As my junior year of college comes to a close I have not only been able to reflect on the lessons that I have learned thus far, but I have also had the opportunity to reflect on the areas I have found a new interest in. This year in particular my interest in nonprofits have skyrocketed. From learning about the management side of the nonprofit sector to learning the ins and outs of how to successfully fundraise for nonprofits, I have had the opportunity to learn the true value of the nonprofits sector. I have also been able to see the many struggles that nonprofits have to face, which are certainly not easy.
So the main reason why I am so interested in nonprofits is because they have been proven to be extremely beneficial to all of society and do unmeasurable good. However, the challenges and struggles that they often face are ones that can be solved with a bit more thinking. This area of trying to grow the nonprofits sector is the area that I find most intriguing and one that I feel I will continue to explore once I am out of college. To do this though I think it is important to really explore the current structure of nonprofits and the professionals that are well versed in the nonprofit sector.
After living in Eugene I have seen so many different nonprofits that take many different forms. One that I have a particular interest in that I actually mentioned in an earlier post is the Eugene YMCA. The reason for my interest was because I had heard the CEO speak in one of my classes and the not only explained what the Eugene YMCA is but he also gave a really interesting look into what it takes to be the CEO of a nonprofit. With all that being said I decided to take it a step further and sit down with Steffen to get to ask more questions that gave me a better look at the area of the nonprofit sector that interests me the most while also getting to know a bit more about a nonprofit that plays a huge role in my local community.
Q. What is your background in the nonprofit sector and what led you to the YMCA in Eugene?
A. I grew up on a Montana cattle ranch as a fifth generation cattle rancher and hadn’t planned on going to college. I ultimately started dating a girl who was in college that talked me into going to college after planning on just working at the cattle ranch. When I went to college I had a hard time picking my major and ultimately focused on marketing and communication. I really loved it and felt like I was doing pretty well in the classes. I was in college on an academic scholarship and had just about a 4.0 GPA.
At my University, Brigham Young University I had a marketing and advertising team that represented the University at competitions and they made the team up of students with different expertise. You would put together this, kind of, mini student led advertising/ marketing team that led ideas and I was the president of BYU’s team and so I thought I have the grades and the background here in the sector. Then when it came to my senior year and I started applying to jobs I thought I would be turning down job offers but it wasn’t like that at all. I probably did 40 or 50 applications and wanted to work for an ad agency in probably New York or LA and I wasn’t getting any opportunities to work in that sector. Back in East Montana where I grew up, my dad said hey there is a large local nonprofit here that is a community action agency called Action for Eastern Montana and he said that they are looking for a head of marketing and communication. They called it like the Director of Strategic Planning and so I applied for the job and was successful in getting the job.
Action for Eastern Montana was an organization with five branch offices and was about a six or seven million a year nonprofit that had about 100 employees. My responsibilities were with marketing and communication, community outreach, and helping the board with strategic planning. I did that for about two years and then their CEO left to pursue a different job so I applied and ultimately got the job. One of the lessons that I learned through that was how important it was post college to be able to go to a place that might not be a place that everyone else is willing to go. Being willing to go to a community where you are willing to get the job and experience proved really valuable to me. I served as the CEO for about 10 years and that time was an incredible opportunity for me to learn from industry leaders.
Q. Do you think we need to make the nonprofit sector more competitive to foster the nature and legitimacy that the for-profit sector has?
A. I guess the compensation in the nonprofit sector is, is an interesting area because, you know, in a lot of ways, for a lot of nonprofits, you don’t have that traditional market in terms of, well, we just charge X amount more for our services every year. We just inflate the value a certain percentage and then just, you know, use that to fund operations. And so I, you know, I’ll use myself as an example. I’ve been here in Eugene for four years and and my I haven’t felt right adjusting my compensation for over those four years. So my pay hasn’t changed. It did change I 1% since I’ve been here. And then I turned around and donated that back to the organization in order to support, just trying to make sure we have as many resources as possible for the frontline and and I saw that in a lot of ways in the nonprofit sector like we have a nine member leadership team at our Y and if you were to combine the the total percentage change of like half of that group over the past, say, three years, that all cumulative change is like 3% or maybe 4%. And so, there is a little bit of that reality where the executive or administrative staff within nonprofits probably have a much lower rate of compensation change each year than in the for profit sector.
I would attribute a lot of that to a mindset of kind of choosing the nonprofit career path. If you are perhaps, maybe a little bit more of an altruistic person, that might be a little bit more service focused. And so a lot of our leaders have focused on here, you know, we’ve put resources around frontline staff, our teachers, and and so those are the two staff at our Y who experience a greater rate of change. The other part that becomes challenging in the nonprofit sector is associated with the fact that for a lot of executive positions, you’re directly competing against the for profit industry because, you know, for example, to try to be a director of a program at the YMCA like in politics or child care, etc., those are kind of the career paths where you need to have an expertise in that. But if you are somebody with expertise in accounting, finance, HR, you can take those skills and work in for profit or nonprofit areas. So it’s also challenging to hire those positions because you need to find somebody who is altruistic and willing to work in the nonprofit sector. I think just about every senior executive position at our Y that I’ve hired since I’ve been here, the people who have joined those positions have taken a pay cut and are coming from for profit sectors to come and work at the YMCA.
