Leadership Forward 321 and is also weekly and it is like a micro lesson. So this is where I take some theme from the podcast and drill down and it is readable in under five minutes. It always has three parts to the micro lesson right here, three things you can learn two concrete resources. And then something inspirational, a quote, a picture, just something to sort of fill our hearts on the theme. And then the other way people can connect with me is LinkedIn. I share a lot on LinkedIn. I love being in communication with people. I DM people immediately back if they message me. So those are the three great ways to connect with me.
Ann Price:Awesome, I love that. I love that so much so I've been sharing some this is new on the last couple episodes, some rapid fire questions. So what is giving you hope these days?
Brooke Richie-Babbage:question. So what is giving you hope these days? I'm going to say community. I think that people are leaning in to one another and looking for ways to stay connected in spite of the storm, right, in spite of the chaos, and I've just been really inspired by the number of calls I've joined or meetings I've come into where people start by saying how are you, what do you need? Right, and that leaning into one another makes me feel really hopeful.
Ann Price:That's awesome. So I think we may have touched on this, but is there any other advice that you would give community leaders specifically, and I think of nonprofit leaders as community leaders? Certainly yeah.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:Yeah, I would go back to. Don't try to go it alone. Right Now is the time to make it a priority to find that peer group, the advisor, the coach. I think I might have mentioned one of the primary things that I do inside of Bending Arc is I run a high-touch growth accelerator for nonprofits. It's a coaching program, it's an organizational redesign program and one of the things that people say they get the most out of that is that they are not alone anymore and that running organizations is that they are not alone anymore and that running organizations, especially in community, people don't talk. I think often enough about how lonely and isolating that can feel. So my advice is find your peers. Find the people who can walk alongside you, who can hold your hand, who can show up and say look, we got this together.
Ann Price:So organizational redesign, is that like for nonprofits who need to make a shift for any reason? Yeah, what does that look like? I'd love organizational design, so I have to ask Me too. It's one of my favorite things to say.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:So what I mean by organizational redesign is this is a program. It's called the Next Level Nonprofit. It's for organizations that are nearing a million dollars and that are realizing that the systems and the way that they've run their teams and the things that they've set up the institution they built got them to where they are and it's breaking right. It's just not going to get them to the next place that they are and they want a plan to get through this next growth horizon. So it's for organizations that are between $850K and $2 million and we sit down, we go through the strong framework together, there's a deep organizational assessment and then I design a growth plan that says here's the pillar we're going to focus on and we will redesign that pillar together. Soup to nuts. They get group coaching, they get one-on-one coaching, they get training for their whole team. So it's a real deep dive that redesigns at least one of the pillars over the course of six months.
Ann Price:Yeah, and so they get you. They get your support, but they also get the support of this community around them. Yes, right, right. And I was right to my hand, like, oh, I represent that remark Right, because we're talking about like nonprofit growth, but the same applies to any business owner out there. Folks, my consultant.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:Mine too. I also have a coach.
Ann Price:Right, so yeah, I do too Right. Don't stay stuck folks. If that's you, if your organization is in that pain, point right and you have that burnout, okay, call Brooke.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:Whatever you do, don't stay stuck, it's not a badge of honor. The way that organizations grow is they invest in the things they need to invest in to move them through, whatever their sort of growth edge is.
Ann Price:Yeah, and I know when Brooke and I are talking about growth, I feel like I can you tell me if I'm wrong. I think I'm right. Right, we're not talking about growth for numbers sake. We're talking about for service sake, absolutely.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:That's why I always talk about growth of impact Right and part and parcel of that part and parcel to that will often be money right. It will also often mean a bigger budget, but that's not the point. It's having more of the impact that you want to have, whatever that looks like for you.
Ann Price:Yeah, absolutely. It's all about that community service right being a service. So I have loved this conversation so much. This has been great, anne. Um, I got. I got to ask you when you look to the future, what community possibilities do you see?
Brooke Richie-Babbage:Yeah, I think we're becoming more networked. I I started, you know, when I was a lawyer. I practiced a type of law called community lawyering, and it meant that.
Ann Price:That's a, that's a thing. It is, it's wonderful I might have said yes to law school.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:So okay, I just want to take like 90 seconds to tell a quick story. So when I got to Harvard, I would say to people I'm not going to be a real lawyer because I'm going to do social impact work, right. And I thought law meant a thing. And then I took a class called community lawyering with a woman named Lonnie Guinier who was just an amazing social change leader and organizer, just brilliant thinker. And you go around and sort of say while you're there and I said my thing, I'm not going to be a real lawyer. And she said I want to challenge you to think about what it means to be a lawyer.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:A lawyer is a problem solver and the tool that you use is your knowledge of law, but it is one tool. And so if you want to be a problem solver in our society and one of the tools you are going to be expert at is the law you get to call yourself a lawyer. And it changed everything about what I understood my role was. And so when I graduated and got my fellowship to start practicing law community lawyering meaning I am working in community with other people who bring different tools and expertise my tool happened to be that I know the law. We worked with organizers and impacted people and government officials and policy researchers and everybody sat at the same table and brought their individual perspectives and skills to bear on an issue. So it's a collective form of action where I don't get to take up space as the expert right.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:So that's how I came into this space and what I am finding exciting about and hopeful to go back to your question about what I'm seeing broader, sector-wise is that I think we are starting to understand that changing our society and making it more just and more beautiful and more equitable requires us to think beyond. Am I a non-profit, am I a for-profit? Am I government? Am I a researcher? You know think tank person? We center the issue and then we're figuring out how to work collectively across sector, across ideas, hopefully at some point maybe even across affinities. I think maybe we're getting there.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:We're trying to work more collectively and in a more networked way, and I just think that's, as a society, really exciting and really beautiful.
Ann Price:Yeah, and I think if we were more connected that would solve so many problems. I agree, and you are just one of, like several attorneys that I've had on the show and you know, I know it sounds like folks, so I'm like, no, I have a deeper respect.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:This is your way into law. Yeah, that's the lawyer part of me and like no, I have a deeper way into life.
Ann Price:Yeah, I surround myself to all these really smart people who are doing fabulous things. But anyway, I love that idea of networking. So you mentioned LinkedIn and the toolkit and your mastermind and the podcast. Is there anything else you want to share?
Brooke Richie-Babbage:No, I would say definitely connect with me on LinkedIn. The best way to stay in my world are the podcast and the newsletter. I always share opportunities for coaching and support through the newsletter, so folks who are interested in learning more. And then I have a website, obviously brookricheybabbagecom, so there's all my stuff is there, but the best way to connect with me is LinkedIn.
Ann Price:Awesome. Well, Brooke, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Brooke Richie-Babbage:I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. This is a great conversation.
Ann Price:Hi everybody, thank you for joining me today on Community Possibilities. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. Be sure and share the episode with a nonprofit leader or community leader that you know and love. It might just be the medicine they need today. Before I let you go, as always, just a reminder to like, share and subscribe to the podcast that helps us so much.
Ann Price:And lastly, I want to let you know that we have been doing some major retooling on the website. If you go over and look at the resources page, you can now browse by category. So there's workbooks, courses, insights and, of course, my book with Dr Susan Wolfe. So, for example, for the workbooks, we have a vision statement template. We have a logic model template, a theory of change template, a nonprofit mission template, coalition self-assessment evaluation plan oh my gosh, so much more. A nonprofit evaluation capacity self-assessment, and that's just all under workbooks. Those are free resources just for you. So please check out our resources page. Communityevaluationsolutionscom. Slash resources is where you can find this and many other things that will help you in your work. That's it, everybody. Hope you have a fabulous day Until next time. Thank you.