So there’s that reality and, and parts of it I don’t know that you can get it all the way out because you would never I believe like the old Simon Sinek quote, “leaders eat last”. Like the leaders should prioritize giving resources to frontline staff and to to members that you serve. But I do think that it becomes dangerous for nonprofits if you try and go a long time without adjusting the compensation of those staff. Because eventually, you know, every worker is a human at heart and they have bills and families and households and all of those things to cover. So you have to think about that. And the other thing I think that is common in the nonprofit sector and there’s some books that I’ve read on this, you know, certainly there’s a lot of articles along. It’s one of that I’ve shared with our team, a publication called Crappy Chairs, and it was based on this idea that a lot of nonprofit figures have a scarcity mindset. And this scarcity mindset translates like the idea of crappy chairs is a metaphor for where we don’t want to spend money on the organization, and instead we’ll get like some broken down chair or a leg up with a block of wood and put some duct tape on it. And then we’ll make sure that we can just keep serving clients. But it’s emblematic of an organizational philosophy that there’s scarcity. And with this scarcity, we can afford to invest in ourselves as an organization. And it really became prevalent for me working in the federal poverty sector, where we had a facility where people would come there, we had a food bank, they would be getting assistance.
When I became the CEO, I started doing focus groups and discussions with a lot of our clients. One of the things that they elevated was like, I’m embarrassed to come here. I’m embarrassed because they come in and it looks broken down, like I feel worse about myself coming here. And it makes me impact in self-confidence and self-image because it just feels broken down. And we have fleets of vehicles and contractors. We would go out to people’s homes and weatherize their homes and provide assistance, and we would have people who would ask us to park down the block. They wouldn’t want to be known as having us there to help them. And in a lot of that change, when we got to do pickups and we had new equipment and our staff had uniforms, and when people felt like the nonprofit was professional and welcoming and and the environment was inviting, it made them feel better about themselves. And so I think getting nonprofits to not have that scarcity mindset, it’s a little bit of a, you know, there’s a code switch that we need leaders like you to help come in and focus on that.
Q. Is there anything you else you wanted to add, like maybe about like the YMCA that you think would be important to include in my blog?
A. I guess the key thing that I would say relative to the YMCA is and the university is the university is often filled with brilliant students with big ideas who are looking ahead to their future. And if there’s ever any great ideas they have or things that they’re interested in, the Y is a great place to connect because it it is a nonprofit that especially over the last several years because of the national focus on the idea that we’re here to focus on youth development, social responsibility and healthy living. And because of that broad focus, it allows us to kind of go wherever the community has an area of need. And that’s a little bit different in terms of being a nonprofit. And so, you know, you might have somebody on campus who says, you know what, I’m from I’m from South Africa, and I would love to do something with the YMCA there and hopefully get connected to I mean, YMCA is have a global reach, I think from a Y that a sister relationship with the Y in Sierra Leone, we did fundraising in support of them. You know, somebody can say I’m I’m worried about people with HIV in our community here, but for the Y do there. And so the Y is a great place that has the ability to be in incubation around innovation because it’s not necessarily are saying we’re going to do this exact same thing every year. And so over the years, over the history of the YMCA as a movement, since, you know, since its founding in London in 1844, Y have innovated in a huge assortment of ways. Whether it was that was why inquiry into basketball into volleyball wise to make exercise and camp programs and swim programs. And and so if the university students ever want to innovate or think about great ideas, we’re always open for those discussions.
When I initially went into this interview with the mindset that I would spend maybe 20 minutes of less speaking with Steffen after the first two questions I realized that would not at all be the case. Not only would he answer the questions thoroughly but he would give follow up questions back to me which fosters an incredible conversation. As I mentioned I had previously mentioned I did hear him speak previously in one of my classes so I knew the dedication and time that went into his role as the CEO. Hearing him speak on an insiders look on what it takes to grow the nonprofit sector while also seeing how encouraging and interested current nonprofit professionals are to fostering and guiding that growth was amazing to see. There are so many avenues and paths in the nonprofit sector. There are also so many practices yet to be explored with nonprofits and Steffens had encouraging words on how his organization as well as many others are dedicated to trying those out to further push the boundaries of nonprofits. I appreciated the time that he allowed me to use to ask these questions to then further share them with you all and I know this interview is a testimate to the bright future that he and the nonprofit sector have ahead of him. I am excited to start my own journey in the nonprofit sector and hope you will follow along with me as well.